This is one of those mornings where everything’s busy, but nothing seems to be happening — I’m waiting on the latest wave of announcements from TIFF, trying to schedule a couple of interviews, putting off transcribing another interview (I hate transcription, hate it hate it hate it), and my DVD column hasn’t gone up yet. So I have nothing to post.

So I did what I always do in situations like this, and bounced over to my favorite Hong Kong DVD retailer, DDDHouse, to see what was new. I guess it’s been a while, because they’ve got all kinds of good stuff that isn’t available in North America yet, and may not be for a while.

Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s outstanding “Tokyo Sonata“. “Tulpan“. “Departures“. Even Miyazaki’s “Ponyo“, which opens here on Friday. (Okay, it’s the original Japanese version instead of Disney’s all-star English dub track, but I’m a stickler for subtitles.) They’re all legitimate releases from the rights-holders in Hong Kong — some of them are PAL discs, but if you’ve got a multi-region player it almost certainly has that capability, too.

Of course, if you’re buying PAL discs, you should really start here. And maybe here. You know, just to stay ahead of the curve.