The Golden Rock - July 26th, 2007 Edition

- Apparently there are quite a few fans of David Lynch in Japan. His latest Inland Empire, which I honestly think it looks too weird to be my kind of film, opened on two screens in Japan this past weekend. With three shows a day over two days, the film attracted 2031 admissions and grossed 3.24 million yen. Considering one theater seats only 111 and the other seats 232, that's a pretty good opening. According to Eiga Consultant, people started lining up at the Tokyo cinema 2 hours before the first show and the last show was sold out three hours beforehand. Also, the pamphlet/program had a 40% sales rate. Either that means good-of-mouth or it means people just plain don't get it. Return business, anyone?

- Inland Empire was released by Kadakawa films in Japan, who also released the remake The Murder of the Inugami Clan, a ton of smaller films, and a bunch of TV shows after ruling the Japanese film world way back then. Now they are planning to do their own "fight fire with fire" strategy by posting their copyrighted material onto Youtube. However, they are also developing a program that would find internet video content that are violating copyright, though I'm not exactly sure whatever that means.

- Hollywood Reporter has more on the hit opening weekend for the Thai horror film Alone at the Korean box office, including the distributor's strategy to market Thai horror as the next big wave and that J-horror is over. They're a couple years behind, but hey, whatever works for them.

- Recently, Japan entertainment trend reporting website Oricon polled people on what they thing is the scariest J-horror film. The results aren't really all that surprising.

- Time for Venice festival news - First, Jason Gray has information on the Japanese selections, both in and out of competition (They even gave an in competition spot to Takeshii Miike. Is this a first for Miike in a major European film festival?). Then you can just go and check out the entire list at Variety, which includes quite a few major Asian films.

- On the other hand, things are definitely not going very well at the Bangkok International Film Festival, where there are more sellers than buyers at the market, films are not well-attended, and one Thai executive even said the money spent should've gone straight to the film industry instead. Ouch.

- It's reviews time! Twitch has a review of Kiyoshi Kurosawa's Retribution, a rather long review of the new Korean film May 18th, and a shorter one for Japanese blockbuster Dororo. Then, Variety's Derek Elley turns in a review for the opener for the Puchon International Fantastic Film Festival Eternal Hearts.

- The Weinstein Company has snapped up another Asian film that they could potentially ruin, this time one of Vietnam's biggest films ever.

- Yesterday I reported the misreporting of casting news regarding Derek Yee's The Shinjuku Incident. Today Hollywood Reporter, whom I consider to be a pretty accurate news reporting organization, reports that China Film Group is onboard as a co-producer, which means you know the good guys and/or the Chinese will again win in the end.

- Apparently Taiwanese pop star Jay Chou's latest single, the theme song for his directorial debut Secrets, is suggested to be a breakthrough in style by incorporating British rock influences. Why is this news, especially when he's done it before already?