Japanese Smash ‘The First Slam Dunk’ Is Scoring In Asia Ahead Of European Rollout

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Hit Japanese animation “Suzume” improved its box office performance in its third week of release in South Korea and remained far ahead of all competing titles. “Suzume” earned $6.06 million over the weekend between Friday and Sunday, a 7% increase on its previous weekend, itself a strong hold that almost equalled its opening session. Data is sourced from Kobis, the tracking service operated by the Korean Film Council (Kofic). The film, which has been a huge hit in Japan and some other Asian territories, enjoyed a 66% share of the entire Korean cinema box office over the most recent weekend and expanded its cumulative haul to $23.9 million after 19 days on release.

Peter Andre has opened up about living in Japan, recalling a time when a Japanese mafia boss started yelling aggressively at him and tensions started to rise. Singer Peter, 50, said the experience left him "petrified" as hee described the “dangerous” situation as “a little too close for comfort”. He told The Sunday Times: "On this particular night, this man just started yelling at me really aggressively and it turned out he was a member of the Japanese mafia, the Yakuza.

Theo James is making a rare red carpet appearance with his wife!

This Friday (March 24), Rina Sawayama will make her acting debut in John Wick: Chapter 4, the latest installment in the ongoing Keanu Reeves-led assassin action fantasy franchise. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the English-Japanese pop star has a song on the film’s soundtrack, the first new cut of music from Sawayama since last year’s Hold The Girl.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Leading Japanese publisher, Kodansha is to launch an online comic book distribution service from May. Titled K Manga, the operation will go live in May and be exclusive to readers in the U.S. The company is publisher of many of the best-known manga titles in history including “Attack on Titan” and “Ghost in the Shell.” These and some 400 others will be available at the launch of the serialization platform.

Japanese Breakfast‘s Michelle Zauner has announced that the film adaptation of her memoir, Crying In H Mart, will be directed by Will Sharpe.The book, which arrived in 2021, explores how the death of Zauner’s mother forced a reckoning with the musician’s Korean-American identity.Zauner dealt with her grief by writing music, and explained in a press release that being creative while “embracing of Korean food and culture” made her feel closer to her late mother.The musician previously confirmed in 2021 that there would be a film adaptation of her book. Now, she has revealed that Will Sharpe, who plays Ethan Spiller in The White Lotus, will be on hand to direct.Speaking about Zauner’s memoir, Sharpe told PEOPLE: “There were lots of things that resonated with me as somebody who is half-Japanese, half-British, spent my childhood in Tokyo.

The Japanese House has returned today (March 20) with a new single – listen to ‘BOYHOOD’ below.The singer-songwriter, real name Amber Bain, initially teased her return last month, posting a photo of herself on Instagram with the caption ‘News coming soon’ and directing fans to sign up to her mailing list.The Japanese House last released new music in 2020 in the form of the EP ‘Chewing Cotton Wool’. Her only studio album so far, ‘Good At Falling’, came out the year prior.New single ‘BOYHOOD’ is an ode to the complexities of gender and sexuality, with gentle electronic beats and guitar plucks providing a backdrop for Bain’s soft and harmonious vocals.The accompanying video shows Bain watching a projection of herself from a bed, as one of a pair horseback riding through lush green fields.Speaking of the visuals, she said: “When Katie and I were young and in love, we fantasised about riding off into the distance on her horse Bam Bam, away from all the problems that came from being gay and in love back then.“This song talks about how sometimes, however hard you try, you can’t help but be a product of the things that happened to you or held you back earlier on in life.

article by Times staff writer Teresa Watanabe described the distinction between internment and incarceration and the historical context the terms have in connection to the result of Japan’s 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor. “Instead, The Times will generally use ‘incarceration,’ ‘imprisonment,’ ‘detention’ or their derivatives to describe this government action that shattered so many innocent lives,” wrote Watanabe, whose parents and grandfather were detained in the days after Pearl Harbor.“My parents, Shigeo and Joanne Watanabe, were U.S. citizens born and raised in Seattle — she a student at Seattle University who loved parties and red painted fingernails, he an aspiring accountant with a golden glove and killer smile,” wrote Teresa Watanbe. Watanbe continued: “In the aftermath of Japan’s 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor, they were imprisoned in an incarceration camp — not an internment camp.”Just two months after Pearl Harbor was attacked, President Franklin D.

Attack On Titan is set to conclude with current season Attack On Titan: The Final Season Part Three after first premiering in 2013.One of Japan’s most successful anime series, Attack On Titan is set in a world where humanity is forced to live in cities surrounded by three enormous walls that protect them from gigantic man-eating humanoids referred to as Titans.The show follows Eren Yeager, who vows to exterminate the Titans after they bring about the destruction of his hometown and the death of his mother.One of the reasons behind the show’s international success is the clever use of music, with each season featuring a new theme that hints at what’s to come over the following episodes.Attack On Titan Season Four, Part Three’s theme song is ‘Under The Tree’.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Filming has begun on Tom Waller’s true-crime thriller, “Kiss of the Con Queen,” with real-life victim Eoin O’Brien (“The Last Full Measure”) taking the lead role. He plays actor duped by an impersonator to travel to Indonesia on the promise of auditions for a leading role in a DC origins series, only to discover that he had been scammed by the infamous Con Queen of Hollywood. In the real world, the alleged perpetrator, 41-year-old Indonesian food blogger Hargobind Tahilramani, is accused of pretending to be both male and female Hollywood executives and having swindled hundreds of victims of millions of dollars. He was arrested in 2020 after an FBI manhunt and is currently in prison in the U.K. where he is fighting against possible extradition to the U.S. The U.K. court hearings have been dramatic and disturbing.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief U.S.- and Japan-based screen writer and producer Aoyagi Yumiko has signed with Creative Artists Agency (CAA) for talent representation. Born in Yokohama, Japan, but having grown up in Los Angeles and graduated from Sophia University in Tokyo, Aoyagi now works across both the Japanese and U.S. film and TV industries. She debuted as a screenwriter in 1995, writing the fourth episode of the Fuji TV series “Seiga wa Tatsu” before winning Galaxy Award prizes for telefilm “Saigo no Kazoku Ryoky: Family Affair.” In 2003, she wrote the show “Kokoro,” becoming the youngest person ever to write for the coveted morning slot on Japan’s national public broadcaster, NHK. The slot about a young woman’s development in a traditional neighborhood in Tokyo, has a continuous history of over 60 years and is known as “the face of Japan.”

Japanese Breakfast’s Michelle Zauner has said that she has grown to “appreciate” her late mother’s lack of support throughout her career – crediting it with making her into the artist she is today.The alt-pop singer discussed her tumultuous relationship with her parent in a new interview on Conan O’Brien’s podcast, Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend – explaining how she believes the backlash she received ultimately led to her success with Japanese Breakfast. Asked if her complicated relationship with her mother acted as a catalyst for her creativity, Zauner replied: “I think, if anything, […] it really affirmed how badly I wanted it. It’s almost like, if your parents are like, ‘Oh great, yeah, go be an artist’, you almost don’t want it anymore.

Richard Kuipers Murder, treachery and political intrigue are the juicy ingredients of Zhang Yimou’s “Full River Red,” an entertaining if overlong mystery-comedy set in the narrow passageways and dark chambers of a Song dynasty military compound in 1146. With a twist-packed plot to match its labyrinthine location, Zhang’s fast-paced film motors along nicely as an engaging “Knives Out”-style whodunnit before stumbling a little in the protracted final act. A Lunar New Year smash hit in China, “Full River Red” will be released on 150 North American screens by specialty distributor Niu Vision Media on March 17.  The biggest commercial success of Zhang’s distinguished 35-year career, “Full River Red” has already grossed a whopping $671 million at home since Jan. 22. The 157-minute blockbuster continues the string of hits (“Cliff Walkers,” “Shadow,” “Sniper”) he’s delivered since big-budget international co-production misfire “The Great Wall” in 2016. Much less ornately decorated and colorfully photographed than Zhang’s famous wuxia epics “House of Flying Daggers” and “Hero,” this intricately plotted outing is more concerned with wordplay than swordplay.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief U.K.- and Hong Kong-based company Phoenix Waters Prods. has formally partnered with Hong Kong’s Agog Films to create Phoenix Waters Asia, a new venture aimed at increasing content production in Asia. The venture was announced on the sidelines of a film investment conference held Tuesday in Hong Kong at the FilMart rights market, where Phoenix Waters Prods. CEO Bizhan Tong was a speaker. The two companies previously collaborated on “Chungking Mansions,” an ambitious pan-Asian action film on which Tong is director, and where production was previously scheduled for last year. Tong told Variety that lensing will start later this year, “after address any issues that could hinder filming in Hong Kong.”

Mark Schilling Japan Correspondent Japanese author Oe Kenzaburo, the winner of the 1994 Nobel Prize in Literature, has died at age 88. His date of death, ascribed to old age, was March 3. A total of six films have been made from Oe’s work, most recently the 2001 “Gibier d’élevage,” a reworking of “The Catch” by Cambodian director Rithy Panh. Born in 1935 in Ehime Prefecture on the island of Shikoku, Oe began writing while still a student of French literature at the University of Tokyo. Not long after graduating in 1957, he published “The Catch,” a novella about a Black American airman who finds himself captured by rural Japanese villagers in the waning days of the war. It won the prestigious Akutagawa Prize and was made into a 1961 film by Japanese Nouvelle Vague auteur Oshima Nagisa.

Marta Balaga European Film Promotion (EFP), an international network of film promotion institutes from 37 countries, is heading back to Hong Kong’s FilMart for its in-person return. “It wasn’t clear if the reopening of the market [post-pandemic] will immediately lead to business, but people want to reconnect with local companies,” observes deputy managing director Jo Mühlberger. This year, 28 sales companies from five European countries will be joining EFP’s Europe! Umbrella (22 onsite and six online). Most of them hail from France, as Unifrance won’t have its own stand, explains Mühlberger.

While it's nothing new, and we're certainly not complaining, Harry Styles' name is inescapable right now.

Finally settling in! Fresh off their $1 million win on The Amazing Race, winners Derek Xiao and Claire Rehfuss are revealing the newly furnished apartment they share together in Los Angeles.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Warner Bros. Discovery and Japan’s U-Next have announced an extension of their relationship with a renewed deal to supply content to the SVOD platform. The agreement sees U-Next continue as the streaming home of HBO in Japan. Featuring exclusive content rights for HBO, HBO Original and HBO Max Original series, the strengthened agreement includes: current and future seasons of HBO’s “House of the Dragon,” “The Last of Us” and “Succession” as well as returning HBO Original and HBO Max Original series “True Detective: Night Country,” “Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty” and “And Just Like That…”