Some more news that is a little late, but better than nothing.

- Good news came last week for Hong Kong filmmakers when the government announced a rahter large subsidy for Hong Kong films. It seems like now despite that promise, there is one good news and one bad news. The good news is that the fund will be targeted for small-to-medium-budgeted films, which means smaller films now have a chance in getting made. Bad news is that the fund plans to only cover up to 30% of production cost for each film.

- Korea Pop Wars has coverage on the upcoming Spring schedule, which would include films by Im Kwon Taek (Korea’s own answer to Yoji Yamada) and Kim Ki Duk.

- Twitch also rounds up the February Korean box office, which was dominated by quite a few successes and total is up from January. However, it’s slightly down from the total for February 2006. Then again, when you have local films taking up 67.4% of box office gross, you really have nothing to complain about. Hong Kong filmmakers would literally kill for that kind of number.

- Speaking of Korean films, The Host opens this weekend in the States, and it’s getting very very good reviews. Rotten Tomatoes has it at 94%, and even though I have the HK DVD, I’ll probably catch it in theaters just to show my support. Of course, I’ll have to watch Zodiac first though.

- Hoga News brings us two pieces of news: One being a report on Eiga Consultant’s analysis of the opening weekend for Takeshi Miike’s “Ryu ga Gotoku,” which despite being placed just 10th at the box office, is still “pretty good.” Honestly, except for the cgi helicopter being so powerful that it removes the main actor’s shirt, I don’t see what’s so “love and hate” about it. The other is the link to Jetro’s quarterly newsletter on the Japanese showbiz.

- Mark Schilling of Japan Times actually has a review of “Ryu Ga Gotoku,” along with “Genghis Kahn: To the Ends of the Earth and Sea.”

- Oh, in case anyone was interested, Hot Fuzz is now officially a blockbuster. Yeah, baby.

- Lastly, director Mira Nair has a fluff interview with Variety Asia in light of her latest film, “The Namesake.”

Tomorrow, I should be filling out missing links and post the best of the week.

Trying to catch up with news that I missed, this entry will probably be pretty long, with the related links added in later.

- Hong Kong Thursday numbers are out, and Ghost Rider leads on its opening day with HK$560,000 on 34 screens. The Queen takes second place with just $140,000 on 14 screens (it should still have a fairly strong weekend, though definitely a drop from last weekend), the second highest opener is the “comedy” The Lady Iron Chef (which doesn’t even have a website) with a pathetic HK$70,000 on 26 screens. With the same gross on only 9 screens is the Japanese film “Nada Sou Sou” (or Tears For You, based on the hit Japanese pop song), and Ann Hui’s The Postmodern Life of My Aunt, co-starring Chow Yun Fat, takes in a sadder HK$40,000 on 5 screens. The weekend looks to be fairly weak, as none of those failing opening films have enough screens or attraction to really get ahead of those top films. Next week, Dororo and 300 will be released.

- I was happy when MTV started the MTV Chi network, although I had no idea how they were going to pull it off (I would’ve done a MTV East Asia to combine Korean, Japanese, and Chinese pop together, but that’s just me). And I never found out how they made it work because they never managed to put it on cable in San Francisco, and now it’s shutting down for good. Like the AZN TV network, MTV has announced that it will shut down operations of the MTV World Division (this does not include its subsidiaries in other parts of the world) at an yet-to-be-determined time.

I say their biggest mistake was that they couldn’t roll it out to large Asian-American communities and college campuses, so people who actually wanted to watch it couldn’t. Of course, I don’t work in cable, but even if they couldn’t get that type of plan ready before they started, then they failed before they even started operations.

- Here’s a smart move: Instead of just censoring or simply outright banning a movie in China, why not use a ratings system? The idea has been out for years, but apparently it’s again on the agenda at the National People’s Congress.

- Johnnie To’s new film, previously named The Flying Butterfly and now named Linger, has finished shooting. The romantic drama, starring Li Bingbing and Vic Zhao (of the Taiwanese version of the flower boys) may debut in Cannes too.

- If anyone can read Chinese, Zha Jiangke, off the success of his latest Still Life, has asked Maggie Cheung to play a flight attendant in his new film, about 1949 Hong Kong.

- Official details are finally out for the next crappy Chinese Japanese comic adaptation (the last one being Initial D), and it also stars Jay Chou! This time it’s the Taiwanese film Slam Dunk, based on the basketball comic of the same name and was once an Ekin Cheng vehicle in the 1990s. It’ll be directed by Kevin Ping and set for release for Chinese new year 2008. It will also star Charlene Choi (half of the Twins, but just as annoying) with Ching Siu Tung on action choreography (Last i checked, this was a basketball movie, right?).

- Earlier reports have said that Andrew Lau (who CO-directed Infernal Affairs) was removed from directing duties on his Hollywood debut The Flock. He has come out and cleared up the rumor, but only in Chinese, I’m afraid. Anyway, he said he was only given the right to do two different cuts, and if the producers weren’t satisfactory, they can recut it again, and that’s what happening to The Flock. Lau emphasized that there’s no reshooting happening and now it’s simply another recutting of the film because the producers wanted more sex and violence in the film. He still has the final right to approve the film. He also complained about having to deal with producers in Hollywood (who’s probably telling him to stop using those stupid flash pans), and said he’s now good friends with Richard Gere. Maybe Richard can get Lau one of those apartments he sells in Japan.

- I haven’t seen much Japanese Pink films (If I’m not mistaken, it’s basically quality softcore porn that’s actually like a real movie), but the States will be getting one. It features George Bush, a girl getting shot then turning into a genius, and something about North Korea. Wow.

That movie is The Glamorous Life of Sachiko Hanai, and it sounds like a blast.

That’s it for today, more tomorrow.

But I don’t have much time nor energy to post them all. So I have to be picky and post the ones that are really worth posting.

-In the usual stuff I report, Japanese box office numbers are out, and because they’re now using the exchange rate of $1=116 yen, films are actually making more money in terms of dollars than last week. So talking about percentage changes seem to be useless, except that Sakuran’s expansion isn’t quite impressive, but not bad nevertheless.

- Daily Dumpling reports that Wong Kar Wai and Stanley Kwan (one of the very few openly gay Hong Kong filmmaker) are teaming together to produce a lesbian film. Looks like Brokeback Mountain really did break a barrier that no one in America saw - that Asian filmmakers can make gay-themed films too.

In source-less news (From Oriental Daily), in accepting his award for best screenplay at the Hong Kong Critics Association Awards, Wong Jing said that he’s working on a follow-up to Wo Hu about the drug trade. How convenient for him to come up with it after the success of Protege……Can anyone in Hong Kong confirm this news for me?

- The hearing-impaired community in Japan is protesting a move by Babel’s Japan distributor to not include Japanese subtitles for the Japan section of the film. A film with a hearing-impaired protagonist, and there are no subtitles for it? That’s brilliant.

- Tony Leung has decided to drop out of John Woo’s super-duper epic “Battle of Red Cliffs” because of the exhaustive 6-month shoot schedule (hey, if John Woo can do it, you can too!) and Takeshi Kaneshiro will take his place.

- JASRAC shows that they’re the dicks they are again by getting involved in the personal feud between famous singer Shinichi Mori and songwriter Kouhan Kawauchi, who wrote his hit “O-Fukurosan.” Basically, the story is that Mori has been singing a slightly modified version of it since 1978 (the song came out in 1971) without Kawauchi’s permission. When Mori sang it again at the big yearend Kohaku singing contest last new year’s eve, Kawauchi requested a meeting, which Mori abruptly canceled. So Kawauchi throws a tantrum and refuses to allow Mori sing any of the songs he wrote for him, even threatening a lawsuit if he ever does so.

And now, the JASRAC has apparently posted a message on its site warning people to not sing this song in public, or to face legal action. It’s obvious Kawauchi showing Mori how big his….ego is and him swinging his…power around.

- It’s about bloody time - several broadcasting firms in Japan has set up an ethics code to prevent anymore producers faking data on their health shows.

- Dave’s Trailer Page has a nice 7-minute clip of Spiderman 3. It looks interesting, despite it being more of the same stuff.

I’m far too sleepy to keep typing on this computer, so I shall leave the rest for tomorrow, including new Japan Times reviews and Hong Kong opening day box office numbers.

More of a news day today, but some additions to yesterday’s news:

- Hoga News found the final result for the opening weekend of that Genghis Khan movie, and it’s actually a flop! It may’ve opened at number 1, but it only brought in 197 million yen (and at some 480 screens, that’s only a 410,000 yen per-screen, which rounds down to about $3500). That can’t be good for everything else under it.

- Remember I reported that My Sassy Girl director Kwak Jae Yong is making a Japanese movie named “My Girlfriend is a Cyborg?” Apparently before that, Variety Asia reports that he did end up making a Korean movie starring Shin Mina and On Ju Wan named “My Might Princess” (How many of those “My _______” movies are we gonna get from Korea?) and it’s coming out in the summer. Who knew when those parodies of movies showed up in My Sassy Girl, the director was actually really pitching movie ideas?

- Hong Kong music review blog 3C Music has a damning report on the possibility that a new song on new Gold Label princess Stephy Tang’s album may be copied from famed composer Joe Hisashi. The site has quite a few posts mentioning these possible frauds in Hong Kong music, and as many many people know, hit producer Mark Lui is the biggest perpetrator. Examples include (just play the little play button under the main entry in Chinese to listen to a comparison)

Jill’s “Funny Jealousy” vs. Vitamin C’s “Graduation”

Jill’s sister Janice’s “I Love when I Want To” vs. The Coors’ Breathless

Alex Fong Lik-Sun’s “Large Small Heart” (Obviously an over-literal translation and by no means reflect the actual meaning of the name) vs. Ekin Cheng’s “The Era of Love”

Of course, Mark Lui is not the only one - Mark Lui’s protege Justin Lo’s “Headline News” (sang by a less talented guy in the crapfest Love@First Note) has been known to combine TWO sources (only one is in this post though): The Stylistics’ “You Make me Feel Brand New” and Bondy Chiu’s “Joy-seeking” (I knew that chorus sounds familar!), and Even Eason Chan’s “Bad Habits” seem to resemble Rufus Wainwright’s “Cigarettes and Chocolate Milk.”

It even happened to Joey Yung, and according to this report, this is the response by manager Mani Fok:

“《奇》所屬版權的這間公司已關閉多年，根本不存在問題。”

“Regarding the issue of copyright, the copyright holder of the song has already been defunct for years, so there’s no problem.”

Someone on a forum that broke the news said there’s no music in Hong Kong, just an entertainment industry, I’m inclined to agree.

Then again, it’s not like America’s music industry isn’t similarly derivative:

Usher’s Yeah vs. Chris Brown’s Run It.

The Frays’ Over My Head vs. How to Save a Life (holy shit, it’s the same chorus!)

I do have an example for Japan, but I can’t find the necessary clips on Youtube, so let’s just say that they do it too.

- Another Hong Kong, littleoslo, has a line-up of bad album covers from Mainland Chinese CDs. Don’t worry about the captions, some of them are funny anyway.

- Twitch has a long interview with Bong Joon Ho, one of my favorite Korean filmmakers working today in light of the upcoming release of The Host. Again, be sure to go watch The Host, it’s great monster fun.

- Daily Dumpling has a small round-up of some of the celebrity blogs out there. It’s not comprehensive, but it’s a good start.

- Twitch also provides a trailer for the Singaporean film “One Last Dance” starring Francis Ng and Harvey Keitel (who thought of that combination?).

- A very new blog called Hong Kong and Kung Fu DVD News and Review has popped up, and it offers a look at the availability of Hong Kong Kung Fu films’ bootleg being sold in large chain stores around the states.

Lastly, I’m sure everyone that cares have heard by now that Utada Hikaru is getting divorced, but I don’t do celebrity gossips here, so you can look it up yourself.

Updates might not come the next two days because I’ll be at my alma mater again for two days for a mix of personal and professional reasons. So make this one last, ok?

A late update today for personal reasons, but I’m here anyway. But given that it takes me around an hour or two to write a complete entry, I’m just gonna spread them out on this and the next entry. Let’s start with a bunch of numbers and rankings:

- Hong Kong Sunday numbers were, as predicted, fairly weak on the wide release side. The stronger numbers are all in the new limited release, with The Queen leading the way, earning a phenomenal HK$500,000 on 14 screens on Sunday (that’s an HK$35700 per-screen average, or roughly $4600, which is pretty good, considering the average ticket price in HK is give or take HK$55 and The Queen is playing in most, if not all, multiplexes). It’s already made HK$1.63 million, but given its talky nature, it’s hard to tell how far it’ll go with the average HK moviegoer, who was probably attracted by both the subject matter (being a former British colony) and the Oscar win by Helen Mirren. It ties with Protege, which took the same number, but on 33 screens. It’s already gone past that HK$25 million mark, and it’s even about to double Dragon Tiger Gate’s take at the box office, which signals some kind of hope in the HK film industry.

Next in line is Dreamgirls, which made HK$210,000 on 10 screens (total so far: HK$700,000 after 4 days), and then Letters From Iwo Jima with HK$150,000 on 5 screens (total so far: HK$480,000 after 4 days), which means it has a better per-screen average, which would make sense considering the inflated ticket price due to a longer running time. Anyway, I would expect Letters From Iwo Jima to have better word-of mouth and hang around the theatres longer than Dreamgirls anyway.

As expected, the Pang Bros.’ The Messengers did manage to take the 2nd place spot with HK$590,000 on 29 screens for a HK$1.89 million total so far, but with the fickle horror audience, it’ll probably fizzle out around the HK$5 million mark. Meanwhile, Night at the Museum remain unbeatable with HK$870,000 on 37 screens for a HK$35.64 million total so far. Looks like the HK$40 million mark won’t be very hard to reach.

- According to Korea Pop Wars, the South Korean box office seemed to have a much more interesting weekend, as three films are claiming the top spot.

- Japanese box office rankings for total attendance is out, and as expected, the over-titled Genghis Kahn movie takes the top spot. The One Piece movie takes second, Ghost Rider takes 4th, and Tom Tykwer’s Perfume takes 5th (Eiga Consultant analyzes its opening day and predicts that it will do way worse than Phantom of the Opera, which was a huge success in Japan, and do considerably better than A Very Long Engagement. The best news is that it will do better than it did in America. Of course, a 2 million-dollar gross isn’t hard to beat at all.). Sakuran went into wide release and stays at 7th place. It probably had a considerable increase in box office for it to stay at the same spot among the new releases. Takeshi Miike’s “Ryu Ga Gotoku” (based on the game Yakuza) also opened in a limited amount of screens and got the 10th spot (more on the premiere by Hoga News here). Hopefully, numbers will come out tomorrow for a more solid analysis (despite the change in the exchange rate in the last week).

- Japanese drama ratings are also out, and the Flower boys (don’t worry, it’s just my nickname for a show about a group of protagonists that actually have the galls to call themselves “Flower 4″) beat out Karei Naru Ichizoku again for the second week in a row, scoring 22.3 rating on its 9th episode (it’s also its third-to-last episode) while Karei Naru Ichizoku gains slightly with a 21.6 rating, but not enough to win the week. Yukie Nakama’s drama continue to find new lows with a 10.3 rating this week, and Haken No Hinkaku continues its higher-than-average rating run with a 19.9 rating this week. As these dramas begin to wrap up in the next few weeks, ratings should be slightly higher on the whole.

- David Fincher’s Zodiac also opened this weekend waaaaay behind John Travolta’s lowbrow road comedy Wild Hogs at second place with just $13.4 million. Then again, considering that David Fincher may be the film’s biggest attraction, it’s an OK number, but it won’t make back its reported $65 million budget in domestic box office.

- Lastly, it does count as numbers, but not really. Despite the recent health show scandals in Japan, 47% of Japanese people still believe in expert testimony on health shows, according to a survey on the Daily Mainichi news. In fact, only 67% of those people who believed the “natto=diet” correlation (which sparked the scandal) found out that it was false. Which means 1/3 of those people who watched that show is experiencing some heavy cognitive dissonance right about now.

I’ll fill in some of the links tomorrow, all the important news links are already there. And of course, more news will come too.

- Forgot to mention a news item I picked up from reading Oriental Daily (I really should look for a new Chinese news source). At 17 is going to break up and go solo after their show at Baptist University next weekend. I’m not sure when that was decided, the two have been hosting the TVB music show “Jade Solid Gold” for the past year (although I seem to keep missing it on TVB here). Anyway, I’ve been a fan of theirs since they debuted, and I’m sad to see them go. But it should be interesting to see what they’ll be doing as solo artists.

- I mentioned that this blog was named after my pseudo-production company (pseudo because I haven’t made anything since April 2006). So here’s the only one of two films I can claim to be my own. That’s right, it’s the infamous (at least to those that know me) Vergangenheit. Consider it my gift for the week.

Seeing that it’s Sunday, and I don’t have that much time today, thought I’d just update a little earlier today:

- New reviews, one for Kiyoshi Kuorsawa’s Sakebi from the Daily Yomiuri, one for Strawberry Shortcakes (Which Jason Gray wrote about subtitling it for) from Variety Asia, and one for the very very little-known (honestly, even this one slipped out of my hands)Wife From Hell from lovehkfilm.

- In case guys haven’t found out yet, the second and last installment of the Death Note films, The Last Note, is coming out on the cheaper HK DVD alternative on March 13th, except it’s not that much cheaper. I might just wait for the eventual box set or something.

- Hoga Central has the preliminary first-day box office result for the Genghis Khan movie, and it’s 25% ahead of Yamato, so it’s almost officially a hit.

- Lastly, it’s not much to get extremely excited about, but the first image (yes, just image) for the Johnnie To-Tsui Hark-Ringo Lam film Iron Triangle is out thanks to Twitch. You don’t even get to know whose section the image is from, but it looks pretty cool (I’m guessing Tsui Hark’s though).

That’s it for today, but tomorrow I’ll have box office and drama ratings. In other words, something for me to get excited about, but not necessarily for you guys.

Mostly news from Japan today, some outdated, some new.

- First, on the heels of Paris Je T’aime, another French producer is now putting together an omnibus film about another international city, this time being Tokyo (one of my few favorite cities in the world). “Tokyo Tales” will feature short films by Michel Gondry, Bong Joon Ho, and French director/actor Leo Carax, whose films I have never seen. Twitch has a link to a Hollywood Reporter….report here (now you see why I never use Hollywood reporter? The links will just be plain awkward). I can understand why there is no Japanese director involved, seeing so many Japanese mainstream films take place in Tokyo and its suburbs, a Japanese director’s take on Tokyo won’t really bring anything new to the table.

I did read an anthology named Tokyo Fragments, and I didn’t enjoy it that much. I hope this will be better.

I actually watched Gondry’s latest, The Science of Sleep, last night. It’s a great study into the reality of dreams, but it also feels anti-climatic. I liked its visuals and general inventiveness (plus an admirably downbeat, kind of abstract ending), but I’m not going crazy over it.

- Speaking of omnibus films, Ryuganji is reporting that Altamira Pictures is putting together an anthology of twelve films. The special part is that each film will be inspired by a pop song from the Showa era (which I’m sure my mother will love). At the bottom of the same report is a link to the sequel to “Pacchigi!”

- In Ryuganji’s latest entry, he also reports that the world’s most popular xenophobic politician, Tokyo governor Shintaro Ishihara, is criticizing Clint Eastwood’s Letters from Iwo Jima to step up the praise for his own film, “Ore Wa Kimi No Tame Ni Koso Shi Ni Iku,” which he wrote and executive produced. At a party celebrating the completion of the film, Governor Ishihara says that Eastwood’s film did not “have a sense of the American soldier’s frustration,” and that his film is “much better.”

Obviously, Ishihara, who actually granted Eastwood special permission to film on the island of Iwo Jima, did not see Flags of Our Fathers, because I thought seeing an American soldier’s intestines on the ground after getting shot is a pretty good showing of their frustration. Plus, never trust a producer that praises his own film, look at what happened to the Matrix sequels.

As for what Kamikaze pilots are, see here.

- Yay, Twitch has the full trailer for the Thai film The Sperm, and it looks like some crazy fun.

- Variety has a prediction of this summer’s film market. It’s another summer of the sequels (Spiderman, Die Hard, Harry Potter, and Pirates of the Caribbean, to name a few), and sadly, I’ll probably be in theaters for all of them.

- And then David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson’s blog talks about the possibility that the world may have come to reject Hollywood films (in case you don’t want to read it all, Kristin doesn’t agree). It’s an interesting read, and she gives a good perspective of the world film market right now.

- Sometimes looking on Wikipedia can be quite useful. For instance, I managed to find actor/radio talk host/director Matt Chow’s blog. Personally, I watch some of his stuff (I’ve listened to bits and pieces of his radio show), and despite never getting lots of acclaim for his work, he’s done some good stuff (He was actually brought in to work on the script for Dog Bite Dog, and his script work actually helped got the film going). It’s all in Chinese, though, which means many of you won’t be able to read it. Just look at the pretty pictures then.

Lastly, FG, a blog about all things Japan, has an entry about my favorite ramen joint Ichiran.

A picture I took of the place on my recent trip. Doesn’t that just make your mouth water?

We have quite a bit to go through today, so let’s start with what I promised yesterday first.

- Turns out Japan Times have some good reviews this weekend, starting with Linda Linda director Nobuhiro Yamashita’s new film Matsugane Potshot Affair and Mark Schilling giving a kind-of negative review. Then Kaori Shoji goes and gives a pretty positive review for Paris Je T’aime, a film that I saw in Hong Kong on my trip, loved, and even bought the DVD. It opens in the States on May 4th, so do me a favor and check it out, will ya?

The best part of the Japan Times Film Section update, however, is the interview they have with Letters From Iwo Jima screenwriter Iris Yamashita. It’s not especially insightful, but considering I haven’t seen much press with Yamashita (the press seem to go to Paul Haggis more, for the obvious reasons), it’s something worth checking out.

- Hong Kong Thursday (opening day) numbers are out, and it looks be a pretty weak weekend. The weekend’s widest opening, the Pangs’ The Messengers, opened on 29 screens and got HK$270,000 for third place behind Night at the Museum and Protege. Among limited releases, The Queen opened to a very healthy HK$230,000 on 14 screens towards a very healthy weekend, Dreamgirls opened on 10 screens and got HK$90,000, and Letters From Iwo Jima opened on 5 screens with an HK$80,000 gross (with a 10% ticket price inflation due to length). Advance ticket sales are looking pretty weak, so The Messengers may come up from behind to pass Protege as second place, but overall the weekend doesn’t look to be very strong in ticket sales anyway.

- Sakuran seems to be doing so well even during the week (According to Cinema Cafe, after 5 days on 51 screens, the total admission so far is 63402 people) that it should reach 110 million yen (according to today’s exchange rate of $1=117 yen, that’s about $940,000) by Friday. For those of you in Tokyo, this Shibuya theater is promoting a special where a group of 3 or more can get in for 1000 yen each if the entire group (men AND women) shows up wearing kimono (that include yukata, guys). So get that cheap Uniqlo yukata (seriously, I really did it see one when I was there) out and head down to Shibuya.

Thanks to Hoga Central for the news.

- I reported about the box office for the film Bubble He Go! (which is a minor box office success now in Japan) for a few weeks now without actually talking about the film itself. Now Japundit has an introduction, in case you wanted to know more. I’m not that attracted by the idea, since I missed out on the pop culture explosion in the early 90s (I was too young to get it), but it seems interesting nevertheless.

- The lucky people in Japan will be the first in the world to be able to watch Spider Man 3 (a film that, despite my sometimes holier-than-thou taste, I have to admit to be looking forward to very much). Not only the film will get the world premiere at the Roppongi Hill cinema (what the allure to that theater is, I don’t seem to know) on April 16th, AND it will now open on May 1st, 4 days before the US debut and the first in the world to receive a wide release.

- Media Asia (who as I reported a few days ago admitted that Infernal Affairs is actually based on a Japanese comic) will be pouring HK$500 million for 2007, including several new films by Milkyway (they distributed Breaking News, Exiled, and 2 Become 1, to name a few) and the new Peter Chan film, now titled “The Warlords” (can there be a more generic title than that?). They also struck multi-film deals with Dog Bite Dog director Soi Cheang and Johnnie To.

- A poster at the Mobius forum found three articles by local free paper The Guardian about Bong Joon Ho and The Host. I also seem to have mistaken that the showcase coming on Monday will include The Host. It will only feature Barking Dogs Never Bite and Memories of Murder, both are worth watching anyway.

- Just in case anyone has a couple of million dollars to spend, the Hong Kong Entertainment Expo (which include Filmart for international buyers, the Hong Kong International Film Festival, and the debut of the Asian Film Awards this year) will be expanding by a quite a bit this year.

- Twitch today has an impressive set of reviews for all the mainstream American DVD releases in February….except for Flags of Our Fathers. You can read it all, or just read the ones that you care about, like I did. It’s your choice, and it’s an impressive report regardless.

- Lastly, Hong Kong televised its first chief executive debate, and why am I talking about it, you ask? Because it sounds pretty damn entertaining. Of course, it would mean more if Hong Kong citizens actually get to vote for their chief executive, because there’s not really a point for this debate when the “election” is decided by 800 middle-aged to old Chinese men. For now, it just feels like a “Who wants to be a Communist ass-kisser” popularity contest.

Updates may be sparse in the next week. Well, just maybe, you can’t get rid of me that quickly.

Since I went all post-crazy yesterday, let’s take it a little easier today, and start with some personal notes:

Thanks to Kozo over at Lovehkfilm for mentioning this blog, and actually calling me an all-around great guy, although you probably can’t tell by the antagonistic attitude I’ve got on this blog. Traffic has gone up considerably since that link went up, so thanks for stopping by.

munin left a comment (sorry I’m singling you out, but I do have to single out your comment to make a point) down at the Departed-Hong Kong-China article. Your corrections are all correct…..because that’s exactly what I corrected in my response to what Professor Fung wrote in his article, which I translated. I’ve now put bold on my response to clear up any misunderstandings. Thank for coming anyway.

Also added some new blogs on the favorite menu on your right - YTSL, whose top 10 list I’ve mentioned before has Webs of Significance, Brian, the webmaster of Hong Kong Cinema - View from the Brooklyn Bridge has Asian Cinema-While on the Road, and Sanney Leung, the ex-webmaster of Hong Kong Entertainment News in Review (which I honestly did not frequent much because I probably had the same source for news as him, except he took the effort to spread it, which deserves any Hong Kong film lover’s respect) is back with The House Where Words Gather.

Jason Gray, in his comment for my entry yesterday, has cleared up the discrepancy in the data that Box Office Mojo and Eiga Daisuki! has regarding box office numbers. Here is his comment:

“As you guessed, Kôgyô Tsûshin’s weekly ranking, which is in turn used by sites such as eiga.com, is based on total admissions (全国動員集計).

Box Office Mojo is ranked by earnings. The problem with that site is that they don’t post the original yen figures. You can back calculate it using their exchange rate, but that’s only good for the 1 minute on the 1 day that rate was in effect.

At Screen (which is subscriber only, unfortunately) we publish the original figures and $ amount.

Sakuran earned Y44,855,778 while Marie pulled in Y43,975,895. Sakuran’s per screen average was Y879,525 from 51 screens, which is not incredible but still pretty good.

As for the discrepancy in earnings vs. admissions, there are lots of ticket-related reasons for that such as discounts for groups of 3 high-school students, Y1000 Ladies Day, maeuriken (advanced tickets), people going to discount ticket shops in urban centers, comp tickets related to campaigns etc. etc.

So, that’s why Sakuran/Marie Antoinette and I Just Didn’t Do It/Battle Of Wits were flipped.”

There ya have it. Thanks, Jason!

- Also saw A Battle of Wits with Andy Lau and The Lives of Others (the best foreign film winner at the Academy Awards).

A Battles of Wits is an immensely entertaining war epic by Hong Kong veteran director Jacob Cheung and stars Andy Lau as a war advisor from the Mozi tribe to help the Liang city from being destroyed by the Zhaos. It’s ok, just think of it as big army A attacks small city B, so Andy Lau comes and defend small city B without wanting to wipe out big army A. But things are complicated when the Mozi war advisor pisses off the king with his pacifism and general likability. Despite being a very entertaining war epic (without going into laughable territory like The Promise), A Battle of Wits feels very impersonal. Cheung chooses to constantly shoot scenes at a certain distance, allowing his actors to really be in the middle of things, but it also feels detached. There aren’t many close-ups, and when the camera does get up close, the 2.35:1 ratio always manages to fit at least 2 faces in there. While some of these scenes are compelling thanks to Cheung’s handle on interpersonal tension (he’s known for making human dramas, not large-scale epics), A Battle of Wits takes a while to get used to.

Of course, credit to Cheung for creating a realistic period film without resorting to martial arts and flying people. Despite its comic roots, A Battle of Wits is largely grounded in reality, and the battles are fought with real smarts rather than supernatural powers. And Micheal Jackson would surely love at least part of the ending.

A lot of people felt that Pan’s Labyrinth was robbed when The Lives of Others won the best foreign film Oscar. But here I can tell you that it was largely deserved. Taking place in 1980s East Germany, The Lives of Others is about an East German State Security Agent charged with spying on a loyal communist playwright, but begins to grow sympathetic towards his target. It’s gripping, tense, involving, and even touching. Pan’s Labyrinth was a very strong contender, with beautiful set designs, great cinematography (although it robbed Children of Men), and it’s a work of great imagination. But The Lives of Others have a stronger script, strong performances, mature direction, and it’s more grounded in its humanity. Both films take place at times when the country is under great oppression, but while Pan’s Labyrinth used graphic (sometimes even exploitive) violence, The Lives of Others uses its script and its atmosphere to build up the possibility of the oppression. And what an ending.

Both are great movies, but in my humble opinion, The Lives of Others deserved that Oscar.

- Moving on, looks like we have more details about the limiting of competition shows in China. It seems that the move is due to the authorities believing that shows are being dragged on to to make more money from SMS voting. I can buy that reason.

- German firm Contraco will be collaborating with a Korean firm to create a film fund, and it will be the first Korean film fund to include foreign capital. The entire fund of $42 million will launch its first film in May, though there are no announcements regarding what the film will be.

- In Japanese music news, Shiina Ringo’s first solo album in 4 years (I introduced two of the track in last night’s entry) has debuted at number 1 on the Oricon weekly chart, selling 97,000 copies. It’s not a great number, but a number one debut is a number one debut. Meanwhile, in the singles world, Arashi has the number 1 single from last week, while Ai Otsuka debuts only at 3rd place, and Mika Nakashima, despite having a theme song to a fairly popular drama, can only muster a 4th place debut.

On the daily chart, Utada Hikaru has a first-place debut with Flavor Of Life.

Singles ranking is here, and album ranking is here.

- Speaking of music, the New York city council seem to symbolically banned any racial slurs, which would mark trouble for rappers who like using such slurs in their music. Apparently, using it carries no penalty; instead, you just get a wag of the finger. Chris Rock has a funny remark at the end of the article that I can’t write out again, but trust me, it’s funny enough to warrant checking it out.

- Last week, I mentioned that Japanese Academy Award winner Hula Girl is getting an encore run at a limited amount of screens at 1000 yen per ticket. Eiga Consultant has analyzed its first day earnings, and it made 18.24 million yen on 52 screens nationwide. At 1000 yen a pop, that means 18,240 people showed up, averaging about 350 people per screen.

FYI, though, the DVD is coming out on March 16th.

- I’m personally not an anime fan (I don’t really watch it….at all), but Twitch reports that John Woo is producing the sequel to the animated film Appleseed, and they also have a teaser up now. I watched it, and it looks just like an ad for another video game. But I’m not an anime fan, so maybe i have no right to talk.

- As we reported before, the Japanese Genghis Khan movie (honestly, the full name takes too much effort to type right now) is coming out this Saturday with huge fanfare and widespread advertisement (I’m not in Japan, so I don’t know). But as they say, the higher you climb, the harder you fall. Someone is already suing the production company for never signing the official document to get the rights transferred from her in order to produce the film. This is why you never transfer anything without signing an official document.

Tomorrow, looks like we’ll have Hong Kong numbers, and the new Japan Times reviews.