My skull is still ringing like a bell after this week saw Carina Lau and Tony Leung finally tie the knot. In Bhutan. In a wedding draped in tinsel by chief tinsel-draper Wong Kar-wai himself. Also, it was hot this week. The USA has declared a War on Terror, but can they also declare a War on Heat? In China they've declared a war on "emulational guns."  Maybe a War on Heat is next? Something has to be done because it's upsetting the monkeys.

French theater legend, Ariane Mnouchkine, has directed three short films about the upcoming Olympics called "Beijing 2008." You can see all three over on EastSouthWestNorth, and while the first two are pretty fun, I love the third one where French President Nicolas Sarkozy and his wife get splattered with blood when Chinese police gun down a Tibetan protester in front of them.

Speaking of world leaders, Minoru Kawasaki's kaiju send-up, GUILALA'S COUNTERATTACK: LAKE TOYA SUMMIT CRISIS is out this week. It's the movie which sees the famous space chicken from 1967's X FROM OUTER SPACE attack the leaders of the world at the G8 summit. Takeshi Kitano plays a giant monster in it, too. Here's a press conference where actors dressed as Kitano and Guilala did battle for the media:

Mark Schilling gives the flick a drubbing in his review for the Japan Times.

In other Japanese press news, folks going over to read the online edition of Mainichi Daily News are greeted with a craven, cringing apology on a splash page all its own before they get to go inside and read the paper. The apology is a lip-trembling whine attempting to placate the humorless squares who had a problem with the Wai Wai column. "We apologize deeply for causing many people trouble and for betraying the public's trust in the Mainichi Shimbun," it reads. Those words don't make any sense. I mean, individually I understand what they all mean but in this context I'm baffled. We are talking about the Wai Wai incident, right? How on earth did that cause anyone any trouble and how was the public's trust betrayed? Well, one person it did cause trouble for is Managing Director Yoshiyuki Watanabe. The apology goes on to state:

"The Mainichi Newspapers took punitive measures on July 20 against Managing Director Yoshiyuki Watanabe, who previously served as general manager of the Multimedia Division, and another senior official, to hold them responsible as supervisors, in addition to those who were earlier punished."

Punitive measures? Like this?

Far better at public apologies are the folks over at Shaw Brothers Reloaded, a European Shaw Brothers fan site. They were putting together a Star Tour 2008 that would bring over 16 Shaw icons for a live appearance and show in December of this year, including Ti Lung, Cheng Pei-pei, Ivy Ling-po and more. However, the event is now canceled after it turns out that the folks running the site were getting ripped off by some con artists who were using the excitement over booking these celebs to fleece the good folks at Shaw Brothers Reloaded. They write:

"Anticipated joy made us blind for doubts. We are sad, angry, and also ashamed.

Worst of all, we made you hope to meet the Stars in person, and now we have to let you down. In the future, we will be more cautious.

We wear sackcloth and ashes. "

Short, simple and to-the-point. That's how you apologize in public.

In other fun news, Nippon Cinema reports that Ryuhei Kitamura has announced that he's making an American version of his first big feature hit, VERSUS. 

JU-ON director Takashi Shimizu is apparently directing the latest installment in the SIBERIAN EXPRESS series from Japan. But what exactly the movie will be is uncertain: is it animation, live action or CGI animation? No one knows. But people are pondering it.

The Weinstein Company have been beaten to the punch with a remake of Akira Kurosawa's SEVEN SAMURAI. Ryuganji is reporting that Nakano Hiroyuki of SAMURAI FICTION and RED SHADOWS has remade the film...for a pachinko machine. You can watch clips from it over here on the official site.

The Puchon International Film Fest just gave out a set of awards in their first ever genre film project. The jury consisted of international man-about-film Roger Garcia, Tom Quinn from Magnolia and director Takashi Shimizu. The big winner is the director of THE BUTCHER, Kim Jin-Won, whose flick, THE DEVILS, took $15,000 in production and post-production support. DEVILS is an animated horror film that wants to fuse occult gore with video games and those who've seen some of its elements say it looks pretty cool.

And finally, to take you into the weekend, courtesy of David Chute, a Bollywood number from the 1983 musical, KARATE! See it here!

Kittens, whippings, monkeys, Bollywood, Takashi Shimizu and SEVEN SAMURAI on a pachinko machine: another installment of Friday is Fun-Day just trying to make you happy. Try not to die of heat stroke this weekend