TOKYO – Domestic films overtook Hollywood for the first time in 21 years at the Japanese box office in 2006.

The Motion Picture Producers Association of Japan said the revenue from Japanese movies reached 78.39 billion yen (643.36 million dollars) in 2006, while that of non-Japanese films was 74.09 billion yen.

It was the first time that Japanese movies outpaced Hollywood since 1985, when US monster movies “Ghostbusters” and “Gremlins” swept the world.

“More people coming from outside of the film industry are making movies these days,” said Isao Matsuoka, chairman of the Motion Picture Producers Association of Japan.

“Japan’s overall capability to create movies is growing,” he said.

The final report on 2006 box office trends showed that 28 Japanese movies earned more than one billion yen compared with 21 foreign films.

However, the top three earners were all from Hollywood.

“Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire,” the latest installment of adventures of the boy wizard, was the year’s top performer, grossing 11 billion yen, followed by Johnny Depp’s “Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest,” with the much-anticipated bestseller turned movie “The Da Vinci Code” in third place.

The most popular Japanese film, which came in fourth, was “Gedo Senki,” the film debut of Goro Miyazaki, the son of animation legend Hayao Miyazaki.

Based on US writer Ursula Le Guin’s “Earthsea” stories, which were published from 1968 and later compared with J.K. Rowling’s smash-hit “Harry Potter” series, the animated film tells the story of a boy who becomes a wizard. – AFP/sh

Channel News Asia

LONDON 30 Jan. – Penyanyi Jermaine Jackson berkata, beliau yakin adiknya, Michael Jackson sudah memikirkan secara serius untuk memeluk Islam.

“Saya merasakan Michael perlu menjadi seorang Muslim kerana dia akan mendapat perlindungan daripada segala tuduhan palsu terhadapnya.

“Ada kekuatan dan perlindungan dalam agama ini,” kata bekas penyanyi Jackson Five yang kini menetap di Bahrain itu.

Beliau berkata demikian sewaktu temu bual dengan BBC Asia Network selepas menduduki tempat kedua di belakang aktres Bollywood, Shilpa Shetty dalam rancangan realiti televisyen Celebrity Big Brother (CBB).

Jermaine berkata, beliau percaya adiknya itu telah memikirkan secara serius untuk memeluk Islam semasa tinggal di Bahrain.

“Saya mendorongnya ke Bahrain kerana saya mahu dia tinggalkan Amerika dan menetap di tempat yang tenang dengan penduduknya sembahyang lima kali sehari,” tegasnya.

Jermaine berkata, Islam membantu mententeramkan beliau sepanjang menyertai program realiti yang menghendaki peserta diawasi 24 jam sehari itu.

“Sekiranya saya tidak mengingati Allah dan bersolat, saya tentu tidak dapat bertahan, Islam membolehkan saya fokus dan menenangkan fikiran,” katanya.

- Reuters

Utusan Malaysia

On electric avenue

Mainstream pop is more digital than ever today, as mainstream artistes seem to be jumping onto the electropop bandwagon

ON A ROLL Nelly Furtado

There’s a new flavour in the air for the last couple of seasons, and it has a definite electronic feel to it. Take any of the big selling pop acts today, from Madonna’s dance extravaganza Confessions on a Dance Floor to Nelly Furtado’s “naughty” album Loose to Robbie Williams’s wayward tribute to 1980s electropop Rudebox, and you’ll find that the electronic sound seems the direction to go in.

As Head of Programming for Channel [V] Luke Kenny, points out, a large section of the top 40s pop machinery, many of whom had more organic sounds in the past, seems to have reacted strongly to another movement headed in the opposite direction. “People have been getting an overdose of rock-oriented bands,” he says. “So it’s natural that pop should go in the other direction, less rock and more electronic.” Agrees T. Suresh, General Manager, EMI India: “When people get bored of certain patterns, then they will obviously innovate.”

Hip-hop influence

So soul and R&B that dominated pop until recently seems to have taken a backseat and given way to the production heavy, synth sounds. What many find interesting about this is the shift of emphasis from singing to other areas of music making.

Mili Nair, a musician and RJ for WorldSpace, for instance, finds it interesting that this new sound also comes with a definite hip-hop influence. “Especially with the female stars, the focus is on rapping rather than singing,” she points out. “It’s not like they can’t sing. But that’s what their image has become. Fergie was first launched with “Where is the love”, in which she doesn’t rap at all. So I was quite upset when she came out with Ducchess.”

For those who can get past such issues, the new sound promises a lot, says Kenny. The digital sound is easier to produce and it is easier to make the music sound better, sound funkier, he says. “The electronic sound gives a different dimension to song writing. You’re not writing verse, chorus, verse anymore. It’s like using different media to paint your sonic picture.” And this change gives the new pop hits a “new edgy sound that is appropriate for clubs,” says Malavika Varadan, an RJ for Radio City. “Promiscuous,” she says of Nelly Furtado’s latest hit, “might not be the best way to showcase her voice, but it is still a great song.”

Much of the credit for that, and for many of the latest pop hits go to the rapper-producers working on the albums, points out Mili. “In the early 1990s, Timbaland would probably have been featured occasionally on an album. But collaborations (on the scale of his appearance on Furtado’s Loose) weren’t as big then.”

Paris on Paris

With so much attention shifting onto high-profile producers, an inevitable consequence is albums such as Paris Hilton’s debut Paris, where a crack team of producers and songwriters actually manage to make the hotel heiress vaguely likeable, a mammoth task considering the celebrity in question. Says Malavika, for all the bad press, Hilton’s debut album has not done badly. Despite a few minor quirks about individual products, electropop is back in vogue. And while not everyone might be gung ho about this new turn in pop, industry observers agree that there is certainly some substance to this trend, making it one to watch out for.

RAKESH MEHAR

Hindu On Net

BERLIN – The 57th Berlinale will screen movies directed by actors Antonio Banderas, Steve Buscemi and Julie Delpy and see stars like Isabella Rossellini add glamour to the film festival.

French actress Delpy, who won audiences’ hearts with her romantic turn alongside Ethan Hawke in “Before Sunset” and its sequel “Before Sunrise” nine years later, is showing her directorial debut.

Playing true to type, Delpy, who co-wrote the script for “Before Sunrise” with Hawke, has delivered a romantic comedy entitled “Deux Jours” (Two Days in Paris).

Spanish heartthrob Banderas is giving directing another try, this time in his mother tongue, after critics gave his first attempt, “Crazy in Alabama”, a lukewarm reception.

His new film “El Camino de los Ingleses” (Summer Rain) features acclaimed Spanish actress Victoria Abril, with whom he starred in Pedro Almodovar’s “Tie Me Up, Tie Me Down”, and Alberto Amarilla.

Steve Buscemi’s “Interview 83″ features English starlet Sienna Miller in a remake of a film by slain Dutch director Theo Van Gogh about a charged encounter between a political journalist and a famous actress.

It is screening in the festival’s Panorama Special section which also features the much talked about new French adaptation of the D.H. Lawrence 1928 sex-in-the-woods novel “Lady Chatterley’s Lover”.

Directed by Pascale Ferran, the film runs for nearly three hours.

Festival director Dieter Kosslick said US star George Clooney, a near perennial favourite at the Berlinale, has pleaded off this year though his “The Good German” is screening in competition.

But Cate Blanchett, Faye Dunaway, Lauren Bacall and Emmanuelle Beart will be lending glamour to the event which kicks off on February 8 with the premiere of “La Vie en Rose”, a biopic about French singer Edith Piaf.

French cinema is given ample billing at the festival, with veteran directors Jacques Rivette and Andre Techine unveiling their latest works, but Kosslick said the slowly recovering German industry was also heading for another strong year after scooping up the main acting awards in 2006.

“We have German actors and actresses in 10 of the really important films screening here, though they are not necessarily German productions,” he told a press conference.

Lovers of German cinema will be able to see a fully remastered version of Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s epic work “Berlin Alexanderplatz”.

“It is two degrees lighter than the original, which means that this time you can actually see Alexanderplatz. I know that the purists may be horrified,” Kosslick said. Alexanderplatz, is a large, open square in central Berlin.

The festival’s reputation for intellectual cinema attracts stars not only to the main programme but also to the fringes, the director of the Forum section, Christoph Terhechte, said.

“Isabella Rossellini has come back this year for the sake of an 8-mm silent movie,” he said, referring to Guy Maddin’s childhood drama “Brand upon the Brain”.

Rossellini does not star in the film, but will do a live narration.

Major glamour with a German touch comes in the form of an 88-minute portrait of Karl Lagerfeld.

The Hamburg-born fashion designer who runs the house of Chanel has let the camera get up close and personal for “Lagerfeld Confidential”.

“You literally see him picking out his collars in the morning,” Kosslick said.

The festival runs through till February 18 with 22 films competing for its prestigious Golden Bear prize. – AFP/sh

Channel News Asia

You can call it a film director’s equivalent of writer’s block. And it has taken Chris Noonan 10 years to crack it.

The 54-year-old Australian hogged the limelight in 1995 with “Babe”, a lovable tale of a talking pig which surprised pundits with US$66 million ($101 million) in box office receipts and seven Oscar nominations, including for Best Director. It won for Best Special Effects.

Noonan’s back in the game with another intimate film opening here tomorrow. “Miss Potter”, starring Oscar-winner Renee Zellweger, is a biopic of Beatrix Potter, the Victorian writer-illustrator behind the Peter Rabbit children’s stories.

“It doesn’t feel like a comeback film, really,” said Noonan in a recent telephone interview with TODAY from Sydney. “Making a film takes, minimum, two years of my life. So, I want something that’s both original and emotional. But immediately after “Babe”, I was offered many projects that were derivative of other films.”

The graduate from the Australian Film, Television and Radio School said this is because Hollywood financiers often insist on film-makers proving their projects will roll in the dough – even before they’ve been made.

“If you can tell them: My film will be a cross between this film, which was successful last year, and that film, which was successful the year before, then you’ll most likely get your money.”

Chuckling, he recalled wryly that one script was even pitched to him as “Babe meets Monsters from the Deep”. Little wonder he chose not to dip his feet in the shallow waters – until the simple, tender “Miss Potter” came along.

The US$26-million-film traces Potter’s writing career and her love affair with publisher Norman Warne (Ewan McGregor).

“It’s not about a tortured writer,” said Noonan, who shot his first film at 16.

Observing that movies about writers often depict them agonising over drugs or sex, he noted: “On the surface, nothing much happens in Beatrix’s life. But inside the heart of this woman is a strong dramatic story. She had a lot of pain and it’s pain that’s easy to relate to.”

His next project, though, may not be that easy to relate to but it certainly won’t take him another decade to return – “The Third Witch”, a retelling of Shakespeare’s “Macbeth”, is due to be released later this year. –

Channel News Asia