Friday is Fun-Day! Unless you're Lydia Shum who was rushed to the hospital Thursday after collapsing at home. Shum is Hong Kong's most huggable celebrity, a rotund 60 year old sporting one of the worst hair styles in Hong Kong who looks pretty much like any Hong Kong lady riding the light bus with a bunch of grocery bags at her feet, but who managed to snag superstar Adam Cheng as a husband (well, okay, they're divorced now but come on, the woman lived with him for 14 years) and while movie fans may only remember her from cameos or from Sammo Hung's MILLIONAIRE'S EXPRESS, if you've ever caught even five seconds of Hong Kong television you've probably seen her at least half a dozen times. Her condition is currently unknown.

It's also not a fun day if you work for ADV, the anime and manga publisher who just laid off 10% of its staff (13 people). Ten days ago an ADV employee gave an interview to Publisher's Weekly saying "We’re like a sleeping giant that's just woken up from a long nap—and we're hungry.” Hungry enough to eat jobs.

Friday's not a fun day for Vicky Zhao Wei (SHAOLIN SOCCER), either. Accused of lip synching on her new album she held a press conference to sing her new songs live and disprove those awful rumors. It would have gone better if she'd been able to remember her own lyrics.

It's also not a good day to be the Pusan Film Festival. The massive event is winding down and the verdict is: it rained, no one made many deals, the film market was a bust, Ennio Morricone was offended by the way he was treated and left early and too many events were canceled or moved at the last minute. Nevertheless, a lot of folks had a good time and some of them have been posting reviews of the brand new Kenta Fukasaku movie, X-CROSS, the new Takashi Miike movie CROWS-EPISODE ZERO and the new Takeshi Ishii movie, NAMI - THE ACTRESS (aka THE BRUTAL HOPELESSNESS OF LOVE).

Andy Lau has taken a good look at Tony Leung's tackle in LUST, CAUTION and deemed it "impressive." Then he goes on to say that Tony must have been tricked into performing the sex scenes and that he, being a bashful Andy Lau, could never perform naked like Tony. There's no love lost between these two TVB veterans and when asked about allegations that Tony isn't on such good terms with the "TVB Tigers" as they're called (Andy Lau, Tony Leung, Felix Wong, Ken Tong and Michael Miu who all got their start on TVB) Andy gives a complicated answer which is paraphrased on his fanblog (flog?) as:

"'I believed Tony will understand, he would know in showbiz, what is allegation all about.' He added that he would not explain the allegation to Tony as he is very understanding, if he would to explain to Tony, it would be like a 'humiliation' to him, he and Tony are good friends but seldom get in contact, Tony might find it strange if Andy called him as they seldom call each other."

Speaking of LUST, CAUTION, have you found yourself wondering what that comma is doing there? Danwei gives a detailed history of how the comma arrived in LUST, CAUTION (taken in part from a piece in The Beijing News) and then they mercilessly analyze the new trend in Chinese movie titles: useless punctuation. From EXILED to LUST, CAUTION to PERHAPS LOVE, punctuation is hip in China and not a lot of it makes much sense.

It is sort of nice to be a baby in China today because the National Population and Family Planning Commission has started replacing their old slogans like, "One More Baby, One More Tomb" with warmer slogans that encourage expectant mothers not to abort their daughters, like "Care for Girls" and "Both Boys and Girls are in Parents' Hearts."

This Friday has also been lousy for the organizers of a Durga Puja festival in India's Kolkata. J.K. Rowling and her publishers have sued them for US$50,000. Their crime? Building a replica of Hogwarts as part of their festival. The legal filing runs 394 pages and claims that they can pay a US$50,000 fee for the right to build the castle or they can take it down. One organizer said, "The summons came at a time when the marquee is almost ready and we don't know what to do now as we cannot afford to pay the fine...It's just a theme. We have also modelled the Titanic and no-one sued us."

In Japan, everyone's self-confidence is at an all-time low. There's the Fukuoka cop who was shot in the buttocks with his own gun when he tried to stop two men from breaking into a porn vending machine. Again: he was shot. In the butt. With his own gun. The robbers escaped.

Worse was the fate of a thief who stormed into a tobacco shop run by an 81-year-old in Osaka. The thief left after the old guy gave him a song and dance about how poor he was, then he thought better of it, got a knife, came back to the store and once again left after hearing the old man's poor mouth routine. Police say the old guy "Might have dented his confidence."

Then there's Indonesian human rights activist, Munir Said Thalib. He's dead. The Indonesian government set him up to have an inflight meal on Garuda Airlines that was laced with arsenic back in 2004. The trials are still going on, with one government stooge after another being found guilty.

And worst of all there are the six Cambodians who encountered a nice cow while driving this year. They're all dead, too. The cow is in custody.

Have a nice weekend!