The Golden Rock - August 21st, 2007 Edition

A really slow news day today, so this entry is mercifully shorter than usual.

- The Japanese box office numbers show that the weekend match-up between Ocean's 13 and Harry Potter was much closer than I thought. Despite Ocean's 37 % drop (in comparison to Potter's 27%), the difference between the two films were only a little more than 2 million yen. Nevertheless, Ocean benefited from the holiday week, with 1.75 billion yen already in the bank. Plus, both these films are released by Warner Bros., so they win either way.

Like everywhere else it played, Ratatouille is holding on based on word-of-mouth, losing only 7% of its business from last weekend. The biggest drop again goes to the latest Naruto movie. Meanwhile, Isao Yukisada's latest Into the Faraway Sky failed to attract audiences based on Yukisada's name alone, making only 26 million yen from 121 screens.

The only opening that made it to the top 10 is Fumihiko Sori's animated film Vexville. On 181 screens, the film only made 42 million yen. That's only 66% of Fumihiko's producing effort Appleseed's opening. However, the film has been sold to 129 countries for distribution, so I'm sure these guys will make their money back.

- A bit outdated, but Stephen Chow's latest is no longer called A Hope, but CJ7, which would be a more literal translation from the film's Chinese name, which i have no idea how to type in pinyin.
- Aya Ueto is going to be playing her first role as a mother in the fall Fuji TV drama Wild Mama. Apparently she will be a stepmom that argues with a lot of people. How does that make good TV again?

- In an effort to make you look more forward to the awards and not concentrate on its redundancy, the Asia Pacific Film Awards (to take place in Australia, not Asia) has just completed a complementary program featuring interviews with a lot of big-name Asian directors. Well, at least big names to me, alright?

- Any amateur game developers now have a new goal to reach - a win at the Amateur Division of the Japan Game Awards.

- Major South Korean entertainment firm Sidus (and I say major because I see its logo quite often) is penetrating the US market by buying a slice of Asian-American-targeted cable network Imaginasian TV. This means expect more Korean entertainment on American cable television, and that ain't bad.

See? mercifully short.