Hoga News

Ken Takakura's "Thousand Miles" a modest start

Zhang Yimou's "Riding Alone for Thousands of Miles", starring Ken Takakura, opened last weekend in Japan with a modest box office result of 96 million yen with 81,000 viewers, 5th position in the weekend ranking and 15% of "HERO", 24% of "House of Flying Daggers" compared to the same director's films.  The expected final box office is around 1 billion yen, disappointing figure compared to "Poppoya" (4.1bil. yen) and "Hotaru" (2.3 bil. yen), both starring Ken Takakura.

Source:  Eiga.com, Movie Consultant Blog

<2/1 addition>

Ken Takakura's interview is on Daily Yomiuri, thanks to update by Ryuganji.

Hogas continue to gain share in Japanese box office

Motion Picture Producers Association of Japan (Eiren) announces 2005 box office statistics in Japan.  Overall revenue declined by 6% due to lack of big Hollywood hit, while Japanese films (hogas) gained market share.  Total market size was 198 bil. yen in 2005.

Foreign film revenue decreased by 11.7% from 2004, while hoga increased 3.4%.  Hoga's market share has been increasing since 2002, to 41.3% in 2005.  As a side note, the largest hoga share was marked in 1960 at 78%, according to Eiren's historical figure.

(Click the chart to enlarge)

While there was only one foreign film that made more than 10 billion yen ("Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire"), more hogas made 3-4 billion range in 2005.  7 hogas made more than 3 billion yen in 2005 ("Howl's Moving Castle", "Pokemon", "Negotiator", "NANA", "Suspect", "Train Man" and "Always") versus 5 in 2004 ("Howl (double counted due to its opening date)", "Crying Out Love, in the Center of the World", "Be With You", "Pokemon" and "Doraemon").  If you exclude animation, the contrast is even more significant (5 vs. 2).

See "2005 Box Office Result" entry

Hollywood blockbuster hopefuls such as "Star Wars Episode III - Revenge of Sith", "War of the Worlds", "Batman Begins", and "King Kong" all did not make it up to the expectations.  "Memoirs of a Geisha", which in theory should have targeted Japanese market, was also a non-issue, in a stark contrast to the huge success of "The Last Samurai" in 2004.  Hollywood should have realized by now that simply putting "Ken Watanabe" sticker on a film is not the formula for success in much more competitive recent Japanese film market.

English version of the press release is not published yet, but here is the Eiren Website.

Motion Picture Producers Association of Japan

"Howl" nominated in Oscars

Hayao Miyazaki's animation feature "Howl's Moving Castle" is nominated in Best animated feature film of the year category of Academy Awards, along with "Tim Burton’s Corpse Bride" and "Wallace & Gromit in the Curse of the Were-Rabbit".

Source:  Academy Award Official Site

"Inugami-ke" remake and "Furuhata" strikes again?

Haruki Kadokawa's early hit in 1976,  "Inugami-ke no Ichizoku" (literal translation:  The Inugami Clan) will be re-made by the same director Kon Ichikawa, and the same main actor Koji Ishizaka.  Ryuganji's japan film news made a detail translation of the article.  This time, the film will be produced by Kadokawa Shoten, with which Haruki Kadokawa himself already has desolved ties.

Koji Ishizaka was one of the top handsome star around the time of the original movie, but his name has not been featured for some time on the entertainment press, until he starred in the second episode of the 3-part mini-series "Furuhata Ninzaburo" on Fuji TV in the New Years holiday this year.  The drama got so much press and featured high-profile stars like Seattle Mariners' Ichiro, so I was wondering why yester-year's Ishizaka.  Fuji TV already did a remake of "Inugami-ke" as a TV drama in 2004, and although I have not seen Fuji's name in Inugami-related articles, I wouldn't be surprised if they are a big investor in this movie.  Now Fuji is badly hit by the "Livedoor" problem, but they are still very clever at these types of things.

New Special Article on Koji Yakusho

We have just uploaded the new page, "Hoga for Beginners (2) - Koji Yakusho", recommendations of Koji Yakusho movies on the main Website of Hoga Central.  Enjoy!

Surprise appearance of Yoji Yamada and Takuya Kimura, and Shochiku's big expectation

Yoji Yamada and Takuya Kimura, the director and the star of Shochiku's next samurai film "Bushi no Ichibun" (literal translation:  pride of samurai, see 10/22/05 entry), made a surprise appearance in Shochiku's new year line-up conference on Jan. 26.  Shochiku also decided to move the release date from fall 2006 to New Year Holiday season, and scale-up the screen number to over 300, based on the huge expectations from their theaters.

Yamada praises Kimura as "wonderful actor, and I am having a great joy finding out his new charms," and Kimura replies "I am given this great opportunity.  With Team Yamada, I am spending the most lavish time, so different from regular tight schedules of TV dramas."  I heard an early report some time ago that Kimura was giving Yamada a hard time with the scheduling headache because of his busy TV appearances, but the team seems to have found some solutions to that problem.

The film is positioned as the last of Yamada's samurai trilogy based on Shuhei Fujisawa's novels, following "The Twilight Samurai" (2002) and "The Hidden Blade" (2004), which rejuvenated Japanese samurai film genre with his clever focus on real life of samurais.  Kimura has been the king of J-drama for more than a decade and recently appeared in Wong Kar Wai's "2046".  In "Bushi no Ichibun", as usual for Fujisawa's novel, a low-rank samurai in northern Japan is the main character.  Kimura plays this unfortunate samurai who loses his eye sight and his wife's fidelity, and decides to retaliate to protect his pride as a samurai.

Shochiku is not only expecting to make a big money domestically, but also to bring it to major international film festivals.  With no other mega-hit recently, Yamada seems to be Shochiku's savior and the only hope for now.

Source:  Nikkan Sports and others

Koyuki wins "Jewelry Best Dresser"

Koyuki received "Jewelry Best Dresser" award, along with several other celebrities, as the people who go best with jewelries.  Koyuki is currently nominated in Japan Academy Awards Best Actress category for the big-hit "Always - Sunset on the Third Street", and her performance in "Kwaidan - Eternal Love" was also highly praised, but so far I have not heard any news of her new movies.  I wish she spends more time on films than TV commercials, but again, that is just my selfish wish.

Source:  SANSPO.COM

Korea reduces "screen quota"

Korean films and TV dramas have scored a huge success in Japan in recent years, fueled by "Han-ryu (Korean-style) boom" among middle-to-mature aged ladies who fell for Korean hunks like Bae Yong-Joon.  Korean government has been helping its domestic movie industry by imposing a "screen quota"; Korean theaters are required to show Korean domestic movies for at least 146 days per year, and as a result, foreign movies have been squeezed out from Korean film market.

This quota, however, has been a roadblock for the Korea-US Free Trade Agreement talks, and so the Korean government finally agreed to reduce its quota to 73 days per year.  Now Hollywood gets more room in Korea, and the net opinion is divided into two - some people think that Korean movies are already competitive enough, or advocate free trade principal, while others fear that Hollywood will flex its monoploy muscle in their country.

Well, if you take an example in Japan, which never had any screen quota, Hoga industry was badly hit by Hollywood at one point of time, but the bottom is already over by mid-90's and now lots of Hogas line up side-by-side with American movies in the top box office list.  And Korean films now also own a lucrative Japanese market.  So don't worry, our friends in Korea.  Competition is good.  By the way, I wish the U.S. also lift the "non-tarrif barrier" against foreign films, which is imposed by the Hollywood distribution machine.  Too bad that US is a free country and the government cannot tell the industry to do that.

Source:  Joins.com (Japanese version)

<Quick addition>  Kaiju Shakedown just uploaded the same topic at the same time, in more detail.

Akira Terao's "Professor" marks a surprisingly good start

Top three of the previous week, "The Uchoten Hotel" (I called it "Ecstacy Hotel" before, but sounds like its English title will be "Suite Dreams" according to Kaiju Shakedown), "YAMATO" and "Harry Potter", retained their position in box office last weekend in Japan.  Ranked fourth newly, surpassing "Legend of Zorro", which also just opened this weekend, is a relatively low-key human drama, "The Professor And His Beloved Equation" starring Akira Terao and Rie Fukatsu ("Bayside Shakedown" series) and by Director Takashi Koizumi.  (Note:  English title is based on "Tsushin Kogyo box office ranking")

Terao plays a math professor, whose memory only lasts for 80 minutes due to an injury, and Fukatsu a single mom and his home helper.  The story surrounds their relationships, together with the helper's son and professor's sister-in-law, and his passion to math formula, based on a best-seller novel by Yoko Ogawa.  I have not seen this movie yet, but just by reading the description, it sounds a perfect role for Akira Terao.  (Doesn't he look like a math professor, much more realistic than Russell Crow?)  Based on the box office during the opening weekend, the studio (Asmik Ace) is expedting more than 1 billion yen gross from this film.

Source:  Eiga.com, Movie Consultant Blog

"Memoirs of a Geisha" is banned in China?

Although this news is not fully confirmed, Yomiuri and ZakZak report that China's National Radio, Movie and TV Board decided to ban the theatrical release of "Memoirs of a Geisha" in mainland China.  (Yomiuri based on Hong Kong's and ZakZak on Chinese media)  According to the report, the authority explains that the theme is "too sensitive".  Net opinion in China about the film has been harsh to the fact that Chinese actresses, including Zhang Ziyi, play the roles of Japanese geishas, as being national embarrassement.  The film was originally scheduled to be released on Valentine's Day.

I could not help remembering  "The Promise" parody that was reported on Kaiju Shakedown a few days ago.  Is Nicholas Tse the chairman of the authority body??