So much news I needed to post twice

More Hollywood-oriented news now.

- Rumors of a sequel to The Departed have now blown up to rumors of TWO sequels, and neither of them are based on the original sequels (one prequel, and one nonsensical sequel). At least they're not making it back-to-back within one year.

Source: Hollywood Elsewhere

- Youtube has agreed to post up Japanese warnings on their website for users after a meeting with the dev...I mean the JASRAC to prevent postings of Japanese copyright materials. The blog "Watashi to Tokyo" also include an interesting story about JASRAC's practices, which involve the bullying of a small neighborhood lounge that played copyrighted music and got smacked down. Japanese entertainment has always held out any possible chance of reaching the widest audience possible by holding out for an extra couple of bucks. No wonder Japanese artists can't find success outside of Japan.

Source: Watashi To Tokyo

- I posted a link for the trailer for Peter Berg's The Kingdom here before. Now the film's release date has moved from April to September after phenomenal test group scores in no other place than Sacramento, California. Relying on just one town's test scores may not be such as good idea, remember The Avengers?

Source: Yahoo News

- New York Post critic Lou Lumenick reports that the new Nicholas Cage actioner-comic-adaptation Ghost Rider will be released without any screenings for critics. I feel like my job is in more and more jeopardy every time one of these reports come out.

Source: Hollywood Elsewhere

Sometimes you just don't know whom to trust

- Box Office Mojo posted its own official Japan box office numbers from this past weekend, and there's a slight discrepancy - While yesterday's Eiga Daisuki ranking shows Monster House at 10th place with Battle Of Wits at 3rd, the Box Office Mojo ranking shows the new film Dear Friends at 10th place, and Battle of Wits at 4th, behind Marie Antoinette. What gives?

Nevertheless, the Battle of Wits opening is weaker in numbers than I thought, since the release is fairly wide at 246 screens, it only took in 130 million yen (that's about 1.09 million in US dollars, according to Mojo) for a 528500 yen average, which amounts to only about US$4400 per-screen. And average ticket prices in Japan is 1500 yen (adult price is 1800, but advanced tickets are sold at 1300 yen, and students are charged 1500 yen as well), so do the math. Since, according to Eiga Consultant, it did do 114% of The Promise's opening weekend business (and possibly with considerably better word of mouth and a popular source material), it might do respectable business for a Hong Kong film. Then again, Hong Kong films usually don't even see the top 10, so we'll see.

Meanwhile, Japanese films are staying afloat quite well, with Dororo losing only 15% of its business, and Shall We Dance director Masayuki Suo's "Soredemo Boku Wa Yattenai" losing only 14% and will probably stay strong thanks to word-of-mouth and recent promotion by the director himself. The multiple-Oscar nominated The Departed, however, not doing so well, losing another 40% of its business over the weekend, along with Letters From Iwo Jima, which finally seems to be dying down after an astonishing 9 weeks in the top 10.

Source: Box Office Mojo

- Takeshi Kitano (or known as Beat Takeshi) has recently completed his 13th film, which will supposedly with a mishmash of homages to Ozu, science fiction, and I guess whatever oddball stuff he can come up with. It will open in June.

Source: Japan Zone (please scroll down if you don't see it)

- Twitch has been provided with stills from Soi Cheang's new film Shamo. This time a manga adaptation, the presumably hardcore action flick will star former pretty boy Shawn Yue, whom I always thought has great potential as an actor. The original comic apparently featured many gay rape scenes (it does partially takes place in prison), but the director himself said that they have been left out of the film.

Source: Twitch

- The team behind the controversial "Lost in Beijing" is now prepared to defy the censors and show the film uncut in Berlin....at least for the market screenings. But they have yet to decide which version to go with for the public screening. Come on, stick it up to the man!

Source: Variety Asia

Critics? What's that?

- Variety likes to end their first paragraph of film reviews with a little prediction of their box office takes, because apparently being professional means you can watch movies early enough to predict their box gross, not analyze (like yours truly). A Korean film critic apparently likes to follow Variety's vein by predicting the highly anticipated new film by Park Jin Pyo (You Are My Sunshine) "Voice of a Murderer" would flop. Despite, you know, "You Are My Sunshine" being the highest-grossing Korean melodrama ever, and that a crime film that tries to cash in on major collective memory happens to hit box office jackpot (read "Memories of Murder").

Then comes news that "Voice of a Murderer" made $10.1 million with 1.46 million admissions, AND screen counts actually increased day by day.

I'll bet a certain someone in Germany is happy about that.

Source: Twitch, Variety Asia.

- Those silly censors at the Chinese government strikes again. They have approved a heavily-cut version of Li Yu's "Lost in Beijing" (starring Tony Leung Ka-Fai) to screen in Berlin. Apparently, the censors demanded 53 cuts (totaling about 15 minutes), include a scene of a car driving down a dirty alleyway with water since it gives a bad impression of Beijing. Man, people must think America is a pigsty after all the dirty alleyways with water they show in their movies.

Now producer Feng Li has to consider showing the approved version or open defy status quo and showed the original version in Berlin. Of course, he has to consider the last filmmaker that did that got banned from making films for 5 years.

Source: Variety Asia

- Japanese box office rankings for the past weekend is out. Dororo remains in the first place, as Pursuit Of Happyness in second. The biggest major opening this week would be Andy Lau's A Battle of Wits. I don't have an official screen count or numbers, but this is considered a pretty major opening for a Hong Kong film (It did get nominations at the Hong Kong Film Awards, so it's a Hong Kong film, yeah? Good), let alone an Andy Lau film. This is probably due to the fact that it's based on a popular Japanese comic, not the fact that Andy Lau is prominently featured in the poster
Source: Eiga Daisuki!

- Rinko Kichuchi from the brilliant "Babel" (that's right, the more you hate it, the more I'll love it) has signed up for a role in Rian Johnson's (who made a great debut with Brick) con-man noir drama The Brothers Bloom. Here's to hoping she just won't become the fetishized Asian femme fatale there to satisfy the male gaze.

Source: Twitch

Ah hell, it's Hollywood, that's what probably will happen.

Extra large Monday edition

Having been lazy for the last couple of days about blogging, I feel somewhat obligated to deliver more news today.

- The Pang Bros.' Hollywood debut The Messengers (although not completely their film - Producer Sam Raimi reportedly brought in another director to reshoot a couple of scenes after filming ended) debut at no. 1 with 14.7 million dollars at the box office, marking the 5th best Super Bowl opening of all time. Reviews have been mostly negative, even though I thought Variety's review was leaning towards the positive side, and it still got a rotten tomato.

In other box office news, Letters From Iwo Jima sinks 9% this weekend, despite a screen expansion. Sadly, the multiple Oscar nominee will limp to get to the 10 million-mark, unless Flags of Our Fathers' DVD release this week help boost box office takes. I doubt Warner Bros. is worried, though, since it'll make 40 million dollars in Japan alone. That's double its budget.

Meanwhile, Babel and Children of Men are in a virtual freefall now. Especially sad is Children of Men, which has gotten great acclaim, word-of-mouth, and even Oscar nominations, only to earn back less than half of its budget in the States. On the other hand, good news for Pan's Labyrinth, which has now apparently becoming the highest-grossing Spanish-language film in the States (sans inflation).

Source: Box Office Mojo.

- Meanwhile, in Hong Kong, new opener House of Mahjong has inexplicably become the number 1 film this weekend, earning HK$410,000 on 29 screens on Sunday for a 1.52 million gross after 4 days. Even the Project Greenlight film Feast opened at third place with a solid 260,000 on 23 screens on Sunday for a 1.01 million total so far, even though the version in Hong Kong theatres is reportedly only 87 minutes long, suggesting a 8-minute trim for a friendlier category II-B rating.

Blood Diamond continues to stay strong at second place with a inflated 370,000 take on 31 screens on Sunday with a 7.71 million total as it draws closer to being first 2007 10-million earner in Hong Kong. It might happen, it might not, who cares?

In limited releases, Anthony Minghella's Breaking and Entering, which is also doing decent but not great limited release business in the States, managed to make HK$150,000 on 7 screens on Sunday for a HK$560,000 total. The biggest limited release opener, though, is the 2-screen opening of Borat. It made an extraordinary 90,000 on only 2 screens for a 280,000 total so far.

Source: Mov3.com, Broadway Cinemas

- There was a test screening for Derek Yee's new work Protege last week, and results were generally positive. In the post-screening Q&A, Yee also laments the decline of Hong Kong films, citing the recent incident where citizens called in to complain about a broadcast of the classic film An Autumn's Tale because of the scene where the Chow Yun-Fat character swears in a scene of road rage played for laughs.

Source is from the Oriental Daily newspaper from Hong Kong, but they change their online content everyday, so there's no longer any official source.

- Additional review for Japanese blockbuster Dororo. Last week I posted a negative review, so now here comes a positive review for the usually-reliable (at least when it comes to Japanese films) Mark Schilling at Japan Times.

- Speaking of reviews, four new reviews for the month are up:
Joey Yung - Close Up (music)
Miriam Yeung - Unlimited (music)
Like a Virgin (Korea)
Live Good (aka: Mission Sex Control) (Korea)

- I like the Colbert Report. Unlike The Daily Show's sometimes-liberal slant on its skewering of news, The Colbert Report is a sharp satire of the so-called fair and balanced Fox News and other right-wing news shows. So why am I talking about Colbert, you ask? Because he recently did a segment on this year's Academy Awards and how it's destroying America. Trust me, it's funnier than it sounds.

Watch it here.

More tomorrow, hopefully, when the Japanese box office results may come out. What can I say? I live by Box Office Mojo, and so should you.

Just when I thought I was out....

Back at my alma mater UC Davis for a few days on official business, but there are just too much news in the Asian film world that I just have to post.

- The Hong Kong Film Award nominations are in (curiously, not on their official website yet, so a full list is available on MonkeyPeaches here), and Zhang Yimou's barely-a-Hong-Kong-film Curse of the Golden Flower gets 14 nominations, including one inexplicable supporting actor nom for Jay Chou. He also scored two nominations for original songs in CURSE and Fearless. Yes, Jay Chou has now been nominated for more Hong Kong film awards than Martin Scorsese.

In other news, Patrick Tam's After This, Our Exile is second with 10 nominations. Johnnie To is celebrating twin nominations in both Best Picture and Best director for Election 2 and Exiled (also deservedly nominated for best editing and cinematography). Edmond Pang Ho-Cheung's Isabella, a personal favorite of mine, is sadly shut out of the major categories (replaced by Happy Birthday and Confession of Pain in the best screenplay category. WHAT?!), with a few in the technical departments and Isabella Leong for best actress. In another case of injustice, Dog Bite Dog not only gets the shaft from the Hong Kong critics society as a recommended film (it got nothing, even though Soi Cheang's The Death Curse was a recommended film), now only gets one nomination for best new actor. Considering the fact that I can find so many films shafted probably means it must've been a pretty good year after all for Hong Kong cinema. Yeah, let's keep telling myself that.

- Japanese congomerate Kadokawa will start selling their films via Bittorrent technology. Here's hoping they don't waste their technology on a slew of mediocre J-horror films.

source: Variety Asia

- Hong Kong will gets its first IMAX cinema (probably after seeing the technology used on major theatrical releases) along with a UA multiplex in Kowloon Bay this summer. I live near Kowloon Bay, I've ridden the buses past the area, but I see no major mall being constructed. The fact that you can't see a mall from the MTR station may spell a bit of doom for the overpriced Hong Kong UA chain. Broadway Cyberport cinema, anyone?

source: Variaty Asia.