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.
In spirit of the Japanese film Densen Uta, today’s Song of the Day is the infamous Hungarian suicide song “Gloomy Sunday.”
DISCLAIMER: DESPITE THE CLAIM OF THIS SONG’S EFFECT BEING ONLY PART OF FALSE URBAN LEGENDS, THE GOLDEN ROCK IS NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR ANY HARM THAT MIGHT COME FROM LISTENING TO THIS SONG.
This is the more depressing version of the English lyrics by Desmond Carter, sung by Diamanda Galas. She gets the facts a little twisted here, but the point is to listen to the song, not her version of history.
And here is the more optimistic version of the English lyrics by Sam Lewis, sung by Billie Holiday. I like the delivery better, despite the attempt to lighten up with the extra verse.
- The closest thing to a box office report today is that while Harry Potter is breaking records in North America, Ming Pao Daily in Hong Kong reports that it didn’t even get anywhere close to hitting the opening day records set by Spiderman 3 and Pirates of the Caribbean. On only 42 screens (Pirates and Spidey opened on doubled that number), Potter made reportedly HK$3 million, after ticket price inflation (It’s not even 140 minutes long!!!!!) and the IMAX 3d ticket sales, which is double the price of a normal ticket. Still, it’s the highest Potter opening in Hong Kong yet, and it didn’t even open on a public holiday, so it’s still safe to say that this movie is going to be huge.
- The new Japanese horror film Densen Uta (Infectious Song) has a simple idea - there’s a song that kills whoever sings it (come on, I have enough trouble finding enough Japanese songs to sing at Karaoke already!). I know it sounds like a horror comedy to poke fun at the sometimes infectiously fun (ha ha, I made a pun) Karaoke culture of Japan, but they are actually taking it seriously (click on 動画 for the teaser). According to the introduction on the site, it’s inspired by the urban legend surrounding the song Gloomy Sunday.
Still, you have to give it to Shochiku for finding creative ways to promote the film. First, they will put two versions of the song in Karaoke machines across Japan, and people who choose the wrong version will get a bit of a scare. They’re also planning on releasing the actual song as a single two weeks after the film’s release, and a second version will be released depending on whether the song is really infected or not. And Jason Gray reports that they’ve even gone as far as putting QR codes around strategic locations, including bathrooms at popular department stores.
In case you are not quite caught up with cellular technology, a QR code is usually a square of strange patterns that cellular phones can decipher. In most case, reading certain codes can lead users on mobile website the advertisers want you to go to. I personally didn’t find much practical use of it since it took me a while to figure that out when I lived in Japan. But now you can use it to buy movie tickets in Hong Kong. Anyway, I digress. Good advertising, Shochiku. Now I hope the movie is watchable.
- Gamers in China are pissed off because they waited a long time to buy their legal versions of the popular online game World of Warcraft, only to find that it’s been censored by the Chinese government. According to the game distributor in China, the skeletons used to symbolized dead characters were changed to graves in the Chinese versions because of the government’s agenda to promote “a healthy and harmonious on-line environment.” Now everyone can just go buy an uncensored American version down the street for one-tenth of the price. Yay.
- There’s a new trailer for Peter Chan Ho-Sun’s Warlords, starring Andy Lau, Jet Li, and Takeshi Kaneshiro. They’re not showing much, but at least it looks like it’ll pull no punches as a gritty period action flick. At least it wasn’t “illegally” leaked.
Then again, if that’s not work-safe, you can forget about watching American hip-hop videos on Youtube too.
- Johnnie To’s Hong Kong Western gunplay masterpiece Exiled is going to Korea, and I’m not exactly clear on how they want to promote it. They’re certainly not promoting the stars, that’s for sure.
- Speaking of distribution in Korea, major investor Sidus, who has seen its name on many Korean films, is going into distributing their own films themselves. This is a gutsy move, considering the somewhat dire state Korean films are in this year.
- Japanese-Canandian band Monkey Majik (as in their lead vocalist and guitarist are Canadian, and the other two members are Japanese) have a hit song on their hands without even releasing a single for it. Their song “Sora Wa Maru De” first appeared on a Japanese commercial earlier in the year, and has made its way up to the number one on the USEN request charts since then. I don’t have the commercial for it, but I personally don’t see the appeal.
- Naomi Kawase may be complaining about the government not supporting films on a national level, but the Sapporo city government is sure as hell doing plenty of good. Not only will they send film students from local colleges and Hokkaido University to go work on film and TV shoots in the Sapporo area, they are also sending four students every year to visual media internships in Tokyo. Now the Hong Kong government needs to do something like that before they just pour US$35 million into subpar films.
The Oriental Daily from Hong Kong reports that director Joe Ma has confirmed that his last good comedy Love Undercover has been bought up by a Hollywood studio for remake. Despite no official casting having been announced, Ma said that he would personally like to see Drew Barrymore take the role Miriam Yeung made famous. This news comes after Stephen Fung’s Enter the Phoenix and Andrew Lau/Alan Mak’s Confession of Pain were bought up for Hollywood remakes earlier in the year.
Good news? Bad news? Don’t care? I personally think it’s going to suck already.
Today’s Song of the Day was kind of hinted when I didn’t put a link to one of the songs I mentioned in the Oricon charts. It was the number 2 song this past week, and now it’s the Golden Rock Song of the Day. From Ayaka, it’s “Jewelry Day.”
It’s also the theme song for the Japanese May-December romance Last Love
You know the procedure for Wednesdays - it’s the Oricon charts!
- We’ll first look at the monthly rankings for June. On the singles chart, it’s no surprise that Kat-tun’s latest won, but I’m a little surprised that it won by such a large margin. Released on June 6th, the single sold 332,000 copies within the month of June, despite the song sucking quite hard. Meanwhile, the only two songs that are not new releases on the top ten are Keisuke Kuwata’s Ashita Hareru Kana and new band GReeeeN’s Ai Uta, both of which saw rising sales from the previous month.
Meanwhile, the competition on the album charts is a little closer, as Mariya Takeuchi’s latest album sold 357,000 copies in the month of June after being released on May 23rd. Not too far behind is Johnny’s Entertainment’s Kanjani, who sold 226,000 copies of their latest after it was released on June 6th. Zard’s last compilation album “Golden Best” sold an additional 155,000 copies due to the untimely death of singer Izumi Sakai. Sad for J-pop, 4 of the albums on the top 10 are American albums from Linkin Park, Avril Lavinge, Maroon 5, and Ne-Yo, respectively.
On to the weekly charts. On the singles side, Erika Sawajiri’s first single as herself debuted at the top spot, but with a fairly weak sales figure of 50,000 copies. Sawajiri is now the first female artist to have her first two singles debut at number 1 since Hiroko Yakushimaru became the first female artist to do it in the early 80s. Not very far behind is the much-touted new single from young artist Ayaka, who just announced she will hold a concert at the famous Budokan in December. Despite all the hoopla surrounding the song’s release, it only sold 38,600 copies in its first week. Still, I actually like the song quite a bit. Meanwhile, high-pitch boy band w-inds’ new single, which is apparently the Japanese theme for Shrek the Third, only mustered a 4th place debut after selling 28,7000 copies. As for returning singles, Koda Kumi’s latest lost about 67% of its first-week sales with only 35,000 copies sold this week, and Ketsumeishi’s latest suffered similar damage with their latest single as well. If daily rankings hold up (and they usually do), then the new single by a collaboration known as the Golden Circle should win the week with very weak sales.
As for the album chart this week, Namie Amuro’s latest also suffered a 64% drop in sales, selling only 90,500 copies despite staying at the top spot. In comparison, GReeeeN’s debut album lost only roughly 35% in sales for their second week, selling 85,700 copies at a close second place. Meanwhile, Zard’s Golden Best sells another 32,200 copies, while R&B/ballad pop act Melody, who I’ll always know as the girl in that cool M-Flo song, sees her latest album debut at 6th place with only 22,000 copies sold. Get ready for Arashi’s latest album to blow away all competition by the end of the week.
- As we reported yesterday, Andrew Lau/Alan Mak’s Confession of Pain arrived dead on arrival in Japan. On its opening weekend, the film made 23.7 million yen. That’s only 27% of the opening for Daisy and 54% of the opening for Infernal Affairs III. Eiga Consultant sees it as a failure of Ayumi Hamasaki’s theme song to bring audiences in, but I see it as a freefall of Takeshi Kaneshiro’s popularity in Japan. Even teaming up with who is arguably one of Asia’s top actors couldn’t lift this thing up. Then again, the movie isn’t all that great.
- Just a little preview of Friday’s Hong Kong box office report - Harry Potter is going to be huge, just look at the IMAX presales. Those tickets are twice the price of a normal ticket. Red means sold out, by the way.
- This can’t be real, right? Dicky Cheung, best known as Hong Kong television’s answer to Stephen Chow, is starring as the Monkey King in a Hollywood film after he played the famous character in two different television dramas.
- In an attempt to search out for new inspirations for films, a popular blog about a group of students’ war of pranks with a local resident in a rural town is being adapted into a film. If it all goes well, I bet you they’ll be making various versions of TV as well. Then again, the film is being directed by Renpei Tsukamoto, whose last theatrical work is One Missed Call 2.
- The Tribeca Film Festival held a mini-edition in Beijing, and it seems to be a success, as it has attracted not just over-glamourized celebrities, but hip film buffs as well.
- MTV and Motorola held a series of concerts featuring Taiwanese star Jay Chou and Chinese star Cui Jian to remind people that music comes from real musical talent, not just getting lucky on some talent show. Wow, so MTV actually promotes music anywhere that’s NOT the United States.
- In DVD news, Studio Ghibli’s Tales From Earthsea is coming is a cheaper Hong Kong DVD on July 20th, while the Korean dark comedy Driving With My Wife’s Lover, which I linked a review for a while ago, is coming out in August. I actually want to watch both, despite the less-than-good reputation for Earthsea.
- The Thai government is just pissing off everyone in the Thai entertainment industry, as even the TV industry has come out against the new ratings system. They argue the new system, which they say was thought up without any careful consideration, will restrict artistic freedom and impossible to put into practice. Case in point: A program is rated PG if it contains “use of wrong grammar not used for comic effect.” Man, that’s worse than China.
Today’s song of the day comes from the discovery of this website. Guess what? today’s song was the number one song in the UK on the day I was born. I can tell you what the number one song in the US was that day because I’ll never choose it as Song of the Day - it was Tina Turner’s What’s Love Got to Do With It.
Anyway, the number one song in the UK on the day I was born was George Michael’s “Careless Whisper” from Wham!’s Make it Big album. Now you might have an idea how old I am.
Seems like I accidentally used this title for yesterday’s Song of the Day, my apologies.
- The Japan box office numbers are out on Box Office Mojo….kind of. They have a bunch of numbers and percentages, but I’m guessing that because not all the distributors delivered their numbers, so the rankings are somewhat incomplete. The only conclusions I can make out is that 1) No film took a real big hit. Not even Pirates of the Caribbean, which just would. not. go. away. and 2) Confession of Pain preformed pretty disappointingly, despite the presence of Takeshi Kaneshiro. Is he just not that popular in Japan?
On the arthouse side, the Finnish film Lights in the Dark by Aki Kurismaki. The only reasons I’m writing about the performance of this film are 1) it actually looks really interesting, and 2) The advertising suggests that director Kurismaki has some kind of small following in Japan. Anyway, the 2006 Cannes contender opened in one small theatre in Shibuya on the 7th, and attracted 703 admissions for an even 1 million yen gross on the opening day. With a capacity of 145 and 5 shows a day, that means each show had an average capacity of 97%, which is pretty damn good.
- Despite bad word-of-mouth pretty much anywhere it played, Studio Ghibli’s Tales From Earthsea managed to sell 147,000 copies the first week and is the best first-week sales of any animated DVD this year.
- Even though it’s easy to attack the Hong Kong print media for spending most of their pages on celebrity gossips, you can actually find some little pieces of news that matter. For example, while this report is about Hong Kong stars Gigi Leung and Lau Ching-Wan having to lose weight for their respective upcoming film roles, you also learn that Wai Ka-Fai is making a new movie starring Lau as a blind man this August.
- The hit drama Nodame Cantabile is coming back for a two-part drama special in January. Next stop: the movie? For those people in Hong Kong that hasn’t downloaded it yet (I’m sure there are a few of you out there), this will be showing on TVB in August.
- TV Tokyo is under fire for biased reporting of the upcoming elections for the House of Councilors. News agenda exists, but I doubt that TV Tokyo is the only TV station that has it.
- MK Pictures, most well-known for producing Korean director Kang Je-Gyu’s Shiri and Taegukgi (if you know Korean films, you should know these films anyway), has been bought up by cable TV. One of the people who sold his shares? Kang Je-Gyu.
Today’s song is a bit of a random choice (I didn’t even know I made to 100 songs already!). From Juno Mak’s Chapel of Dawn (which I reviewed), it’s the first single - Road To Evil. Hopefully, it’s not indicative of any aspect of my life.
- In the Sunday box office numbers from Hong Kong, Hollywood films split the box office booty as Die Hard 4.0 wins the day with HK$1.64 million on 51 screens for a so-called “4-day total” (it already had a week of previews) of HK$11.46 million. Not far behind is Shrek 3, which played on the same amount of screens and made another HK$1.59 million for a 11-day total of HK$17.25 million. Farther behind is the handover commemoration film from Milkyway Hooked on You, which is still going relatively strong by making HK$600,000 on 30 screens for a per-screen average of HK$20,000. After 11 days, the Miriam Yeung/Eason Chan starrer has made HK$7.1 million, and might even cross the champagne-worthy HK$10 million mark.
Meanwhile, this week’s Hong Kong opener Wonder Women, which opened on a lackluster 12 screens, bounced back a little bit from its soft opening to make HK$210,000 for a 4-day total of HK$660,000. Robert Rodriguez’s Grindhouse segment Planet Terror made only HK$180,000 on 15 screens for a 4-day total of HK$840,000. This would probably be because of the subject matter and the category-III rating (no one under 18 admitted). On its 20th day of release, Hong Kong comedy Simply Actors made HK$140,000 on 20 screens for a HK$9.13 million average. It’s not very likely this will pass the HK$10 million mark. Lastly, Julie Delpy’s Two Days in Paris continues to play strongly on its 4-screen limited release, making HK$70,000 for an 11-day total of HK$70,000.
US$1=HK$7.8
This week, the Harry Potter movie opens in Hong Kong, which pushes everything out of the way. This one is especially big because it’ll be the first major IMAX film to play in Hong Kong’ spanking-new IMAX theater, and lines for advanced tickets have already gotten quite huge.
- In South Korea, Transformers remained very very strong, losing only 2% in total market shares this past weekend. It’s also looking to break the attendance record for a foreign film, which was set by the final Lord of the Rings film at 6 million (Tranformers has already hit 4.2 mil). For how everything else is doing, check out Korea Pop Wars.
- In Japan audience rankings, just about every film stays where they are, except for the entry of Dolphin Blue starring Kenichi Matsuyama at number 7 and Andrew Lau/Alan Mak’s Confession of Pain at only number 8. More numbers tomorrow from Box Office Mojo.
- In Japan drama ratings (yes, a majority of the Summer 2007 season has started), Fuji’s comic adaptation Hana Gi Kari No Kimi Tachi He (which, like Hana Yori Dango, was first made into a successful live-action drama in Taiwan) started ok with a 15.9 rating (roughly 10.3 million viewers). That’s lower than the premiere for TBS’ Hana Yori Dango, which opened with an 18.3 rating back in fall 2005. TBS’ Jigoku No Sata Mo Yome Shitai, which sounds eerily similar to the TV Asahi drama Erai Tokoro Ni Toide Shimatta, premiered with only a 13.7 rating (roughly 8.9 million viewers) up directly against TV Asahi’s third installment of Kikujiro to Saki (based on Takeshi Kitano’s childhood), which premiered with an even weaker 10.9 rating (roughly 7.1 million viewers).
By request, the Misaki Ito/Kyoko Fukada Fuji Thursday drama Yama Onna Kabe Onna does OK with a 14.1 premiere (Last season drama in that time slot, Watashi Tachi No Kyokasho, premiered with a 14.2 rating), scoring roughly 9.2 million viewers. At the same time slot is TBS’ Katagoshi No Koibito, which premiered with a 10.2 rating (roughly 6.6 million viewers, which is even lower than last season’s ratings poison Kodoku no Kake). The highest-rated debut this season so far is TBS’ Yamada Taro Monogatari, which stars two members of Arashi and takes up the old Hana Yori Dango timeslot. It premiered with a 17.4 rating (roughly 11.3 million viewers). The two dramas that are already in their second weeks , Fuji’s Life (their second in the successful Saturday 11pm time slot) and Papa To Musume No Nanakakan, are both holding up well. Life actually saw an increase in viewership, going from the premiere’s 11.0 rating to this past week’s 11.7 rating (roughly 7.6 million viewers). However, it’s still performing weaker than last season’s surprise hit Liar Game. On the other hand, Papa To Musume No Nanakakan, which was praised by the Daily Yomiuri this past weekend, saw only a small drop from 14.0 to 12.8 (roughly 8.3 million viewers) for its second episode.
Whew. I’m covering less drama ratings next week. Just leave a comment if you want me to cover a specific drama.
- According to the Hong Kong Film Blog, Derek Kwok’s The Pye-Dog, which was supposed to be released back in May, is now eyeing a September release date. However, someone in the comment section writes that it might even be looking at November. The mystery continues.
- In my continuing love for the Japanese government advisory panel that is encouraging wider distribution of Japanese entertainment, they have asked DVD recorder manufacturers to allow the limit for copying programs on DVDs be increased to nine from the current one. In other words, if you recorded something from a digital broadcast, you can only copy it onto a DVD once. Now, that limit is being upped to nine, in case the user fails to burn it completely. This is already after a compromise by the panel, who initially ordered that limit be removed.
- Twitch has a full trailer for Kenneth Bi’s The Drummer. Considering I didn’t like Rice Rhapsody very much, this film is actually looking very promising ever since I started following its production on Bi’s blog.
- Although the launch of the reinvented Bangkok International Film Festival has been a little bumpy, the Bangkok Film Market is going very well, with all the booths on the market floor already taken.
- Jay Chou’s directorial debut Secrets isn’t coming out until the end of this month, so I can’t say whether this is good news or bad news. But apparently Jay found the experience rewarding enough for him to say that he prefers directing over acting. Then again, someone with an ego like Chou probably can’t resist acting in his own films anyway.
Not only is this the second official Golden Rock weekly podcast, it also happens to be the 300th entry of this here blog. Then again, I post so much that I can hardly feel any excitement for these -00 th marks anymore…at least until the 500th. One thing to celebrate is that I managed to make it shorter!
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