Eiga Geijutsu Best Ten 2000

[Ono Seiko and Aaron Gerow]

Happy New Year everyone!

It's time for the annual awards and best ten lists to come out, so to 
begin with, here's the Best Ten and Worst Ten for 2000 according to the 
long-running magazine Eiga Geijutsu:

1) Kao (Sakamoto Junji)
2) Suri (Kuroki Kazuo)
3) Hatsukoi (Shinohara Tetsuo)
4) Charisma (Kurosawa Kiyoshi)
5) Hysteric (Zeze Takahisa)
6) Nagisa (Konuma Masaru)
7) OL seihakusho: Kusareen (Imaoka Shinji)
8) Hyoryugai The Hazard City (Miike Takashi)
9) Dokuritsu shonen gasshodan (Ogata Akira)
10) Shin jingi naki tatakai (Sakamoto Junji)

Some films that just missed were:

11) Audition (Miike Takashi)
12) Tokyo gomi onna (Hiroki Ryuichi)
12) Hakkyosuru kuchibiru (Sasaki Hirohisa)
12) Futei no kisetsu (Hiroki Ryuichi)
15) Freeze Me (Ishii Takashi)

Kao was the runaway winner, a result Eigei will share with other awards 
this year, but in other ways the Eigei best ten is peculiar but 
interesting.  First, it also includes a worst ten list and subtracts 
worst ten votes from the best ten votes (without worst votes, Charisma, 
Hyoryugai, and Audition would have all ended up higher).  Voters can also 
freely allot the voting points for each film, as long as none gets over 
10 points and the voter does not exceed 55 points.  Given the variety of 
the selectors, a pink film like Imaoka's, usually ignored at KineJun, can 
hit the best ten.  Also, since many professional people (i.e. filmmakers) 
also vote (the general policy at Eigei being to bring forward the 
professional point of view), behind the camera relationships do seem to 
have an effect.  There are also oddities: Ogata was asked to pick even 
though his film was eligible and he ended up being the only one to pick 
it number 1 (in contrast, Izuchi Kishu, who wrote Hysteric, did not even 
put it in his best ten).

Eigei wanted to get its best ten out fast this year, so films released in 
December were not included in the eligible films.  THe magazine also 
expanded the number of selectors, and even included two foreigners: me 
and Mark Schilling.  I'll let Mark post his selections, but here are mine:

3)   Futei no kisetsu (Hiroki Ryuichi)
     Suri (Kuroki Kazuo)
     Bullet Ballet (Tsukamoto Shinya)
4)   Audition (Miike Takashi)
6)   Atarashii kamisama (Tsuchiya Yutaka)
     Love/Juice (Shindo Kaze)
7)   Freeze Me (Ishii Takashi)
     Jin-Roh (Okiura Takayuki)
8)   Chinpira (Mochizuki Rokuro)
9)   Charisma (Kurosawa Kiyoshi)
Next: Kao (Sakamoto Junji)

As with any best list, it was hard picking when I had not seen all of the 
150 or so films available (or a number of the 87 films that did get best 
ten votes).  Then there's always one's mood at the time: in a few months 
I might pick something different.  But I tried to make a point this year 
of noting I did not feel there was a clear number one (Kao, I felt, had 
problems), while at the same time supporting younger filmmakers like 
Tsuchiya and Shindo.  You can read my comments in the Eiga geijutsu issue 
(number 394).

Here is the fun part, the worst ten:

1) Whiteout (Wakamatsu Setsuro)
2) Space Travelers (Motohiro Katsuyuki)
3) Another Heaven (Iida Joji)
3) Dora-Heita (Ichikawa Kon)
5) Jigo-sai Gakko IV (Yamada Yoji)
6) Tsuki (Kimizuka Sho)
7) Ame agaru (Koizumi Joji)
7) Sakuya yokaiden (Haraguchi Tomoo)
7) Hasen no Marisu (Isaka Satoshi)

Whiteout, which was the boxoffice winner this year, was the runaway loser 
here.

Aaron Gerow
Yokohama National University