Japan Academy Award Nominations

Hi, folks.  I am back in town - vacations are always too short for me.  I should quit being Japanese by now...

While I was away, Japan Academy Award nominations were announced.  Please see Kaiju Shakedown and Variety for some notables, as well as "why Takuya Kimura declined to be nominated".  "Love and Honor", "Suite Dreams" and "Hula Girls" have received multiple-category nominations.  The award presentation will be held on February 16, 2007.

And I just finished translating the full list of nominees on Hoga Central.  As always, I have trouble finding out how to pronounce some staff names (hard-to-read kanjis), so please let me know if you find any mistakes.

Looking at the list, there are some more notables for me other than what Variety reports. 

1. "Best Animation" category is introduced for the first time this year, which sounds a bit odd, considering Japan has been SO into animations for a long time, and US Academy Award has had it for some time by now.
2. "Hurray!!" for "Memories of Matsuko" also receiving quite a few nominations, including Best Director and Best Actress.  In the few other awards which were already announced, they did not win, but I believe both Tetsuya Nakashima and Miki Nakatani deserve a high attention.  Even though these highly competitive categories go to someone else, I believe they at least deserve the music, art and costume related awards.
3. "Hurray!!" for Joe Odagiri, Teruyuki Kagawa (both for "Sway") and Masako Motai ("Kamome Diner") nominations for single-theater (art-house), but international profile films.  "Sway" went to Cannes, and "Kamome Diner" is a story in Finland and was screened there.
4. "Darn!" for zero nominations (I mean, ZILCH!) for "Umizaru 2: Test of Trust".  I understand it is considered "mass/money oriented, low-in-art-quality" films by cinephiles and critics, but I LIKE IT and people liked it.  It is the biggest hit J-movie so far this year, with 7 billion yen gross.  In the past years, at least the leading actors for the similar category films "Bayside Shakedown" series (Yuji Oda for "BS 2" and Yusuke Santamaria for "The Negotiator") were given the honor of nomination, but Hideaki Ito is nowhere to be found in the list!
5. There is also a concern about one of major studios (Toho/Shochiku/Toei) dominates every year, so is this year Shochiku's turn, after last year's Toho?  Hmm....
6. In the previously announced awards, Ken Watanabe dominated the leading actor category.  Surprisingly, he has never been played the leading role in a feature movie before "Memories of Tomorrow", and he has been excluded in domestic award circuits, even though he is probably the most internationally recognized Japanese actor.  So I wonder if Japan Academy voters want to give Mr. Watanabe the first domestic recognition this time around, particularly in the face of a potential of US Academy nomination of "Letters from Iwo Jima"?
7. For international movie fans, "Hotel Rwanda" in Foreign Film Category may sound a little odd - it was such a long time ago when this film was nominated in the US Oscars.  Yes, it was released in Japan for the first time this year, powered by a highly publicized grass-roots internet campaign organized by a young man, who firmly believed that such a great film should be shown to Japanese people.  He formed a fan group, and gathered many net-signatures by the people who agree with him, and eventually the popular press also picked up this campaign - and finally the film was picked up by a small foreign film distributor.  In a totally different sense from "Train Man: Densha Otoko", it was another Internet fairy tale in Japanese film industry.

Well, I guess it's enough for now...  I will try to catch up with the film guides of the nominated films on Hoga Central.

Source:  Nippon Academy Awards Official Site

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