- It’s Taiwanese music charts time! Soda Green’s live CD tops the G-Music Charts in its first week, taking up over 10% of total sales. Meanwhile, Korean boy band Super Junior’s latest debuts at 2nd place, taking over 5% of total sales. June Chu’s debut album arrive on the chart at 8th place with just under 1% of total sales. Korean pop singer Jang Nara’s Mandarin album could only muster a 13th place debut with 0.75% of sales, but she still did better than Japanese pop duo WaT, whose latest debuted all the way down at 18th place with just 0.53% of total sales.

- This week’s Teleview column is all about Change, the upcoming Kimura Takuya drama where he plays an elementary school teacher who becomes the Prime Minister of Japan. Sounds like a real winner.

- Ryuganji has translated another interesting piece from Sai Yoichi, turns out he wrote an even more scathing piece about the making of Soo before the interview that Ryuganji translated about a week and a half ago.

- It’s trailers time! Twitch brings us all three of them today. First, it’s another trailer for Tokyo Gore Police that’s still, well, gory.  Then it’s a trailer for God’s Puzzle, a teen love story that you would’ve never guessed it’s made by Takashi “Ichi The Killer” Miike.  Lastly, there’s a trailer for Ryuichi Hiroki’s Your Friends, which I missed at the Hong Kong International Film Festival and will not even open in Japan until end of June.

- Korean director Na Hong-Jin is already planning for his next film after his megahit thriller The Chaser. The Murderer will be about a man forced to become a murderer to overcome starvation. Any cannibalism involved?

- The controversial documentary Yasukuni has reached the Kansai area after a week of sold-out screenings in Tokyo. The theater in Tokyo has also extended the film’s run after it was only set to play it for a week.

- A new powerful documentary about the issue of forced comfort women premiered at the Jeonju Film Festival this past week and presents evidence that clearly prove the existence of such women even outside of Japan and Korea.

- JJ Sonny Chiba (or the artist formerly known as Sonny Chiba) will take once again take on 7-Color Mask, a TV series role that Chiba took on as his screen debut all the way back in the 60s. After the death of the original writer last month, Chiba has decided to fulfill the actor’s wish by producing and starring in the film version of the series.

- The San Sebastian Film Festival this year will include a retrospective of old black and white Japanese film noir from Japan.

- Jason Gray shows us some of the promotional material Japan is seeing for Hayao Miyazaki’s latest, which is nice since we overseas get damn near nothing to see on the internet.

- Oh, there’s a new post at the spin-off.

- Let’s look at the Thursday opening day box office. The Wachowski’s Speed Racer is a major flop, making only HK$230,000 from 50 screens. Judging from the turnout at the screening I went to, it’s not going to do too much better this weekend. But honestly, it’s not that bad of a movie. Meanwhile, “counter-programming” romantic comedy What Happens in Vegas opened higher with HK$268,000 from 29 screens. Lastly, the doggie documenatary This Darling Life opened on just 8 screens with just under HK$30,000 on opening day. More on Monday with the weekend numbers.

- Thanks to Mr. Texas over at Eiga Consultant, we have some definitive numbers on how the controversial documentary Yasukuni did in its first weekend. In that one theater in Shibuya, the film attracted 3429 people over the first 4 days of screening, and with 8 showings a day in a theater that seats a little more than 100 people, this means every show was sold out. With screenings happening successfully without major protests, Mr. Texas also writes that those theaters that canceled the screenings must be hitting themselves on the head now.

- It’s reviews time! This week we play Rashomon with the Japanese blockbuster film The Last Princess. First it’s an all-out rave from The Daily Yomiuri’s Ikuko Kitagawa, who seemed to have really loved it. On the other hand, Japan Times’ Mark Schilling has his review as well, but he doesn’t quite like it so much.

-Former UFO director Lee Chi-Ngai finally has a new film, this time it’s a dance movie produced by companies from Japan, Hong Kong, Korea, and Singapore, starring actors from Japan and Korea. The dancing film will be released early next year.

- Twitch’s Stefan brings to our attention a Singaporean film about….gangsters?

-  Meanwhile, Variety brings to our attention two Korean-other country co-production efforts: Korean and American companies are teaming up for The Aquarium of Pyongyang, about a family forced into a North Korean prison camp. Also, Beautiful Days director Kim Moon Saeng is adapting a popular French novel into a part-3D animation, part-life-action film produced by the two countries.

- While the movie version of the hit book Homeless Chugakusai just started shooting this March and won’t come out until October, Fuji TV just took a big leap ahead of it by announcing a TV drama version that will start shooting this month and begin airing in July.

- We’ve reported a few times about famous Hong Kong screenwriter Ivy Ho’s directorial debut Claustrophobia. The film, starring Karena Lam and Ekin Cheng, will get its premiere at Cannes…….but not at the festival, just at the market taking place at the festival.

- Finally got some Japanese box office numbers in, although it only covers Saturday and Sunday, which was the middle of the Golden Week holidays. As a result, most of the movies on the chart saw a rise from their previous weekend’s gross. For example, Shaolin Girl saw a 20% boost and has now grossed 715 million yen, despite a somewhat weak opening last weekend. But of course, the biggest boosts went to the kid-friendly films such as Conan (20.3%), Crayon Shin-Chan (27.7%), and The Spiderwick Chronicles (17.7%). However, the Masked Rider movie took a drop instead, losing 23.4% of business despite not losing any screens. Hollywood flick 10,000 B.C. also lost business, presumably because theaters put the more popular films on bigger screens and moved this to smaller ones.

- With its first hit in two years, Toei is now crossing their fingers on God’s Puzzle, Takashi Miike’s latest, to rebound them from what was their worst fiscal year in 20 years.

- Meanwhile, The Forbidden Kingdom has done solid business in China, making 150 million yuan since its release in late April already, partly thanks to the holiday last week.

- Things are not doing so well in Korea, where theaters saw April’s performance as the lowest monthly attendance figures since April 2003.

- However, local performance is not stopping them from taking their award-nominated films for a special showing in Japan.

- Earlier in the week, I mentioned that the Chinese distributor for the new Donnie fantasy film Painted Skin already estimated a final box office take simply based on screen counts. Now, the investors are so confident that not only did they already plan two sequels, they already assume they’re successful enough to raise the budget and get Zhang Ziyi for the second movie.

- The Asia Pacific Screen Awards, which had its first year in Australia last year, is now adding an academy, with all the nominees from last year’s awards being included with voting powers for this year’s awards.

-  There’s a short teaser for the omnibus movie Tokyo!, though it doesn’t really show anything from any of the three films, which will get their premiere at Cannes this year.

- A Spanish film buyer has bought their first Asian film, and…it’s Taiwanese torture porn?

-  Hollywood Reporter’s Maggie Lee turns in a review for Sylvia Chang’s Run Papa Run.

-  Chinese president Hu Jintao told Japanese reporters that his favorite Japanese TV drama is the popular 80s morning drama Oshin. It would’ve been great if he said anything with Kimura Takuya in it, but alas, that was not to be.

- My boy Jero has now joined the ranks of popular Japanese pop stars - he’ll be the spokesman for a new line of canned coffee.

- It’s Japanese drama ratings time! Muri Na Renai (the drama about the 60-year-old man in love with a woman 25 years younger) continues its freefall with a drop to 6.9% rating in the previous episode (we’ll talk about the latest episode next week(. Meanwhile, the Yu Aoi-led drama Osen drops quite a bit in its second week to an 8.7% rating. Last Friends continues to perform strongly, as its ratings went up to a 15.9% again for its 4th episode. However, it’s still the third installment of Gokusen that’s winning the season, though its ratings fell again for the second week in a row, now down to a 23.3%, although the Golden Week holidays may have something to do with it. Another freefalling drama to watch out for is Ryokiteki na Kanojo (aka the drama adaptation of Korean film My Sassy Girl), whose rating dropped by another 2.8% to only an 8.7% for its third episode.

Japanese drama info at Tokyograph.

- It’s Japan music charts time! On the Oricon charts, Koichi Domoto, under the name of his character in the movie Sushi Ouji got the number one single. Shuchishin (what is the big deal with these guys?) continue their stand at #2, beating all the other new releases of the week.

Meanwhile, Madonna topped the album charts with her latest album, as the other new release, the Sushi Ouji soundtrack barely got on the chart.

More at Tokyograph.

Meanwhile, the more comprehensive Billboard Japan 100 charts put British artist Leona Lewis’s “Bleeding Love” at the top and Hata Motohiro at 2nd place, with the latter due to radio play. Since the Billboard charts have different criteria such as radio play and surveying possibly a different number of stores, it’s interesting to see the different ways of gauging musical popularity.

Also, Thelma Aoyama’s hit single “Soba Ni Iru Ne” is now the top single of 2008…so far.

- No Japanese box office numbers yet, but different reports are coming in about Aibou’s phenomenal opening. Over the 5-day holiday weekend, the drama adaptation already racked up over 1.2 billion yen, and its attendance figures is at 150% of YAMATO’s opening, although I don’t think YAMATO opened on an extended weekend such as this.

report from Tokyograph.

report from Variety Asia.

- Hollywood Reporter’s Maggie Lee has a review of Daniel Lee’s Three Kingdoms - Resurrection of the Dragon. What, no mention of Maggie Q’s “when my men battle, I rock the ancient guitar” routine?

- The troubled Bangkok Film Festival is back this year, but it’s now been shifted from July to September, and it will probably be part of the new Bangkok Entertainment Expo, modeled after the successful Hong Kong Entertainment Expo.

- Question: How the hell do you pull off a concept single with “vivid” as a concept?

- Grady Hendrix looks at what’s wrong with Korean films this year just from looking at the trailer for The Legendary Libido.

- Under “your daily Edison Chen news” today, actor/director Stephen Fung confirmed that his latest film Jump is currently stuck in limbo while awaiting approval from China’s SARFT. Also, he said that he did not cut one frame of Edison’s role in the film.

- Lastly, Nippon Cinema gives us a look at just how hard it is to promote a blockbuster film in Japan these days.

-

Japan is at the tail end of its Golden Week holiday, so no Japanese drama numbers yet.

- However, we do have the Japan box office attendance figures for Saturday and Sunday (the “weekend” in Japanese box office terms since Saturday is opening day), and popular drama-now-movie Aibou (aka Partners The Movie) is at the top as expected. Meanwhile, 10,000 B.C. fell to 5th place already, Shaolin Girl hangs on at 3rd (despite poor English-language reviews), and Conan also hangs on by falling only to second place. Believe it or not, the only film that didn’t fall in placing is Nicholas Cage’s sci-fi thriller Next, which stayed at 8th place.

- Twitch also has the Korean attendance figures for the past weekend. Iron Man has already passed the 1 million mark, not including the Monday holiday. Also, The Legendary Libido attracts only 181,000 admissions, while the French action film Taken has already reached 1.7 million admissions.

- Kaiju Shakedown brings to our attention to the Kankuro Kudo-penned, so-crazy-it-might-be-good stage show Metal Macbeth. Its cast actually features Takako Matsu, who is actually quite an accomplished stage actress in addition to her success on TV dramas. Do I dare spend 6800 yen on a 210-minute stage with no subtitle at all on DVD?

- Twitch offers us the full-length trailer for the Japanese action film Chameleon, which I hope won’t have as much slow-mo hair moments as Donnie Yen movies often do. Actually, the behind the scenes video of star Tatsuya Fujiwara doing stunts were more interesting than the trailer.

There’s also a trailer for Kami ga Kari, the latest film from director Minoru Kawasaki, better known for cult favorites such as Crab Goalkeeper, Calamari Wrestler, and Everything but Japan Sinks. It seems to be a more mature film about…a magical stylist?

- Ahead of the release of his latest film, director M. Night Shyamalan will be receiving the Padma Shri, one of India’s highest civilian honors.

- It’s Cannes Film Market news time! First, Variety takes a look at the films Japanese studios will be taking to the market, including the second film by Kenji Uchida (Stranger of Mine) and Mamoru Oshii’s The Sky Crawlers.

Also, the Thai-Singapore-Hong Kong co-produced horror film The Coffin will be premiering at the market. The film stars Hong Kong-based actress Karen Mok and has a Thai-based director.

- Bollywood, after remaking plenty of overseas films without buying any rights, are now talking with Warner Bros. about buying the rights to remake The Wedding Crashers.

- Remember a few months ago, Yuen Wo-Ping wanted to train people to kick ass? It may be for the film Iron Mask, the supposed sequel to Iron Monkey that will star Louis Koo and Shawn Yue that will start shooting in July.

- Lastly, I give you all the Stephen Colbert-Rain dance-off:

Remember, guys. It’s all played for laughs.

- It was a crowded weekend at the Hong Kong box office, though Sunday grosses were a bit lower than that of last Thursday’s public holiday. As expected, Iron Man topped the chart with HK$1.6 million from 60 screens on Sunday. After its opening last Wednesday, the superhero flick has now made HK$9.2 million, which is good though not exactly phenomenal. Meanwhile, Japanese doggie flick The Tale of Mari and Three Puppies made another HK$670,000 from 26 screens for a weekend total of HK$2.56 million. Wong Jing’s My Wife is a Gambling Maestro made HK$312,000 from 27 screens for a not-so-good weekend total of HK$1.35 million. The big limited release hit is the British melodrama The Other Boleyn Girl made another HK$193,000 from just 8 screens for a weekend total of HK$850,000. The film reportedly will expand to even more screens over the weekend. The crocodile thriller Rogue flops with HK$50,000 from 7 screens, and a weekend total of just HK$230,000. Lawrence Lau’s Besieged City, which opened on 7 screens, didn’t even make the top 10 on Sunday.

Meanwhile, The Forbidden Kingdom has passed the HK$10 million mark on Sunday with HK$559,000 from 38 screens. Barbara Wong’s Happy Funeral is hanging in with another HK$188,000 from 24 screens, many of which are only playing it only 1 or 2 shows a day.

HK$7.8=US$1

- Japan had a national holiday today (getting to the end of Golden Week), so box office figures won’t come out until tomorrow.  Same for the drama numbers.

-  After some very stupid word on radio earlier in the year, Japanese pop queen Koda Kumi is back. She’s now on tour, and she’s now the spokeswoman for a brand of razors. Insert inappropriate comment here.

- After Rinko Kikuchi had to drop out of the manga adaptation film The Legend of Kamui because of an injury, The Last Samurai’s Koyuki is now stepping in to take over her role in the Yoichi Sai-directed film.

- Variety has Robert Koehler’s review of The Children of Huang Shi, featuring Michelle Yeoh and Chow Yun Fat in supporting roles.

- There’s also a review of the Japanese film The Last Princess (aka remake of Kurosawa’s The Hidden Fortress) in UCLA’s Asia Pacific Arts magazine after the film had its premiere at USC.  It’s an extremely interesting read.

- In case you don’t know, American television satirist Stephen Colbert has been in a battle with Korean superstar Rain to become Time’s most influential person two years in a role, which culminated into this video. Now,most likely as part of his promotion for Speed Racer, he will be on today’s The Colbert Report for a special dance-off. By the way, they both lost the poll, though Rain did beat Colbert at the end.

- There’s no confirmation for this, but CCTV supposedly boycotted performers who were part of the Chinese talent shows Super Girl and Happy Boy during a show featuring the latest Olympic songs by intentionally not giving them any close-ups. Since this is supposedly from the blog of a CCTV director, no one knows whether the entry or the policy is true.

- Lastly, The Daily Yomiuri focuses on the audience response to the controversial Japanese documentary Yasukuni.

- Drama adaptation Aibou opened this past week in the middle of Golden Week in Japan, and its opening day has already surpassed the opening day gross of distributor Toei’s biggest earner YAMATO. Since it opened in the middle of a week of holidays, it’s a possibility that its opening will surpass YAMATO, but may not have the legs to surpass it in total gross.

- Controversial documentary Yasukuni finally opened in Tokyo, and the first day showings were packed and thankfully without those pesky protests.

- The Japanese animated film The Girl Who Leapt Through Time, which I fairly enjoyed, is getting a limited release in the United States, but only in Los Angeles, New York, and Seattle.

- Apparently, you don’t need a dictatorship to take away human rights: Foreign reporters in China have not only experienced interference with their Tibet coverage, but they’re now also receiving death threats. Yes, that’s how you show your country has progressed in the last 30 years.

- Ryuganji translates a very interesting interview with Korean-Japanese director Yoichi Sai about his Korean production Soo and other stuff.

- This week’s Teleview column on the Daily Yomiuri looks at the several manga-based dramas on Japanese TV this season.

- Donnie “I have hair and I’m not afraid to show ‘em with my pumped abs!” Yen is set to invade over 1000 Chinese cinema screens come September with his latest film Painted Skin. How the hell did they already know how much money they can get from people’s pockets based on the number of screens?

- Five film distributors and three multiplex chains in South Korea has been fined by the Fair Trade Commission there for price collusion. Specifically, the film distributors sent a letter to the multiplexes, telling them to not offer discounts without consulting each other. Funny, Hong Kong multiplexes have been doing that with ticket price increases, so why don’t they get called on it?

- Jason Gray has a short review of Mamoru Oshii’s The Sky Crawlers, which sounds like a hell of a movie.

- Grady Hendrix wrote a while ago about Lawrence Lau’s film about the attempted assassination of ex-Taiwanese president Chan Sui-Bian. Now, there are actual stills from the movie and even an official blog for it. The film, starring Simon Yam, is set for release in August. It will be the third film released this year by the director after Besieged City and City Without Baseball.

- It’s reviews time! From Japan Times’ Mark Schilling is his take on the Japanese teen film Sands’ Chronicle (Sunadokei). From Hollywood Reporter’s Neil Young is his review of the Korean horror film Black House. Lastly, there are two reviews of The Wachowski Brothers’ Speed Racer, which is mentioned in this blog because it features Korean superstar Rain: Variety has a review by Todd McCarthy, while Hollywood Reporter has a review by Kirk Honeycutt.

- Screenwriter Eriko Kitagawa, who has written classic Japanese dramas such as Long Vacation and Beautiful Life (Long Vacation being one of my favorites), is making her directorial debut under producer Shunji Iwai, one of my favorite directors. If this was shot last October, then why isn’t it opening until Spring next year? Anyway, I’ll be keeping this one in my sights.

- Indian government censors in 2007 managed to clear the highest number of films without cuts in recent years, with only 11 films out of over 1,500 ending up being banned. The number of films requiring cuts also reduced significantly. China, on the other hand…

- It was a public holiday in Hong Kong on Thursday opening day, so the box office gross were fairly high.Iron Man, which opened on April 30th here, had a pretty big May Day with HK$2.6 million from 57 screens for a 2-day total of HK$4.09 million. It should have no problem with hitting that HK$10 million mark by the end of the weekend. Another film with an impressive per-screen average is the period drama The Other Boleyn Girl, which made HK$254,000 from just 6 screens on its opening day. There’s also the Japanese film Mari and Her Three Puppies, which made HK$772,000 from 22 screens (with only one playing the original Japanese version). Wong Jing’s latest My Wife is a Gambling Maestro got past the HK$10,000 per-screen average as well with HK$371,000 from 27 screens on opening day. Hell, even crocodile thriller Rogue made HK$73,000 from 7 screens. Sadly, Lawrence Lau’s Besieged City made only HK$38,000 from 6 screens.

- It’s Oricon charts time! Korean boy band TVXQ’s latest single debuts on top yet again, with male trio Shuchishin staying at 2nd place. Meanwhile, Arashi’a latest album tops the albums chart, with Bennie K’s compilation debuting far behind at 2nd place.

More over at Tokyograph.

- On the heels of L For Love, L For Lies‘ success, writer/director Patrick Kong is already shooting his next film, though with the cast of Alice Tzeng and Andy On instead of Stephy Tang and Alex Fong Lik-Sun. Is he trying to move into auteur territory here?

- In related news, Stephy Tang has just started work on her latest film, a Chan Hing-Ka-directed comedy in which she plays an underwear inspector. The film also features Ronald Cheng, Andy On (the man’s got a lot of work lately), and the Shine Boys. Didn’t Chan Hing-Ka already make a comedy about underwear?

- Japanese newspaper Nikkan Sports have been revealing the winners for their yearly drama Grand Prix all week. Here are the winners:

Best Drama: Yukan Club
Best Actor: Jin Nakaishi - Yukan Club
Best Actress: Maki Horikita - Hanazakari no Kimitachi e
Best Supporting Actor: Shuichi Nakatsu - Hanazakari no Kimitachi e
Best Supporting Actress: Yu Kashii - Yukan Club

Be sure to remember that the winners were voted by the general public, and both these dramas feature popular idols. This means the result may not reflect the true quality of these shows.

- Organizers at the Cannes Film Festival have announced Blindness, the latest from City of God director Fernando Meirelles, as the opening film. This marks the first time a Japanese film has been selected as the opening film at Cannes because the film is actually a co-production between Brazilian, Canadian, and Japanese production companies. It also features Japanese actors Yoshino Kimura and Yusuke Iseya. Jason Gray has more details about the co-production deal.

- Under “various Korean film news” today, Twitch has a teaser for King and the Clown director Lee Jun-i’s latest Sunny, about a Korean woman who joins the entertainment troupe to find her husband fighting in the Vietnam War. Meanwhile, a Korean dance group will join the production of the latest Hollywood teen-oriented dance movie Hype Nation, with 60% of the film to be shot in South Korea. Tezza director Choi Dong-Hoon is now working on a big-budget superhero film. Lastly (because it’s only somewhat related), the horribly-titled multi-national martial arts film Laundry Warriors has wrapped filming.

- Emperor Motion Pictures hasn’t really had it hit in a while, so I’m just wondering, where did they get the money to finance in a major Hollywood production?

- In a recent visit to The University of Southern California, Chinese director Feng Xiaogang talks about how much he hated Forbidden Kingdom. These are his words translated (original Chinese text from Apple Daily):

“The film’s story itself is already problematic. It’s a mess. I just couldn’t keep watching. I don’t know why it’s doing so well at the American box office. I would not dumb down something to simply please the American audience. ”

I didn’t like the film either, but dyamn!

- It’s reviews time! From Japan Times is Mark Schilling’s take on Berlin Film Festival winner Park and Love Hotel. From the Daily Yomiuri’s Ikuko Kitagawa’s review of the Japanese blockbuster Shaolin Girl. Twitch’s Todd Brown delivers a review of Ryuichi Hiroki’s Your Friends, which hasn’t opened in its native Japan yet, if I’m not mistaken. Lastly, there’s Jason Gray’s pseudo-early review of the new Japanese film Flavor of Happiness, starring Miki Nakatani.

- State regulators in Singapore have imposed a fine on a TV network there for a broadcasting a home decorating show that reportedly “normalized and promoted a homosexual lifestyle”. Now, why aren’t there anyone protesting against Singapore?

- On the other hand, the Nobel Foundation dropped their official broadcaster in Sweden because their award ceremony was censored in China, which means the network didn’t follow the terms it had with the foundation when they drew up their agreement with the Chinese networks.

- Instead of risking downloading films in their own home, some Chinese people have been going to illegally-operated internet cafes to watch screening of movies that were downloaded illegally by the cafes. While Chinese producer Huayi Brothers have won a lawsuit against three of these cafes, I doubt that people will be scared into stop downloading. Hell, even film school students here download the movies they watch, which may be one of the most depressing things happening to the industry today.

-This week’s Televiews column on the Daily Yomiuri gives a big big thumbs down to the Japanese drama adaptation of the hit Korean romantic comedy My Sassy Girl. There are also short one-sentence reviews of current dramas as well.

- Grady has already linked one teaser this week (the new Tetsuya Nakashima film Paco and the Magic Book), and now he delivers one for the new Tsui Hark film Missing, which is a…….horror flick?! Could this be Tsui Hark’s Linger?

- Also, Jason Gray delivers a trailer for the abused-children-in-third-world-country drama Children of the Dark.