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Archive for August 31st, 2007

The Golden Rock - August 31st, 2007 Edition

- The reviews for Ang Lee’s Lust, Caution is out, and the two big Hollywood trade papers are not too kind to it. Variety’s Derek Elley say that it’s a two and a half-hour period drama that’s a long haul for relatively little returns, and Hollywood Reporter’s Ray Bennett says the film has long period of boredom relieved by moments of extremely heightened excitement. Honestly, I never expected Ang Lee to pull off an espionage thriller, and it seems like he didn’t here. Are there any actually any good reviews to earn the film the reported “standing ovation” it got?

- We know that Hollywood is no good at adapting games, but what about the Japanese? The popular Nintendo DS game “Professor Layton and the Curious Village” will be turned into a movie, and the game is just the first in a trilogy too.

-Twitch has more on the shooting progress of Hong Sang-Soo’s Night and Day in France. If you remember, Hong is actually looking for volunteers to appear as extra, but you should probably be in France and speak Korean and/or French.

- Johnnie To is getting to be an even harder-working man than Andy Lau. Not only did he just bring The Mad Detective (probably not named The Detective anymore because Aaron Kwok’s The Detective is coming), he also wrapped up the Mainland Chinese romance Linger, finishing up The Sparrow (another one of the Johnnie To films made on a Wong Kar-Wai schedule), the remake of the French film The Red Circle, AND now he’s going to produce a trilogy of films about tomb-raiding. I am almost sure they will suck less that those Tomb Raider movies.

- Speaking of Mad Detective, Kaiju Shakedown has a few more stills from the film. Looks like vintage To to me.

- Japan finally passes a law making camcording movies in movie theaters illegal. How come those annoying MPA people didn’t go and push for it more. And why didn’t the US go and make a complaint about that with the World Trade Organization?

The Golden Rock Box Office Report - 8/31/2007

Today’s only box office report is that of Hong Kong’s Thursday opening day. 7 films opened yesterday, with 3 of them I would consider as wide releases. Among them, the best performer was the teen thriller Disturbia (which didn’t get much promotion here). From 24 screens, the Rear Window-in-shitty-teen-rock-music made HK$230,000 for second place. The next one on the list is a bit of a surprise. Alfred Cheung’s Mainland-targeted Contract Lover (review soon in the spin-off) managed to make HK$220,000 from 26 screens, considering that the show I went to last night only had 12 people (and the group I saw it with made up 7 of them). Next on 20 screens is the Korean puppy drama Hearty Paws, which opened with just HK$120,000. This is also a little surprising because puppy films tend to do very well in Hong Kong.

As for the limited releases (I would consider 15 screens and under a limited release, by the way), only one made it to the top 10. The American torture porn Captivity made only HK$60,000 on 14 screens. The other 3 films - La Vie En Rose (2 screens), Renaissance (1 screen), and The Number 23 (1 screen) - naturally didn’t make it into the top 10.

US$1=HK$7.8

- I mentioned that Sicko opened at only about 10% of Fahrenheit 911, but I didn’t take into account that Fahrenheit had a wider opening. In fact, Sicko’s opening was actually 134% of the opening for Bowling for Columbine.

The Golden Rock - August 31st, 2007 Edition

- The reviews for Ang Lee’s Lust, Caution is out, and the two big Hollywood trade papers are not too kind to it. Variety’s Derek Elley say that it’s a two and a half-hour period drama that’s a long haul for relatively little returns, and Hollywood Reporter’s Ray Bennett says the film has long period of boredom relieved by moments of extremely heightened excitement. Honestly, I never expected Ang Lee to pull off an espionage thriller, and it seems like he didn’t here. Are there any actually any good reviews to earn the film the reported “standing ovation” it got?

- We know that Hollywood is no good at adapting games, but what about the Japanese? The popular Nintendo DS game “Professor Layton and the Curious Village” will be turned into a movie, and the game is just the first in a trilogy too.

-Twitch has more on the shooting progress of Hong Sang-Soo’s Night and Day in France. If you remember, Hong is actually looking for volunteers to appear as extra, but you should probably be in France and speak Korean and/or French.

- Johnnie To is getting to be an even harder-working man than Andy Lau. Not only did he just bring The Mad Detective (probably not named The Detective anymore because Aaron Kwok’s The Detective is coming), he also wrapped up the Mainland Chinese romance Linger, finishing up The Sparrow (another one of the Johnnie To films made on a Wong Kar-Wai schedule), the remake of the French film The Red Circle, AND now he’s going to produce a trilogy of films about tomb-raiding. I am almost sure they will suck less that those Tomb Raider movies.

- Speaking of Mad Detective, Kaiju Shakedown has a few more stills from the film. Looks like vintage To to me.

- Japan finally passes a law making camcording movies in movie theaters illegal. How come those annoying MPA people didn’t go and push for it more. And why didn’t the US go and make a complaint about that with the World Trade Organization?

The Golden Rock Box Office Report - 8/31/2007

Today’s only box office report is that of Hong Kong’s Thursday opening day. 7 films opened yesterday, with 3 of them I would consider as wide releases. Among them, the best performer was the teen thriller Disturbia (which didn’t get much promotion here). From 24 screens, the Rear Window-in-shitty-teen-rock-music made HK$230,000 for second place. The next one on the list is a bit of a surprise. Alfred Cheung’s Mainland-targeted Contract Lover (review soon in the spin-off) managed to make HK$220,000 from 26 screens, considering that the show I went to last night only had 12 people (and the group I saw it with made up 7 of them). Next on 20 screens is the Korean puppy drama Hearty Paws, which opened with just HK$120,000. This is also a little surprising because puppy films tend to do very well in Hong Kong.

As for the limited releases (I would consider 15 screens and under a limited release, by the way), only one made it to the top 10. The American torture porn Captivity made only HK$60,000 on 14 screens. The other 3 films - La Vie En Rose (2 screens), Renaissance (1 screen), and The Number 23 (1 screen) - naturally didn’t make it into the top 10.

US$1=HK$7.8

- I mentioned that Sicko opened at only about 10% of Fahrenheit 911, but I didn’t take into account that Fahrenheit had a wider opening. In fact, Sicko’s opening was actually 134% of the opening for Bowling for Columbine.

The Golden Rock Song of the Day - 8/30/2007

Ah-ha, I haven’t used a Suede song since two months ago, so it’s just about time to use one again. From the album Head Music, it’s one of my favorite Suede songs - “Everything Will Flow.”

 
 
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