Note: This blog expresses only the opinions of the blog owner, and does not represent the opinion of any organization or blog that is associated with The Golden Rock.
I had a Podcast ready and everything, but Audacity somehow manages to fuck up my introduction (one track suddenly silenced the other one for a certain period of time, even though I didn’t ask for the silence), and now no more Podcast because I have no energy to spend hours editing it again. So last week was the final Podcast for a while, and maybe we’ll try it all over again in Hong Kong.
- The opening of a major multiplex in Tokyo started a new trend - stage show on movie screens. There’s something similar to that here in the States, broadcasting concerts on a nationwide system of cinemas. The series of stage shows, 4 in all, sold 14,000 tickets during its run, so perhaps it’s no surprise that they already sold 5000 advance tickets for their latest show in 2 days. I can understand why people outside Tokyo might need something like this, but I already imagine live stage shows being better, you know……live?
- For some reason, wasn’t the news on the box office result of the American-produced documentary Nanking much better two weeks ago? With rich people shelling out donations and theaters reducing prices to get people into the theater, I thought it was supposed to be a hit in Nanjing. However, looks like it’s suffering under the Hollywood syndrome as well, where there’s just not enough screens to go around for it.
- The Sun Also Rises co-stars Jaycee Chan, who is also currently in the Hong Kong action film Invisible Targets. His father Jackie has the soon-to-be-crappy sequel Rush Hour 3, which also stars Chinese actress Zhang Jingchu, who talks about her experiences on the set.
Just to finish playing that 6 degrees of separation game, Zhang was in Protege with Daniel Wu, who was in Twins Effects 2 with Jaycee. Boo-ya!
- Jaycee was in Twins effects 2 with Charlene Choi, who was in Love on the Rocks with Louis Koo, who is in the experimental Hong Kong Cannes participant Triangle by Tsui Hark, Ringo Lam, and Johnnie To. The official website for the film is up, and according to Mov3.com, the film won’t be coming out until….November?!
Today’s song wraps up the unofficial theme of the week, which is male quick pop songs (except for the Ekin song, of course). From the album Good Job, it’s Rip Slyme with Sunset Surround. Don’t worry, unlike their latest MTV, this one is work-safe.
I had a Podcast ready and everything, but Audacity somehow manages to fuck up my introduction (one track suddenly silenced the other one for a certain period of time, even though I didn’t ask for the silence), and now no more Podcast because I have no energy to spend hours editing it again. So last week was the final Podcast for a while, and maybe we’ll try it all over again in Hong Kong.
- The opening of a major multiplex in Tokyo started a new trend - stage show on movie screens. There’s something similar to that here in the States, broadcasting concerts on a nationwide system of cinemas. The series of stage shows, 4 in all, sold 14,000 tickets during its run, so perhaps it’s no surprise that they already sold 5000 advance tickets for their latest show in 2 days. I can understand why people outside Tokyo might need something like this, but I already imagine live stage shows being better, you know……live?
- For some reason, wasn’t the news on the box office result of the American-produced documentary Nanking much better two weeks ago? With rich people shelling out donations and theaters reducing prices to get people into the theater, I thought it was supposed to be a hit in Nanjing. However, looks like it’s suffering under the Hollywood syndrome as well, where there’s just not enough screens to go around for it.
- The Sun Also Rises co-stars Jaycee Chan, who is also currently in the Hong Kong action film Invisible Targets. His father Jackie has the soon-to-be-crappy sequel Rush Hour 3, which also stars Chinese actress Zhang Jingchu, who talks about her experiences on the set.
Just to finish playing that 6 degrees of separation game, Zhang was in Protege with Daniel Wu, who was in Twins Effects 2 with Jaycee. Boo-ya!
- Jaycee was in Twins effects 2 with Charlene Choi, who was in Love on the Rocks with Louis Koo, who is in the experimental Hong Kong Cannes participant Triangle by Tsui Hark, Ringo Lam, and Johnnie To. The official website for the film is up, and according to Mov3.com, the film won’t be coming out until….November?!
Call it a half-joke song, or call it a bad choice, but I originally wanted another song from this album. Instead, I shall offer the more popular song from this soundtrack/short film combo.
Don’t laugh, it’s in the house, but this isn’t even mine.
From everyone’s favorite Goo Wat Jai, it’s Ekin Cheng showing his sensitive side with “The Weather’s Fault.” Hey, it’s perfect for typhoon season.
I apologize for the lack of post yesterday. At least it would make longer weekend entries.
- Sequels tend to open higher anywhere you look, unless when it looks very underwhelming. The rule applies to Hong Kong as well, which is why Michael Bay’s Transformers, despite all the hype and the worldwide invasion, had a spectacular opening with HK$2.8 million from 74 screens in Hong Kong on Thursday and still manage to look disappointing. The major sequels - Spiderman 3, Harry Potter, Pirates of the Caribbean - have all opened huge with HK$3-6 million opening days on some 100 screens. I keep telling myself that this, in all logic, is a huge opening and it can only get bigger. There must be some sickening obsession in me to see this one fail somewhere in the world.
In other movies, Harry Potter is beginning to slow down, making HK$690,000 on 50 screens for a damn good 16-day total of HK$41.17 million. Benny Chan’s Invisible Target looks to hold strong this weekend thanks to word-of-mouth, making HK$560,000 on 36 screens for an 8-day total of HK7.78 million. Look for this to pass the HK$10 million mark by Monday. There were two more openings this week - the latest Doraemon movie made just HK$160,000 on 21 screens (though business will pick up for the weekend, and these things do better on home video anyway), and Hula Girl made a sad HK$10,000 on 3 screens. If you’re in Hong Kong and haven’t watched Hula Girl, go. There’s a reason this ALMOST won the audience award at the New York Asian Film Festival, it’s a good syrupy crowdpleaser.
- There’s some rumors out there explaining why Kenneth Bi’s The Drummer was suddenly pulled from the Hong Kong International Film Festival Summer Pops lineup. Apparently, in order to get into certain festivals, films are required to not having screened in its country of origin(Can anyone confirm this?), which means Bi and Co. chose to get its film into a foreign film festival (in this case, the Locarno festival) for sales possibilities rather than pushing local buzz. I don’t blame them, but that’s a pretty major diss for the local audiences, and proof that perhaps Asian films are no longer made for their local audiences any longer.
- zzzzzzz, the MPA continues their crusade in Asia by bringing a 23-minute documentary to Indian students about intellectual property. I want to stop reporting this too, but I’m relaying it just to show how annoying they are about showing off their efforts.
- It’s redundant but less boring because of its ridiculousness, the Chinese government continues to dictate how to fuck up youths in their own special way by continuing to crack down on anything related to the Japanese comic Death Note. Now they have gone as far as shutting down websites that have anything to do with it. And the MPA is confused why people still violate intellectual property in China?
- Youtube is set to put in place their copyright recognition software, stopping any files that are copyrighted from being put on the site in September. This is going to mean that the Song of the Day feature would be in jeopardy, and also means your votes will fail to count anyway.
But hey, be sure to keep voting anyway, because democracy is fun and exciting.
- Korea Pop Wars writes about the new DVD set of Shin Sang-Ok movies. For those who don’t know, Shin is one of the most important Korean directors in Asian film history and has worked on everything from classic 60s films to the Three Ninja movies in Hollywood.
Call it a half-joke song, or call it a bad choice, but I originally wanted another song from this album. Instead, I shall offer the more popular song from this soundtrack/short film combo.
Don’t laugh, it’s in the house, but this isn’t even mine.
From everyone’s favorite Goo Wat Jai, it’s Ekin Cheng showing his sensitive side with “The Weather’s Fault.” Hey, it’s perfect for typhoon season.
I apologize for the lack of post yesterday. At least it would make longer weekend entries.
- Sequels tend to open higher anywhere you look, unless when it looks very underwhelming. The rule applies to Hong Kong as well, which is why Michael Bay’s Transformers, despite all the hype and the worldwide invasion, had a spectacular opening with HK$2.8 million from 74 screens in Hong Kong on Thursday and still manage to look disappointing. The major sequels - Spiderman 3, Harry Potter, Pirates of the Caribbean - have all opened huge with HK$3-6 million opening days on some 100 screens. I keep telling myself that this, in all logic, is a huge opening and it can only get bigger. There must be some sickening obsession in me to see this one fail somewhere in the world.
In other movies, Harry Potter is beginning to slow down, making HK$690,000 on 50 screens for a damn good 16-day total of HK$41.17 million. Benny Chan’s Invisible Target looks to hold strong this weekend thanks to word-of-mouth, making HK$560,000 on 36 screens for an 8-day total of HK7.78 million. Look for this to pass the HK$10 million mark by Monday. There were two more openings this week - the latest Doraemon movie made just HK$160,000 on 21 screens (though business will pick up for the weekend, and these things do better on home video anyway), and Hula Girl made a sad HK$10,000 on 3 screens. If you’re in Hong Kong and haven’t watched Hula Girl, go. There’s a reason this ALMOST won the audience award at the New York Asian Film Festival, it’s a good syrupy crowdpleaser.
- There’s some rumors out there explaining why Kenneth Bi’s The Drummer was suddenly pulled from the Hong Kong International Film Festival Summer Pops lineup. Apparently, in order to get into certain festivals, films are required to not having screened in its country of origin(Can anyone confirm this?), which means Bi and Co. chose to get its film into a foreign film festival (in this case, the Locarno festival) for sales possibilities rather than pushing local buzz. I don’t blame them, but that’s a pretty major diss for the local audiences, and proof that perhaps Asian films are no longer made for their local audiences any longer.
- zzzzzzz, the MPA continues their crusade in Asia by bringing a 23-minute documentary to Indian students about intellectual property. I want to stop reporting this too, but I’m relaying it just to show how annoying they are about showing off their efforts.
- It’s redundant but less boring because of its ridiculousness, the Chinese government continues to dictate how to fuck up youths in their own special way by continuing to crack down on anything related to the Japanese comic Death Note. Now they have gone as far as shutting down websites that have anything to do with it. And the MPA is confused why people still violate intellectual property in China?
- Youtube is set to put in place their copyright recognition software, stopping any files that are copyrighted from being put on the site in September. This is going to mean that the Song of the Day feature would be in jeopardy, and also means your votes will fail to count anyway.
But hey, be sure to keep voting anyway, because democracy is fun and exciting.
- Korea Pop Wars writes about the new DVD set of Shin Sang-Ok movies. For those who don’t know, Shin is one of the most important Korean directors in Asian film history and has worked on everything from classic 60s films to the Three Ninja movies in Hollywood.
Today’s Song of the Day and I have a bit of history. I first heard it many years ago as a commercial song for an All Nippon Airlines commercial (it was during my high school youtube-less days, I believe). It took me months, and maybe even years, before I found the song’s artist, then the song’s name, then the album. Luckily, my search was not fruitless, as I eventually grabbed the album from a local Japanese bookstore.
Then the album turned out to be not really that good. Still, the song is still good and possibly worth the search. From Steady & Co. and their album Chambers, it’s “Only Holy Story.”
I couldn’t find the original commercial, so here’s 20 minutes of Japanese commercials to make it up. There are some gems in there.
- Apparently there are quite a few fans of David Lynch in Japan. His latest Inland Empire, which I honestly think it looks too weird to be my kind of film, opened on two screens in Japan this past weekend. With three shows a day over two days, the film attracted 2031 admissions and grossed 3.24 million yen. Considering one theater seats only 111 and the other seats 232, that’s a pretty good opening. According to Eiga Consultant, people started lining up at the Tokyo cinema 2 hours before the first show and the last show was sold out three hours beforehand. Also, the pamphlet/program had a 40% sales rate. Either that means good-of-mouth or it means people just plain don’t get it. Return business, anyone?
- Inland Empire was released by Kadakawa films in Japan, who also released the remake The Murder of the Inugami Clan, a ton of smaller films, and a bunch of TV shows after ruling the Japanese film world way back then. Now they are planning to do their own “fight fire with fire” strategy by posting their copyrighted material onto Youtube. However, they are also developing a program that would find internet video content that are violating copyright, though I’m not exactly sure whatever that means.
- Time for Venice festival news - First, Jason Gray has information on the Japanese selections, both in and out of competition (They even gave an in competition spot to Takeshii Miike. Is this a first for Miike in a major European film festival?). Then you can just go and check out the entire list at Variety, which includes quite a few major Asian films.
- Yesterday I reported the misreporting of casting news regarding Derek Yee’s The Shinjuku Incident. Today Hollywood Reporter, whom I consider to be a pretty accurate news reporting organization, reports that China Film Group is onboard as a co-producer, which means you know the good guys and/or the Chinese will again win in the end.
Today’s Song of the Day and I have a bit of history. I first heard it many years ago as a commercial song for an All Nippon Airlines commercial (it was during my high school youtube-less days, I believe). It took me months, and maybe even years, before I found the song’s artist, then the song’s name, then the album. Luckily, my search was not fruitless, as I eventually grabbed the album from a local Japanese bookstore.
Then the album turned out to be not really that good. Still, the song is still good and possibly worth the search. From Steady & Co. and their album Chambers, it’s “Only Holy Story.”
I couldn’t find the original commercial, so here’s 20 minutes of Japanese commercials to make it up. There are some gems in there.
WordPress database error: [Expression #1 of ORDER BY clause is not in GROUP BY clause and contains nonaggregated column 'webkozo_wordpress.gr_posts.post_date' which is not functionally dependent on columns in GROUP BY clause; this is incompatible with sql_mode=only_full_group_by] SELECT DISTINCT YEAR(post_date) AS `year`, MONTH(post_date) AS `month`, count(ID) as posts FROM gr_posts WHERE post_type = 'post' AND post_status = 'publish' GROUP BY YEAR(post_date), MONTH(post_date) ORDER BY post_date DESC
WordPress database error: [Expression #1 of ORDER BY clause is not in SELECT list, references column 'webkozo_wordpress.gr_posts.post_date' which is not in SELECT list; this is incompatible with DISTINCT] SELECT DISTINCT MONTH(post_date) AS month, YEAR(post_date) AS year
FROM gr_posts
WHERE post_date < '2025-01-01'
AND post_type = 'post' AND post_status = 'publish'
ORDER BY post_date DESC
LIMIT 1
WordPress database error: [Expression #1 of ORDER BY clause is not in SELECT list, references column 'webkozo_wordpress.gr_posts.post_date' which is not in SELECT list; this is incompatible with DISTINCT] SELECT DISTINCT MONTH(post_date) AS month, YEAR(post_date) AS year
FROM gr_posts
WHERE post_date > '2025-01-01'
AND MONTH( post_date ) != MONTH( '2025-01-01' )
AND post_type = 'post' AND post_status = 'publish'
ORDER BY post_date ASC
LIMIT 1
