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.
Today’s song comes from now-defunct British rock band Suede. This was from the first album of theirs I ever bought (I missed out when they hit it big in Hong Kong with Saturday Night and Everything Will Flow) A New Morning, and it’s my favorite song out of that album. It’s Obsessions.
Why? I chose it in(dis)honor of the Andy Lau stalker/dement family of Yang Lijuan, especially this line:
“Obsessions in my head/ don’t connect with my intellect.”
- Turning our attention over to South Korea, it seems like after the screen quota for Korean films was removed, the evil giant U.S. conglomerate has decided to also rape its TV industry as well by taking away the cap Korea has on foreign ownership in a broadcaster, among other things. Free trade, my ass.
- Ming Pao has an editorial about the status of screenwriters - one of the most overlooked jobs in Hong Kong cinema. Excerpt are as follows:
There have been many market research regarding Hong Kong films in recent years, and audiences points that box office gross are low because the scripts are no good. Local scriptwriters not being treated well is one of the reasons are scripts are bad. To improve the quality of scripts, cultivating new talents is not the only solution.
Screenwriters are weaklings in the film industry, despite their important creative role. But their wages are often lower than the cinematographer, production designers, and even production crew. If they don’t take on other careers concurrently, they wouldn’t be able to survive.
單提高劇本費是沒用的，政府應做的，是完善劇本的版權保障機制，令編劇將來可得到合理的報酬。
Just raising screenwriters’ fees isn’t enough. The government should improve the protection of script copyrights, allowing screenwriters to get fair reward.
To a screenwriter, the screenwriters’ fees isn’t the most important thing, but rather how the script can get basic protection after its creation. Ensuring that ideas aren’t stolen can protect copyrights and allow for a healthy bonus system. Even if the fee is zero, it would attract many more people to participate (in screenwriting).
在不公平的制度下，怎可能叫人用心創作？
How can people create under an unfair system?
好劇本不必然是用錢買的，優良創作環境，才最重要。
A good script isn’t bought simply with money. A good creative environment is really the most important thing.
- We have three posters/promo materials from Twitch. First, we have the poster for Feng Xiaogang’s The Assembly, which looks…..kinda cheap. Then we have the sales flyer for the Benny Chan-helmed Nicholas Tse-starrer Invisible Target, which looks extremely cool. Lastly, we have Joe Ma (Is this “Love Undercover” Joe Ma Wai-ho?) and his Japaense/Hong Kong co-production of Sasori.
- Speaking of pictures, we also have a picture of Taiwanese pop star Rainie Yang apologizing again for remarks she made about the Sino-Japanese war on a Taiwan TV show, which angered those pesky Chinese netizens. Of course, then she takes it too far and starts reading the history book that was given to her at the press conference. Er…..
- China is seeing its first series about homosexuals, good for them! But it might not make it past the censors, although it will broadcast online. I honestly don’t know who would expect them to get past the mainland censors when even Hong Kong people couldn’t accept public broadcaster RTHK’s 30-minute documentary on homosexuals. Good try, though.
- I also mentioned a few days ago the Andy Lau fan madness saga. Anyone that wants a fairly comprehensive wrap-up and a look at the next step for the mentally unstable Yang family shouldn’t hesitate to look at the always informative EastSouthWestNorth blog. Yikes.
- New on the list of “not very good producers” is RTHK, who refused to allow Yan Yan Mak’s film “August Story” to screen at the Hong Kong International Film Festival because Mak put together the 62-minute “long version” from a 22-minute short film that RTHK commissioned her to do. At first, RTHK refused the existence of the film because Mak never received official permission to make it, then they said she can show only the 22-minute version along with 2 other films in the series of short films, and now the film festival people just flat out decided to pull it because RTHK won’t budge. With RTHK in hot waters lately, I’m not so sure if they should be making any more enemies these days.
- Japanese television strikes again, and this time it’s in TBS’s hands. A variety show sent its crew out to Akihabara to interview passerbys, hoping to catch a couple of otakus to answer some questions about current events. Now it’s been exposed that one of those guys were actually contacted in advance to have him just happen to be there so he can get interviewed. Honestly, how quickly can Japanese television’s reputation fall before it’s in the shitter?
- Asia’s least-favorite demented fan family returns to Hong Kong under the guise of taking the father’s body back home, only to go as far as showing up at Andy Lau’s neighborhood and knocking on doors.
Today only comes with a few pieces of news, then part 1 of a two-part pictorial feature:
- Hong Kong does triad election, and Japan has a documentary on a real election. In light of the national election going on Sunday in Japan, the Japanese trailer blog has the trailer for a new documentary on just how a Japanese political campaign is. The movie is Campaign, and the trailer is English subtitled too.
Second, Asia’s least-favorite demented fan family returns to Hong Kong under the guise of taking the father’s body back home, only to go as far as showing up at Andy Lau’s neighborhood and knocking on doors.
That’s it for news today. The rest of the entry goes to this feature:
One of the things I love about going to the movies in Japan is the great promo material they have in the lobby. This is the best way to get moviegoers to be aware of films coming up - since moviegoers show up early to the theaters anyway, they put flyers for new movies at the lobby that include an introduction of the film so people can read them before the movie starts. For memorabilia freaks like me, this means I get free movie posters. So this feature would be some of the posters that I got from Japan.
Part 1: 2004-2005 - study abroad period.
Batman Begins
I still don’t know to this day why I only have one of these.
This poster for Zhang Yimou’s House of Flying Daggers is actually classier than the film itself. The big Chinese letter in the background is the third letter to Zhang Yimou’s name in Chinese characters.
Hayao Miyazaki’s Howl’s Moving Castle
The teaser poster for Spielberg’s War of the Worlds
Initial D teaser poster.
The Suspect Muroi Shinji, the second Bayside Shakedown theatrical spin-off film. Black apparently means guilty in Japanese culture.
This is my favorite poster, which I only have one of. I like the other side (bottom) better.
Naturally, I have a ton of this one.
This is the second promo poster for Kung-Fu Hustle
This is the teaser poster.
My only regret from that year is that I only have one or two of most posters when I could’ve grabbed 5 (just in case), despite the request on the rack for people to get only one. Lucky for me that request is never enforced. For my most recent trip, I went with that lesson in mind. But that’s for part 2, coming when I run out of news again.
The song for today first appeared on the now out-of-print “Nothing Really Matters” album, and can now be found on various compilations. I remember this album because it was his last at the now-defunct Capital Artist label. Even today, many many albums and hit singles later, this song remains my favorite of his singles, though not a favorite of fans since it’s not a particularly Karaoke-friendly tune. The theme song for the underrated film Twelve Nights, it’s Eason Chan’s “Dark Nights Never Come Again”
Why? The lyrics, the bare piano arrangement, the masterful vocal roller coaster Eason manages to pull off are so rarely seen in HK pop anymore. In fact, even the once great Chan Fai Yeung haven’t done more than repeat old tricks for the last 4 years. This song is sadly a “once upon a time” type of song.
Today’s a big day. All the news I have on hand are all going out. So here we go:
- Anyone in an office box office pool is gonna lost big time. People have been predicting trashfest Grindhouse to own the weekend. Estimates such as 20, 25 million were thrown around, TV advertising were pumped up, and guess what? It only made an estimated 5 million on opening day with an estimated weekend take of 11.9 million. But I personally 11.9 is a little low, I predict just a tad under 15 if the 5 mil opening day holds up.
- The Police apparently were big enough in Japan that the opening weekend of its documentary attracted 911 people the first weekend at a 180-people theater in Tokyo’s Roppongi Hills multiplex. Of course, that’s partly because the director showed up on opening day. This also apparently comes after Roppongi Hill’s successful performance for limited release such as Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth and the director’s cut of the Korean film April Snow. Seems like it’s becoming quite a trendy place for hip limited releases these days.
- While Spiderman 3 got through those strict Chinese censors, not even Chow Yun Fat can get Pirates into China. According to Hong Kong’s Ming Pao, seems like China has rejected the latest Pirates of the Caribbean film because it’s too “gross.” I assume they’re talking about the all that special effects with squids, not the movie’s quality. Excerpt is as follows:
Sources report that Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End has been screened, but when the Film Bureau was screening the film, they weren’t pleased with the characters’ looks. Apparently, the second installment “Dead Man’s Chest” was filled with skeletons and scary octopus makeup, and it was criticized by a Film Bureau official as “too gross,” so it was banned. Now “At World’s End” may very well also lose its opportunity to enter the Mainland.
The report also says that 300 was also banned because of the violence. What the hell does it take to please those people?
- Japanese television strikes again, and this time it’s in TBS’s hands. A variety show sent its crew out to Akihabara to interview passerbys, hoping to catch a couple of otakus to answer some questions about current events. Now it’s been exposed that one of those guys were actually contacted in advance to have him just happen to be there so he can get interviewed. Honestly, how quickly can Japanese television’s reputation fall before it’s in the shitter?
- Jason Gray goes to the suburbs of Tokyo to catch another obscure Japanese film (this time an adaptation of an Edogawa Rampo story). The more interesting part is the video of his walk from the train station to the movie theater. Man, I miss Tokyo.
- Being a casual watcher of TV Japan here in the US, which is the subscription-only channel of Japanese programming, mainly from public broadcaster NHK, I realize that NHK news really loves to track the progress of Japanese baseball players who’s made it in the States. They did it for Nomo, they still do it for Ichiro, they now do it for Boston Red Sox’s latest recruit Daisuke Matsuzaka. And now Japan’s finance minister’s had enough, criticizing NHK’s coverage of the pitcher after a recent cabinet meeting. The man has a point, but does he have something personal against Matsuzaka, or he just waited a really long time to let out his opinion?
- Yesterday I posted a link to Asian Cinema - While on the Road’s review of hairy thriller Exte, and today it’s the link to four (!!) Korean film reviews.
Today’s song of the day comes all the way from the 1990 album “You’re the Only One,” when her name was still Shirley Wong. That album contained three cover tracks, and this is the biggest hit. Originally “Superwoman” by Karyn White from 1989, it’s Faye Wong’s “Thanks to Him.”
Why? Next to the fact that Faye Wong hasn’t even released an album in about 4 years now, it’s even more rare to hear her going into R&B territory. The lyrics are also a vast improvement in terms of style since it no longer tries to cram in a bunch of words into the melody, even though it becomes just another Cantopop break-up song in the end. Although listening to the original does ruin Faye’s rendition when you realize Faye just simply does everything Karyn does in the original. Still, it’s rare to hear the queen of the falsetto in Asian pop to do American Idol-style scream-sing, which makes this song rewarding enough already.
As mentioned yesterday, there aren’t many news coming out, even Variety Asia seems to be taking a break. But there are still news elsewhere, and I’ll just even them out for the weekend. I might even go into my own collection a do a bit of a feature.
Watched The Prestige on DVD, better known as Christopher Nolan’s break between the Batman movies. It’s a hell of a mind-bender about two magician’s relentless pursuit to top each other. You might expect them to eventually band together and become friends, but no such luck. They get dirty all the way to the end, and they really know how to duke it out. While there’s not much real thrills to be had (much of the thrills are in the complicated puzzle the Nolan brothers and novelist Christopher Priest put together), the movie moves at a constant pace, moving forward and backward in time enough that audience participation is guaranteed. The movie is well-shot, well-acted, well-written, and even most of the final twists work (even though the sci-fi twist was a bit of a stretch). It makes me wish Nolan would do another small personal film like this before spending 2 years of huge blockbusters.
- This weekend is kind of considered a holiday weekend here in the United States, although Easter is not an official holiday. But in Hong Kong, it’s a 5-day weekend, and that means a huge weekend at the movies too. At least 7 movies open this weekend - Mr. Bean’s Holiday (which dominated world box office last weekend), Danny Boyle’s Sunshine, Luc Besson’s Arthur and the Minimoys, Happily N’ever After, Disney’s Meet the Robinsons, The Reaping (which also opens in the US this weekend), and the sole Hong Kong entry is Eric Kot’s idol comedy Super Fans.
As far as ticket sales go, my unscientific research method is showing that Mr Bean is selling like hotcakes, and Sunshine seems to be doing moderate business (probably because it’s being put on smaller screens). Super Fans seems to be doing ok as well, although I doubt it’ll make a huge dent. We’ll know the results on Tuesday.
- China has this silly rule where they would block foreign films from opening in order to allow domestic films to thrive at the box office. This happened to The Da Vinci Code last year, although some say it was pulled because the government didn’t want to piss off the Catholics, which I wouldn’t be surprised at. This year, Spiderman 3 is lucky enough to squeeze in on May 1st before the July blackout period, and they’re gonna open it on a record 500 screens. That still won’t stop the millions of pirated disc soon to flood the streets of China, though.
- Brian’s Asian Cinama - While on the Road has two entries of reviews. For chronological order’s sake, here’s his review of the Japanese hair scare thriller Exte.
- One reason for this film scholar to go to France this May? To see Martin Scorsese give a masters class in filmmaking at the Cannes Film Festival.
- Speaking of which, Hong Kong’s Oriental Daily (which means it should be taken with a grain of salt) reports that they have asked Jet Tone directly about the status of Wong Kar Wai’s My Blueberry Nights, and apparently the representative has responded it has been officially invited to open the festival, which would be an enormous honor for a Chinese director to go through. But apparently people are liking it so much that they think it should be going into competition, and that now it’s undergoing post-production. More as this develops, but it seems like no English media has picked this story up yet, so no idea how credible the report is yet.
- New York Times has a guide to Hong Kong, although it’s certainly a little to bourgeois for my taste. But hey, if it rocks your boat, go for it.
Today’s song of the day is a classic. I’m sure many people have heard the organ hook at some point in their lives, and it’s an addictive hook. First appeared on the 1967 album (note to self: track may be even better while on drugs), it’s the title track to Procol Harum’s album “A Whiter Shade of Pale.” Name doesn’t sound familiar? Just listen to it.
Why? I honestly don’t know why I should explain why classic songs are songs of the day. You mean, aside from the nostalgic organ hook and great blend of blues and soul into its melody, I have to further explain why A Whiter Shade of Pale is awesome? If your answer is yes, then you should stop your daily diet of Avril Lavigne and Nickelback shit mix.
There might be less news in the next few days because the Ching Yeung Festival got mixed in with the Easter holiday in Hong Kong, so they’re pretty much on public holidays all the way until the 10th. What does that mean? No Thursday and Sunday numbers from mov3.com, and maybe less news from Variety Asia, so look for fairly short entries from tomorrow til next week.
- Let’s face it, my knowledge of Japanese animation and comics are quite minimal. I’ve heard of the name Tetsujin 28 here and there, including the live-action adaptation that opened when I was studying in Japan. But apparently a new Tetsujin 28 film opened this past weekend, but since it’s a relatively small production, the distributor decided to play it at one theater in Tokyo (followed by a tour around Japan, perhaps of the same print) for only a week with 5 showings a day, then decreasing to one morning and one late show a day after that. What they didn’t expect was that the film managed to attract 1291 people the first 2 days for the 133-people auditorium. At 5 shows a day, that means each show attracted 129.1 people, that’s full capacity right there. Apparently, a lot of the audience, primarily late 20-30s male who were fans of the anime, bought advanced tickets, which convinced the theatre to add matinee shows for one week. So now that it’s a hit, what now?
- As reported last week, the president of KTV, the broadcaster behind the drawn-out natto scandal, has resigned, but that only means that he’s now a director without voting rights on the board. What does that mean? It means he still gets paid, under lower salary, and with less power.
- I also mentioned a few days ago the Andy Lau fan madness saga. Anyone that wants a fairly comprehensive wrap-up and a look at the next step for the mentally unstable Yang family shouldn’t hesitate to look at the always informative EastSouthWestNorth blog. Yikes.
- After watching Love@First Note, the Gold Label-produced stinker with the equally overrated Justin Lo (that’s right, I went there), I placed Dennis Law so high up my director’s blacklist that I still can’t get myself to watch Fatal Contact yet. Then again, he did produce the Election movies, which may just mean good things for his latest producing gig - Herman Yau’s Gong Tau. But somehow I can’t help but think Twitch’s expectations for it may be a tad too high.
- New on the list of “not very good producers” is RTHK, who refused to allow Yan Yan Mak’s film “August Story” to screen at the Hong Kong International Film Festival because Mak put together the 62-minute “long version” from a 22-minute short film that RTHK commissioned her to do. At first, RTHK refused the existence of the film because Mak never received official permission to make it, then they said she can show only the 22-minute version along with 2 other films in the series of short films, and now the film festival people just flat out decided to pull it because RTHK won’t budge. With RTHK in hot waters lately, I’m not so sure if they should be making any more enemies these days.
- Am I the only that thinks the Pang Brothers should take a step back and chill? I’m already behind on 4 Pang films - Recycle, The Messengers, Diary, and Forest of Death, all of them are thrillers with maybe some horror mixed in. Do something else, guys - comedy (I know you did one of those), romance, dramas, something else other than horror, and do them slowly. Looks like I’ll be behind on a 5th one, if the film in this sales flyer is coming out anytime soon.
- I mentioned two or three days ago about Rules of Dating director Han Jae-Rim’s latest The Show Must Go On. Well, now Variety has an English review of it all the way from Hong Kong International Film Fest.
- Jackie Chan is looking for a successor that isn’t named Jaycee, and he’s looking hard. You can try too.
That’s it for today. Remember, no Hong Kong numbers for the weekend, but I can predict how the Easter box office will go tomorrow.
Today’s song comes as familiar to anyone that knows me. I’ve been in love with this song since I first saw the trailer for Edmond Pang Ho-Cheung’s Isabella. It’s from Portugal, thus in Portuguese, and it’s a song in the style of Fado, which is its national music genre. From the Hong Kong film Isabella’s soundtrack and from the album Fado Em Mim, it’s Mariza’s “O Gente da Minha Terra.”
Why? I literally listened to this song back-to-back to get inspiration for short film ideas because it happened to put me into that perfect melancholic mood. The vocals, the guitar, everything but the music video is damn near perfect. How can you NOT like this brilliant song? Chinese pop simply can’t make anything this.
Here’s a live performance of the song
And here it is, as used in the Isabella trailer, when I first fell in love with it.
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