I had originally heard today’s song as a live rendition from Sandee Chan’s live album (disc 1, track 8). Though she’s known as a songwriter, the song was curiously written by Cheer Chan, who tends to write relaxing acoustic tunes, not haunting ballads like this. It was also originally sung by Karen Mok on her 1999 album “This is Karen Mok” (which I managed to find a second-hand copy in Hong Kong for less than US$2, where she sings the song in her best Faye Wong/Cranberries type of delivery. Anyway, it’s beautiful and poetic, and it’s “Do Not Love Me.”

There’s no MTV for it, but this live version by Karen Mok is surprisingly good and close to the real thing.

- Youtube/Google and record company EMI have struck a deal to place video contents on Youtube legally. Artists under the EMI label include Coldplay and David Bowie (wait, does David Bowie even make music anymore?). Universal music also has a similar deal in place with Youtube. Too bad only North American music labels have deals so far, everything else is just getting their copyrights violated.

- Meanwhile, Asian music is seeing a huge market at making their products available for mobile users, and for a very good reason. In fact, a survey says most people expect music to only be available digitally in the next few years….as long as these music will be provided in uncompressed 1400k wav files (OK, I added that last part myself).

- This weekend, two films by two major comedians in Japan opened. First, there’s Takeshi Kitano’s latest “Kantoku Banzai” (”Long Live the Director!”), which is supposed to be quite strange and alienating like Takeshis’. There’s also “Dai Nipponjin,” the directorial debut of famous comedian Hitoshi Matsumoto (he’s the bald guy that does those batsu games). There were rumors that the films are opening on the same day to allow some cross-promotion, since the two comedians seem to cross paths on TV quite often. I can’t seem to find any articles about it (though I remember I read something about that), but if you need any proof that there’s any of that happening, just look at the following clip of Hitoshi Matsumoto on the comedy show “Waratte Itomo,” where he not only talks about his Cannes experience, but also have a crew member hang posters of his own film AND Kantoku Banzai in the back. Damn it, I want both of those posters.

I also predicted that there might be some kind of box office battle this weekend between these two films. I was wrong, they’re both fairly small releases (maybe just under 100 screens?), so Pirates will probably win the weekend again.

- I wrote about the so-so box office of last weekend’s opener Shaberedomo Shaberedomo before. Turns out it’s not doing quite well. The film, a drama about Japanese stand-up comedy (except they sit down, which….I guess makes it sit-down comedy in Japan terms), stars Johnny’s Entertainment-managed group Tokio member Taichi Kokubun and is actually doing worse than films featuring other Johnny’s talents. For instance, compared to those films that opened on less than 250 screens, Shaberedomo’s 39.7 million yen opening is only 66% of Sakurai Sho’s Honey and Clover’s opening, though it did open 143% of the opening for “Nezu no Ban” (A Hardest Night), another film about Japanese comedians. In addition, its “main theater” in Ginza reported full houses all weekend. Perhaps word-of-mouth (partly from positive reviews) will give it legs at the box office.

- Japan Times also rips the ridiculous Hollywood blockbuster 300 a new one this weekend.

- I know Ryu Seung-Wan (City of Violence, Arahan, Crying Fist) is a favorite among Asian action film fans out there. After exploring contemporary films, now he’s kind of moving on to period films….except said period film will have zombies in it too.

- Joost is supposed to be the high-quality alternative to Youtube, plus legal content. I have it, but it doesn’t have much to keep me tuned in. This isn’t going to help me keep tuning in, but I think this might encourage some other people to try it. However, Joost is currently invitation-only. Still, just google “Joost invite” and you can find one easily.

- People in the UK are now lucky enough to pre-order the excellent German film The Lives on Others on DVD. I know it’s not Asian, but I like the movie.

- A few weeks ago I put up the link to a teaser for Takeshi Miike’s high school brawl film Crows Zero. Apparently, the film won’t be an all-out boys fest; it will now have approximately one female character in it. Jeez, now I’m just making the movie sound like a prison sentence with periodical conjugal visits.

- Korea Pop Wars has an amusing story about how a win in the art world is overshadowing big bad Hollywood advertising. That’s right, Shrek, you just got your big promotional plan beat down by the French.

- Canada, sit tight. You guys are getting the Election movies in theaters starting yesterday! Just don’t bring a video camera to the theater anymore. Too bad I’ll be missing the August 17th opening of Exiled on the big screen in the United States (I’ll be in Hong Kong already by then).

- Speaking of which, forget about uploading TV shows; don’t even think of trying to spread them, especially episodes of 24.

- Lastly, there are more information about Tsui Hark’s latest film Missing, which somehow has something to do with a sunken wedding ring and an underwater city.

That’s it for today, we’ll wrap up the weekend tomorrow.

If someone asks me what kind of music I like, I honestly have no idea how to answer. Just when I thought I have a handle on one genre, I find something else in another genre that I like, then the music I like just becomes a mishmash of whatever is out there, with any consistency ruined by my indecisiveness. Today’s Song of the Day is one of those songs. I first heard this song as an acoustic cover by Frente!, only to realize that I’ve come to like the original even more. At least enough taht I’ve done it on Karaoke Revolution. From New Order’s 1986 album Brotherhood, it’s “Bizarre Love Triangle.”

Here’s Frente!’s cover, the one that started it all

Took the three hours to watch Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End yesterday. Surprisingly, the 165-minute length went by fairly quickly, maybe because everyone was double-crossing each other the first hour and a half. Unlike Dead Man’s Chest, which sprinkled bits of action moments throughout to keep the audience pumped(including the Krakin beast thing that I have a personal affinity for, though it didn’t appear much in At World’s End), At World’s End is really one big setup for a somewhat underwhelming final battle that feels much like the second half of a huge 5-and-a-half hour film. This one really tests the audiences to see whether they actually care about the plot or not by stuffing as much into the journey between point A to point B as they can. It’s still very entertaining with the silly sense of humor and penchant for excess still around, but Verbinski and his writing team of Ted Elliot and Terry Rossio take the whole thing so seriously that Verbinski actually went as far as trying to channel Sergio Leone in a pre-showdown scene, Western music and extreme close-ups and all.

As expected, Johnny Depp steals the show as Jack Sparrow, even though he doesn’t appear until about 30 minutes in. While the Elizabeth Swann and William Turner plot line’s resolution was better than I expected, they are still the usual straight characters that were obviously misconceived when the writers wrote the original characters, not knowing that Depp’s performance would be so over-the-top. Chow Yun-Fat was great to see on the big screen, but that’s only because of the man’s reputation in my mind; he really doesn’t get much to do. The special effects are…..special, especially the Davy Jones character design. The credits showed at least 5 different special effects firms worked on the film, and it shows how much work they put in to make everything look real nice. Essentially, with all the money and audience love it’s gotten (which I honestly admit I’m a little baffled by, though I think a large percentage of the audience go purely for Johnny Depp and/or the special effects without even caring about the mythology and the plot), this movie is critic-proof. So go catch up with the second movie on DVD (trust me, you’ll need to), sit yourself in a movie theater with a good setup (I watched it in digital projection myself), and just enjoy the hell out of it. Word of warning, though: This movie is the most violent of the three, with people getting stabbed and shot in the head (though no blood). So don’t let the Disney label fool you into thinking it’s a kids film.

Note: Do stick around for past the credits. The post-credit scene this time actually matters, unlike the one in the second film (I had predicted the post-credit scene in the first movie mattered in the resurrection of Barbossa - it didn’t), because it wraps up a pretty important plot line. While I admire the team’s effort to make people watch the credits to recognize all the people’s hard work, it’s already been 160 minutes by the time the credits start. Just show what you need to show and let people go home.

- In Hong Kong, Pirates already seems to be slowing down a little bit. On Thursday opening day, Pirates made only HK$1 million on 88 screens for an 8-day total of only HK$25.85 million. One can argue that reduced running time means less shows, but I blame it on the ticket increase (theaterowners added HK$15 to the ticket price because of the length) and people just kind of balked at a 3-hour long movie. I don’t see this going past $HK40 million, which King Kong managed to do under the same condition.

In opening films, Hong Kong romantic comedy Single Blog (which actually claims in its trailer that 99% is not created, but rather situations taken from Hong Kong people’s blogs…someone should ask for royalties) made HK$220,000 on 25 screens, which is bad, but could have been a lot worse. Premonition starring Sandra Bullock makes HK$100,000 on 15 screens, Disney’s Bridge to Terabithia makes only HK$60,000 on 19 screens, and the weekend is just looking pretty yawn-y.

- Borat opened on 31 screens in Japan this past weekend, and it did pretty well in at least one of them. A theater in Shibuya is reporting that the film got off to an extremely good start, with hip people from their 20s to their 50s attending, and that people are taking advantage of the Monday discount….except the theater gives no official numbers, and no one knows how it did in the other 30 theaters. According to Box Office Mojo, it only made 7.3 million yen, for a not very good per-screen average of 237,000 yen (US$1=121 yen). But considering that it’s playing in small art house theaters that sit only about 150 people (at most 200), the houses are definitely getting filled….just not as filled as some might suggest.

- When my friend told me about the ridiculousness of this, I thought he was behind about 2 months, because I thought Norika Fujiwara’s wedding already happened. Turns out they held a Western wedding reception, and for some reason, Nippon TV thought it was important enough to broadcast it live. Then viewers thought it was important enough to tune in. In the Kansai area, where Fujiwara is from, the ratings for the wedding actually reached 40%. It didn’t do too shabby in Kanto, either; it reached 24%.

- In Europe, authorities report that they seized 23.2 million copies of entertainment goods such as DVDs, CDs, and software. And they’re blaming China, reporting that 93% of what they seized came from there.

- Taiwanese music channel Channel V is signed on to broadcast on the Hong Kong pay network Now TV. The thing is, Channel V was already in Hong Kong when Star TV was still playing in Hong Kong before joining Now TV, so how is this news? I know, I’m wasting your time too.

- There’s a sales poster up for Johnnie To’s romance Linger. Is that what passes for a poster of a Johnnie To movie nowadays? And that title, “Butterfly Fly?” This might be the first time I’m actually avoiding a Johnnie To movie.

- Japan Times has a feature on Japanese cinema’s newest hero Naomi Kawase, who won the Grand Prix at the Cannes Film Festival with her drama “The Mourning Forest.” They also have a feature about the making of the film as well, including her frustrations of working with foreign investors.

- Seems like the New York Asian Film Festival is running into some troubles after sponsor Midway Games decided to pull out of the festival. Now things are being rescheduled, but the festival is still on. I won’t be able to attend (due to the fact that i’m on the opposite end of the country), but I wish them mucho luck.

- Australian screenwriter/director Tony Ayres’ autobiographical film The Home Song Stories, starring Joan Chen and her daughter Irene, won a A$15,000 prize for its screenplay.

- Sai Yoichi, the Korean-Japanese director who made the brutally powerful Blood and Bones, made his Korean directorial debut with Soo, a violent revenge action thriller that sounds really promising. It’s coming to DVD on June 15th.

But then today Twitch’s Todd posted a fairly negative review that now has me wondering whether it’d be any good. I’ve read positive reviews of the film as well, so perhaps it’ll be one of those love-it-or-hate-it films that I might end up liking.

- The Galaxy Award, held by the Japan Council Better Radio and Television (there should be a council like that everywhere), was recently given out. I’ve never heard of this award, but since it’s in its 44th year, it must mean something. Notable winners include drama “Dr. Koto’s Clinic 2″ and actress Ryoko Shinohara for her several roles (including her lead role in drama Haken no Hinkaku).

- For anyone that wants to know more about the Japanese pop music world, Japundit has a really long feature on the infamous Japanese talent management firm Johnny’s Entertainment. Sounds a bit like Hong Kong’s EEG too.

That’s it for today, more over the weekend.