Today’s song of the day needs little introduction. Seriously, just go to the Wikipedia page on it and read up all you want. On the album “Faster Than the Speed of Night,” it’s Bonnie Tyler’s classic “Total Eclipse of the Heart.”

Why? Because it’s the ultimately 80s pop epic that wasn’t done by a large man named Meatloaf (turns out this song WAS written for Meatloaf, according to the Wikipedia page). I know it’s chessy 80s pop, but the video is so far out, and the song is so…unnecessarily epic that you can’t help loving it. Honestly, I don’t even know what the hell it means to have a “total eclipse of the heart” anyway.

Managed to find 3 hours to check out the Rodriguez/Tarantino double feature Grindhouse. Overall, I thought the 3 hours went by fairly fast, and I found it funny that the multiplex I saw it at were playing the film like a grindhouse theater might have, though unintentionally. First, someone forgot to start the previews as the screen froze on the “please turn off your cell phone” screen for a good minute or so. Of course, someone realized he or she was asleep at the wheel and finally started the film. But then the first trailer was misframed for a good 5-10 seconds before the same person fixed it. After about 7 trailers or so (for a movie that’s already 191 minutes long!), the movie (which opened with the Machete trailer) started playing with the lights still on “trailers setting” until Planet Terror was playing for a good 5 minutes already, when someone finally turned the lights fully down.

Then after Planet Terror, people who either needed a good toilet break or just didn’t get the concept started walking out. They were either aware of the 90 minutes of stuff still coming or felt ripped off that they only got the movie with the rocket leg, and about 5-10 people started leaving. Only a few of them come back, and a pretty huge group of 7 people or so also walked out just after Death Proof started. Why? I had no idea. I guess that’s what Harvey Weinstein meant about not “educating” people enough.

Oh, right, the movies. Grindhouse starts with a fake trailer for a film called Machete, starring Danny Trejo as the title character. Machete is, as a character says “a Mexican day-laborer that’s really a Federale.” He gets crossed by some evil men, talks a priest into helping him get revenge, and kicks a whole lot of ass. By the end of Machete, I was more than amused - I was pumped.

I wasn’t really looking forward to Rodriguez’s Planet Terror. I thought Rodriguez is a great technical filmmaker - his ability to DIY everything is impressive to this aspiring amateur director - but he was never a very good storyteller to begin with. His scripts are usually shallow, filled with some “whoa” moments or tons of plot developments to stuff what is essentially an empty story. That’s why I was surprised that I was having so much fun with Planet Terror. Again, he makes up a complicated story about biological weapons that has something to do with viral infections (with an intentionally complicated “here’s what really happened” explanation scene) and essentially makes a very gross zombie film out of it. Any plot description is useless, just know that it’s about a bunch of people fighting really really gross “infected” people and go with it. Everything is tongue-in-cheek and really into that exploitation shoot-and-run spirit (the camera crew shows up very clearly in the mirror in a shot during the opening dance sequence). As for the machine gun leg? Honestly, the trailers showed almost all the money shots out of it already.

Then the bulk of the fake trailers come out - Rob Zombie’s “Werewolf Women of the SS” is only amusing because of its title and a surprise appearance by a big-name actor. Edgar Wright’s “Don’t” is more amusing with better make-up and really good editing, but it’s obviously not much of a feature film idea. Eli Roth’s Thanksgiving is already all over the web, and it’s the best of the bunch. It’s sick, gross, and actually has my favorite lines in the film:

A: [licks blood coming out of headless carcass] “It’s blood.”
B: “Son of a bitch!”

I’m a bigger Tarantino fan - he may have essentially just made a bunch of homage movies (some call them rip-offs, which I can see is a valid complaint.), but he knows how to make a movie. He usually has a good enough handle on dialogue, pacing, and technique that make his movies well worth-watching. I had pretty big expectations for Death Proof; I figured if anyone was going to make an 85-minute movie with mostly girl-talk (which I had read about in reviews), it was Tarantino. However, I have to say I was somewhat disappointed by Death Proof. I was fairly involved the first 45 minutes - Tarantino hooks you with the 70s visual aesthetics, from the credits to the music to all the scratches and missing frames. And the car crash was rightfully intense. Then he resets everything and then it’s another 20 minutes of dialogue before the big finale comes out of nowhere. I usually dig Tarantino’s dialogue, but here, his indulgence is far too apparent. The dialogue in both halves of the film are either repetitive girl talk, endless tidbits of 70s pop culture references, or talk about car movies. What’s worse is that Tarantino has been all over the talk shows, just regurgitating all those stuff he wrote in Death Proof, making all the dialogue feel even more self-indulgent. Hell, Tarantino even flat out gives up on the 70s visuals halfway through the film, and Death Proof suddenly looks crisp with colors and no missing frames. Talk about killing the atmosphere.

Of course, Death Proof does have two redeeming values - car chases and Kurt Russell. Tarantino does live up to his complaint about CGI in car chases by delivering two intensely real car chases, one with real-life stuntwoman Zoe Bell sliding around the hood of a car as Kurt Russell tries to run it off the road, and the other through the highways of Texas. They were well-filmed and well-edited all around. The “avenging chicks” ending felt like Tarantino suddenly woke up and found a direction to take the movie, and I was all the more thankful for it. Kurt Russell, meanwhile, plays his stuntman Mike with a great evil smirk in the first half, only to be reduced to a scared pathetic over-the-top psycho at the end. His transformation is abrupt on paper, but Kurt’s performance eventually made the whole thing work. Would’ve liked to see what Mickey Rourke would’ve done with the character, but I didn’t mind Kurt Russell in the role either.

OK, so some people would say “hey, Tarantino just wrote a bunch of dialogue scenes because that’s how low-budget exploitation films were like.” My problem isn’t exactly with the amount of dialogue. Like I said, I liked the buildup in the first half, but Tarantino could’ve just merged the two groups of girls and made a real revenge film out of Death Proof. But in the end, Death Proof felt like it would’ve made a better extended fake trailer than a feature-length film.

In any case, Grindhouse was actually a lot of fun to sit through. I personally didn’t mind the length, but I could see why people would be turned off by it. The saddest thing is that both films really could’ve been trimmed to a more audience-friendly length - Rodriguez could’ve simplified the convoluted plot and took out the gratuitous explosions to save a couple of bucks; Tarantino could’ve saved himself a good 15 minutes of talking by not making two films out of one. But it is what it is, and I can live with it.

So which director wins the battle of Grindhouse? Just for sticking closer to the genre, making a better missing reel gag (not to say that Tarantino’s missing reel gag wasn’t amusing), and managing to overcome the gossips, I say Rodriguez actually triumphs over Tarantino this time. I think when the films are split up for international release, I dare say word-of-mouth will actually make Planet Terror a bigger success.

Since the weekend isn’t gonna bring much news, I’m moving the news reporting to the weekend entries.

Today’s song of the day is the first single from their first album. Considered their first hit, they’ve actually since come to resent it, which is sad, because it’s a hell of a song. It’s Radiohead’s “Creep.”

Why? It’s emo as hell, but it’s also so self-deprecating that hey, it’s kinda true.

Too bad the only version of the MTV I can find is the clean version (without my favorite line “You’re so fucking special/I wish I was special”)

It’s ok, though, there are plenty of live versions that have that line, including this one in Japan, where Thom Yorke inexplicably makes up one of the lines.

The news today come from random corners of the world, so I’m just going to dive right in without much organization.

- Yesterday I mentioned Nikkatsu’s line-up, which includes the Death Note spin-off film about the L character. We find out today that horror director Hideo Nakata, who made the Japanese versions of the “Ring” and “Dark Water,” will take on directing duties. Well, at least he’s better than the director of Gamera films (that would be the guy who did the Death Note movies).

- On the less commercial side of things, Twitch introduces a film from a country we rarely associate with any film not about war - Vietnam.

- Remember the highly-anticipated Jackie Chan-Jet Li project that turned out to be a kids’ movie? Variety Asia offers us more details, including the director (guy who did Lion and Stuart Little), and the plot, about an American teenager transported into ancient China, where he would join a crew of warriors (with it reportedly based on Journey to the West, it would probably be the monk and his disciples, which include the Monkey King) to free an imprison king. Holy ethnographic gaze, Batman!

- Speaking of Jackie Chan, Rob-B-Hood opened this past weekend in Japan to satisfactory results. According to Eiga Consultant, Rob-B-Hood (called “Project BB” in Japan, which is a direct translation of its Chinese title) grossed 25.6 million yen on 60 screens for an OK 426600 yen per-screen average. The opening is 162% of “The Myth,” but only 58% of “New Police Story,” which grossed 200 mill yen.

- Korea Pop Wars offer some random notes about Korean films and beyond (include Korean films playing at beyond).

- While I said that Grindhouse flopped because it lacked the audience, not shows per day, New York Post critic comes out and says that wasn’t the case in New York, where the per-screen average was actually over $30,000! We’ve just found one more thing to blame rural America….

- Last week I posted a link to the poster of director Benny Chan’s upcoming flick “Invisible Targets,” and now Twitch has delivered again with a report from Chinese TV that contains a bit of footage. That roof jump looks mighty impressive, I hope the rest of the movie can live up to that.

- In Shaolin Soccer, there was a goalie character that was a dead ringer for Bruce Lee. Of course we know that it was intentional that the actor was probably casted in that role because of his looks (Stephen Chow held a huge audition before filming, so I wouldn’t be surprised that’s where he found the actor). That man was Chen Guokun. Who would expect that he was actually casted to play Bruce Lee himself in a biographical TV series based on Lee’s life? Well, believe it, because its shoot starts next week.

- The Tokyo governor’s election has been over and done with for a while (with everyone’s favorite xenophobic nationalist politician Shintaro Ishihara getting his third term in office, just in time for his movie to open!), and the video has been out there for a while. Anyway, as part of the campaign, each candidate has the right to do a 5-minute video explaining their position on issues and why people should vote for them. Out of nowhere comes Koichi Toyama, an ultra left-wing musician and his kooky campaign video. The reason I waited this long because I finally found an English subtitled version. Someone even made a South Park version of the campaign video, because it’s so crazy, baby.

Of course, he’s not the only guy that’s done a kooky campaign video. Rocker Yuuya Uchida also ran for governor in Tokyo in 1991, and he did a similarly entertaining video as well (you don’t even need English subtitles for this, it’s in English already).

Obviously, Uchida lost the election, but what happened to Koichi Toyama? He was in 7th place with 15,000 votes!

What does this have to do with The Golden Rock, you ask? It’s Asian entertainment, isn’t it?

Today’s song of the day was inspired by the 5th track of this album. A comment from yesterday predicted that Justin Lo, a protege of Hong Kong’s notorious Mark Lui, maybe become a new version of the man. Fate would have it that a Hong Kong radio show I was listening to played the previously mentioned Justin Lo track, and I realized the intro is ripped off from today’s song of the day. While the melody doesn’t resemble the song of the day at all, someone (maybe arranger Ted Lo) over there must like Jamiroquai enough to rip the intro from them and put it in the Justin Lo track. From A Funk Odyssey, it’s Jamiroquai’s Corner of the Earth.

Why? Because Jamiroquai rarely goes into bossa nova territory. Plus, I found it funny that Ted Lo even transported the out-of-place hindi-opening to the Justin Lo track. Even without me finding about the copy job by Lo’s team, I would’ve used this song some other day anyway.

Being Wednesday, hump is being used here as a noun, not a verb.

- Let’s start with some rankings. Today it’s the Japanese Oricon (To answer a question that has never been asked, I only go over the Oricon because it’s the most widely-known easy-access general ranking in Asian music. Of course, I’m only saying that because I know Japanese and I don’t know Korean. Plus, I don’t know much about Taiwanese music anyway to go over rankings there). It was a slow week on both fronts - on the singles side, Glay leads the chart with their latest single, selling only 67,000 copies. By that number, you can tell how badly the rest of the singles are selling.

The album chart was fairly weak this week as well, with rock-pop songstress YUI taking the top spot with her second album, selling 290,000 copies. It’s also her first number 1 album, thanks to weak albums sales overall this week. Unlike the crowded album market last month, only 4 new releases found its way on the top 10, and 3 of them are ranked 5th and below.

- In case anyone still cares, Hong Kong Tuesday numbers are out. Mr. Bean still ruled the Hong Kong Easter box office, and Super Fan still flopped.

Several follow-ups from previous reported news:

- In response to Eason Chan’s comments about Ayumi Hamasaki lip-syncing part of her way through her Hong Kong concert, fans in Hong Kong have suggested they boycott Eason’s albums. Excerpt from Chinese report below:

陳奕迅（Eason）因公然指濱崎步在演唱會「咪嘴」而惹步姐迷不滿，昨日就有網友發起罷買Eason的唱片。

Eason Chan’s claim that Ayumi Hamasaki was lip-syncing at her concert has angered her fans. Yesterday, netizens were initiating boycotts of Eason’s albums.

Eason心情未受影響。但談到步姐和網友發起罷買其唱片，他就顯得很避忌，不欲多談，只強調當日接受訪問，大讚步姐是個聲色藝俱全歌手，其他事情不作回應了，免得事件愈鬧愈大。

Eason’s mood did not seemed to be affected, but when the boycott issue was brought up, he appeared wanting to avoid the issue and refused to comment. He only emphasized that during the interview, he complimented Ayumi as an all-around talented singer. He didn’t want to respond to other issues as to not blow things out of proportion.

Original Chinese report is here.

This isn’t the first time he said the wrong thing anyway. A few years ago, he said among the four Heavenly Kings of Cantopop (Leon Lai, Andy Lau, Jacky Cheung, and Aaron Kwok), he only bought Jacky’s albums, which set off another media/fan storm that eventually blew over. As one of Hong Kong’s top pop acts, I don’t think Eason has to worry about any type of boycott.

- Yesterday, I reported that the United States formally filed a complaint with the World Trade Organization about China’s rampant piracy. In response, China pretty much gives the U.S. a very gentle middle finger.

- Park Chan-Wook’s latest I’m a Cyborg But That’s OK is finally coming to DVD on April 30th. I’ll assume that a Hong Kong edition (that will be wiped out by the legions of screaming Rain fans, including those that didn’t show up for the theatrical release) is coming soon after that as well.

- I hated Kim Tae-Kyun’s A Romance of Their Own. It represented everything that was bad about Korean teen cinema - the posing, the melodrama, the tragic twist. I barely made it to the ending. Asian Cinema - While on the Road has a review of his latest, and it seems like it’s more formulaic melodrama that I would hate. Shame, I thought Volcano High was a solid film.

- On that note, Korean films seemed to have hit a slump for March, taking only 21.6% of the market. But the fact that the big picture shows that Korean films is still enjoying a 55.3% share for the year, the reports may be blowing it out of proportion a little bit. Hong Kong would kill for that kind of number, people.

- Japanese production company Nikkatsu has announced its line-up for 2007-2008. The most notable films include the cgi-animated film of popular 70s toon “Gatchaman,” to be made by Hong Kong firm Imagi and directed by Kevin Munroe, who teamed up for the recently-released TMNT. They also announced the Death Note spinoff film based on the detective character L, which will be shot later this year and distributed by Warner Bros. Japan.

- Japan Probe offers a look at what shooting on Kill Bill Volume 1 might have been like. It even offers a Quentin Tarantino impersonator that’s close enough, as far as Japanese impersonation goes.

- The Hong Kong International Film Festival is coming to an end, with the Hong Kong Film Awards on Sunday (I’ll be watching it on Sunday night on the tape-delay broadcast by the local TVB channel in San Francisco), which means Professor Bordwell is leaving. But before he leaves, he shares a ton of pictures, and even mentions this blog! Thanks, Professor, I enjoyed your coverage of the HKIFF!

Today’s song of the day is a Japanese classic by an artist who lived a little too much. You can either find it on an ultra-expensive compilation album or just simply get the single for it. The song was so good that a songwriter even ripped it off for an Aaron Kwok song several months later (more later). It’s still a big hit at Japanese Karaoke, and it’s been covered by many Japanese artists (two of which will be included in this entry). In fact, the Utada Hikaru cover was how I discovered this song in the first place. It’s Yutaka Ozaki’s “I Love You.”

Why? It’s just one of those catchy pop ballads you can’t resist. Who expected something this tender from a guy who died getting drunk?

The live version

The Utada Hikaru version (without the blunder from her first attempt that’s in the concert DVD)

The Mika Nakashima cover on her latest album (honestly, I thought it was a pretty weak cover)

And the controversial rip-off by songwriter Chan Fong-Lu (not credited in the video) and sung by Aaron Kwok from 1991 (one can find it on this compilation) AFTER the release of the Ozaki single.

- While I can’t really gauge how the Easter weekend went in Hong Kong until the midweek numbers come out later tonight (since Monday was also a public holiday), Mov3.com uploaded the Sunday numbers, which was a surprisingly clear indicator of who won the weekend. With a HK$2.16 million gross on Sunday from just 32 screens and a 4-day HK$9.43 million total, Mr. Bean’s Holiday ruled the holiday box office. This result is extremely surprisingly, at least for me, considering that the TV show is long over, Rowan Atkinson’s films aren’t huge draws at the box office (Johnny English excluded), and that it’s been 10 years since the last Mr. Bean movie. Its gross is as huge as Night at the Museum, and that made over HK$40 million, so how far will Mr. Bean go, especially with that amazing per-screen average?

As for the other movies, my predictions were pretty far off. I said Sunshine would do moderate business, but it actually did worse than Disney’s Meet the Robinsons (Easter IS a family holiday, after all) and the biblical horror film The Reaping, which has 4-day totals of HK$3.33 million and HK$2.51 million, respective. As for Sunshine, it made HK$430,000 on 30 screens, which is OK, but not spectacular. After 4 days, it’s made HK$2.07 million. Hong Kong’s sole representative, the Eric Kot-directed Super Fans, was a pretty big loser with only HK$270,000 from 29 screens on Sunday, and after 5 days, it’s only made HK$1.65 million. Good thing it was only a moderately-sized production, which might’ve been what killed it.

- Box Office Mojo also posted the top 6 at the Japanese box office, this week at the exchange rate of 119 yen=$1. Even without the small change, one can see that the top 10 films all fell by fairly large percentages, which only helped show how weak Blood Diamond’s opening was. In case it’s not apparent to you enough, Eiga Consultant puts it all in perspective - it was only 52% of the Japanese opening for The Departed (which ended with a 1.6 billion yen total) and only 92% of The Aviator (which had a 1.07 billion yen total).

- Korea Pop Wars also has the Korean box office, and The Show Must Go On starring Song Gang-Ho obviously made the number 1 spot. More analysis over there courtesy of Mark Russell.

- Plagiarism is a plague in the Asian music industry - everyone is copying off each other, and they’re only spread around like urban legend on the net while it continues. That’s why I’m happy to see one of these cases go to court, as a South Korean court ruled that a MTV for a song by Korean pop singer Ivy was illegally copied off a scene from the movie Final Fantasy: Advent Children. According to the comments there, representatives for Ivy’s side are just blaming it on some Chinese guy. Riiiigggght.

Look for the rip-off of the song by Mark Lui for the HK pop market in the coming months.

- Even the Chinese are in legal trouble, as the U.S. has officially filed a complaint with the W.T.O. over the rampant piracy of Hollywood films in China. That’s probably because Chinese censors keep banning the damn things that people have to find other ways to watch them.

- Funny that on the same day, Variety Asia also has a report about China’s effort to cut down on piracy, which is true since I saw a report of a raid by Chinese officials on the Hong Kong news a few days ago.

- If anyone still cares, the creator of Ghost Rider is suing Sony over copyright infringement for its film adaptation. Wait, wasn’t this produced by Marvel?

- Anyone in for a blockbuster comedy that promotes plastic surgery can turn to 200 Pound Beauty, which is being released on DVD on April 20th. I’m not a big fan of plastic surgeries, but hey, it might be worth a look.

- More on the Jackie Chan successor show - apparently, over 100,000 people have already signed up for a chance at martial arts stardom. Not clear is whether son Jaycee is one of those 100,000.

- Hoga News has some info on new films coming out, one of which is the sequel to the successful drama about ethnic Koreans in Japan “Pacchigi!”

- Just because you pay to watch TV in China doesn’t mean you can watch anything you want, alright? At least that’s what those damn watchdogs say.

Today’s song of the day is from their album “I Love You.” Out of the all the MTVs from the album, I can argue that this one is the most innovative. But it’s not only the MTV I like, the song is not particularly original, but it’s great too. It’s Mr. Children’s “And I Love You.”

Why? Who can resist the lack of enunciation and that falsetto?

- Of course, the big news post-weekend is the fallout from the disappointing opening of Grindhouse. And it’s pretty bad. People blame that there are not enough shows a day, so not enough money, but even with the 3-hour running time, people were projecting 20-25 million. Why? Simple math.

This weekend, Grindhouse grossed $11.5 million, at a $4,419 per-screen average. Divide that number by 3 for the weekend, that’s $1,473 dollars a day. Divide that by 3 again for the 3 shows a day, that’s $491 per show. Divide that again by the the national average ticket price, which is $6.55, that means only there were only an average of 75 people for each showing. That would look pretty empty for the multiplex that put it on their bigger 250-people auditorium, wouldn’t it?

Of course, Harvey comes out and says that the length pushed audiences away, which is true, and bloggers are saying that Weinstein should’ve pushed for Tarantino and Rodridguez to not be so self-indulgent and grind down the running time for each film, which is probably also true. But honestly, who expected it to do this bad when advertising and buzz was literally everywhere on the web? Now the Weinsteins are hoping for word-of-mouth, even though the daily gross actually dropped over the weekend (most films experience a rise for Saturday, then a drop on Sunday). I’ll be watching it this week myself, and LoveHKfilm’s Sanjuro has reviews of the separate films (even one for the trailers). Will the people show up eventually? Probably, but I doubt this will make back its reported $52-million budget (although reports say it’s closer to 70 or even 100 million).

- In other Grindhouse news, Korea Pop Wars confirms that Sponge, who grabbed the film at Hong Kong’s Filmart, will release the films separately in their extended versions.

- No Hong Kong Easter weekend numbers (maybe by tonight, who knows), but we have Japanese audience rankings for the weekend. Night at the Museum and Doraemon hang on again for the first and second spot, respectively. Meanwhile, Blood Diamond opens at third (maybe not at a very good gross, seeing how Night and Doraemon have been around for about a month now), the Japan Times-reviewed Taitei no Ken opens at 8th, and more when the numbers come out.

- Those censors strike again. No, not China (more of those guys later), this time it’s Thailand, who has banned internet video service Youtube after anti-monarchist films appeared on the site. Youtube offers to help the Thai authorities delete the films in question without really going to the point of censorship.

- OK, China, your turn. Remember the Chinese idol show Super Girl that got renamed to Happy Boy? Well, not only does the Chinese government hate girls that are happy, they are forcing the show to follow a strict set of guidelines that include no “weirdness” or “low taste,” allowing only “healthy and ethnically inspiring songs,” and no screaming fans or crying contestants, because god help them if the winner might be popular enough to be the next Premier of the Communist party.

This is the winner of Super Girl. Yes, that’s a girl. Is this the SARFT’s idea of “weirdness” and “low taste?”

- With Super Girl gone, its male counterpart “My Hero!” has taken over the Chinese airwaves. Here, the men not only sing, but also dance and do push-ups to impress the judges. The more amusing part of this write-up by Variety Asia is actually seeing the writer trying to explain what “add oil” in Chinese means in English (It really means “work hard!”).

- Japanese pop queen/suspect outer space alien Ayumi Hamasaki had her sold-out concert in Hong Kong, and with Eason Chan’s tendency to speak his mind, he decided to say that she was probably lip-syncing. Ming Pao has the report, and excerpt is as follows:

Eason形容濱崎步的演唱會是高成本製作，燈光、爆破效果，以至整個演唱會的製作都很好，水準之高是本地演唱會難以做到；不過，他說：「看見濱崎步的勁歌熱舞，懷疑她有三分之一時間是『咪嘴』，而且『咪嘴』功夫很到家。我看麥當娜的演唱會就覺得沒有『咪嘴』，雖然歌聲可能沒有唱片中的水準，但也很好看。」

Eason describes Ayumi Hamasaki’s concert as a high-budget production thanks to the lights and pyrotechnics. That type of quality is one that Hong Kong concerts have difficulty achieving. But he said “Seeing Ayumi Hamasaki’s singing and dancing, I suspect that she’s lip-syncing for 1/3 of the time, and her lip-syncing skills are quite good. I saw Madonna’s concert and didn’t feel she was lip-syncing. Though she didn’t sing as well as she does on her albums, it was still very good.”
對此，主辦單位強調濱崎步並無「咪嘴」，「濱崎步唱得太好，加上所有音響設備都來自日本，才會惹起誤會」。

In response, the organizers insist that Ayumi Hamasaki was not lip-syncing, “Ayumi Hamasaki sings too well, and plus all the audio equipments came from Japan, so that’s why there’s such a misunderstanding.”

Original Chinese text is here.

I’ve seen Ayumi Hamasaki’s live performance videos, and she can’t even hit those high notes when she’s NOT dancing. Plus, from Eason Chan, who still lip-sync some of his TV performances, I wouldn’t be surprised if this is true.

- Then again, it’s hard to tell whether one can trust Ming Pao’s reporting. Yesterday, they reported Professor David Bordwell’s visit to Johnnie To’s set for “Triangle” (which they got from his blog), but they seemed to have gotten some facts wrong, particular in its last section. Chinese excerpts (followed by translation) are as follows:

發覺杜琪㗖喜用手提拍攝，與荷李活所用的路軌拍攝不同，不過用手提拍攝確較靈活。David Bordwell亦認為香港製作有時不夠精細，如電影《放逐》中有一幕講述澳門酒店的場景，原來是在杜琪㗖公司的天台搭景，就嫌太過草率了。

[David] discovers that Johnnie To likes using handheld camera, unlike Hollywood, which favor tracking, but using handheld camera is more flexible. David Bordwell also thinks that Hong Kong productions are not meticulous enough, such as the hotel scene in “Exiled.” Turns out that the “hotel” was a set on the roof of Johnnie To’s production company, and he thinks that it’s too sloppy.

Original Chinese text is here.

The entry that report is referring to is here, and here are the mistakes the reporter at Ming Pao made:

The report writes that Johnnie To prefers handheld, but this is what Professor Bordwell wrote:

“To’s art is furthered by his craftsmanship in shot composition. Composing in anamorphic (2.35:1), nearly always putting the camera on a tripod or dolly, he gets precise results with few lighting units. When I complained that all the new films I saw at Filmart were shot shakycam, Shan Ding reported a neat saying that HK DPs have. The handheld camera covers 3 mistakes: Bad acting, bad set design, and bad directing.”

The report also wrote that Professor Bordwell complained that the hotel set in Exiled shows the sloppiness of Hong Kong filmmaking, but there is no such complaining in his entry. This is what Professor Bordwell wrote in regard to the rooftop set:

“In another echo of old production methods, To’s films sometimes use rooftop sets. Last year the set for the hotel in Exiled was erected on the top of the Milkyway building. Its Demy-like pastels looked very artificial in daylight.”

Any complaining in there? I don’t see it. That’s why Hong Kong Chinese reporting should always be taken with a grain of salt.