The Golden Rock - September 20th, 2007 Edition

- I know I didn't really follow the rest of the Summer 2007 drama season, but now that's it's one or two finales away from being officially over, let's look at how they did.

The highest-rated drama of the season is the comic-based Hanazakari No Kimi Tachi He, which ran into a bit of a tough spot in the middle, but came out on top with a 21.0-rated finale and a 17.0 average rating. The biggest disappointment is the Monday 9pm Fuji drama First Kiss, which started strong with a 19.7 rating but fell quickly to a 12.4-rating finale and only a 14.1 average. On the other hand, Fuji continues to find success in their new experimental Saturday nights 11 pm period with second drama Life. It started with just a 11.0 rating, but it kept up over the course of the season. In the end, it scored a 17.0 rating finale (extremely good for that time slot) and a 12.2 average. That's actually even better than last season's Liar Game.

With an average of 7.5, I have no idea who's going to be showing up for the Sushi Ouji movie.

Tokyograph also has a preview of the Fall 2007 dramas already, so start your engines and get to picking which ones to downl...buy in a legitimate fashion when they come out with English subtitles.

- Not that anyone out there needs to be reminded, but the first Japan International Content Festival (CoFestaaaaaa!) started on Wednesday. It had some big opening ceremony (anything even that goes for 40 days and 40 nights ought to), and now the Tokyo Game Show is under way with a record number of exhibitors.

- This is for real - apparently the South Korean government is planning to present North Korea dictator Kim Jong-il, an avid movie buff himself, not only a home theater set, but also a bunch of South Korean movies. One of the possible flicks? D-Wars.

- A personal note of interest: Christopher Nolan's second Batman film The Dark Knight will be coming to shoot in Hong Kong for 9 days in November, and they're planning to shoot around Central. Time to mark my Hollywood film production stalking schedule.

- American home video distributor Viz Media has picked up the theatrical and home video distribution rights for the two Death Note movies. This is a surprise to me in that I wonder why Warner Bros., whose Japanese division co-produced the film, didn't sell the hell out of it for the American release themselves. Then again, Viz Media were great enough to bring Linda Linda Linda and The Taste of Tea to the United States, so maybe they'll do ok with this one. But no DVD release until Summer 2008? That's a mighty long wait.

- Lastly, Variety has the reviews for Chinese-American director Wayne Wang's latest two films, which see the director returning to his indie roots, and both shown at the Toronto Film Festival - The Princess of Nebraska and A Thousand Years of Good Prayers.