2002 box office

[mark schilling]

Aaron mentioned the "anonymous zadankai about the state of the industry" in
the Eiga Geijutsu Best Ten issue -- I was the gaijin IDed only by my first
initial. I thought it was a fairly tame gathering, actually -- not much
savaging of the guilty by name, in other words, though I did get in a few
cuts at the Tokyo Film Festival and Toho, among others.

I was also invited to submit my Top Ten to Eiga Geijutsu, but the e-mail got
buried in the year-end deluge. Here's a link to the Japan Times page where
it appears:
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/getarticle.pl5?ff20030101a2.htm

My guess is that smaller indie films rarely make the Mainichi and other more
"conservative" lists because many of the voters are either (1) fogies who
somehow consider it shitsurei to vote for a newcomer's film over a deserving
senior's or (2) geino reporters and other types who don't see many Japanese
films, other than the big releases, in the course of the year. Then there's
the matter of propriety -- Miike in his "outlaw" incarnation probably stands
as much chance of topping the Kinejun list as he does of being invited to
the Emperor's garden party.

Mark Schilling



----- Original Message -----
From: "Aaron Gerow" <gerow at ynu.ac.jp>
To: "KineJapan" <KineJapan at lists.acs.ohio-state.edu>
Sent: Monday, February 03, 2003 4:25 PM
Subject: Re: 2002 box office


> >it may be a stupid question but I wonder what is the criteria for
> >classifying films into Japanese vs. foreign. If it has to do with the
> >funding capital of the film, I wonder where would (transnational) joint
> >productions fit in.
>
> I don't know how Eiren defines it (Mark?), but since Japanese companies
> are still being slow to jump onto the international co-production
> bandwagon, there are not too many films that cause problems. My
> impression is that any film with significant Japanese money that is
> mostly in the Japanese language is hoga. The Last Samurai will probably
> not be hoga, however. But the Momantai films were classified as hoga (at
> least in any video store I've been to).
>
> >And what about Asian films? In my understanding, the kanji in the word
> >"youga" (the term used for foreign films) means Western rather than
foreign
> >and, I am not so sure about it, but I think that in the videostore close
to
> >my place Chinese films, for example, are classified under the "houga"
> >category.
>
> Non-Japanese Asian films are definitely put into the yoga category. Your
> videostore may just be odd.
>
> Do note that yoga can sometimes be a purely institutional phenomenon.
> Especially some of the major theater chains are divided between yoga-kei
> and hoga-kei, and thus you sometimes see Japanese films being released
> at, say, "Toho yoga-kei" theaters.
>
> >I found a list of the films released in 2002 on the "Japanese Movie
> >Database" (www.jmdb.ne.jp) but the are 4 more than in the figures
provided
> >by Eiren. Is there a way to find their list of 293 Japanese films?
>
> Note that the JMDB sometimes includes experimental shorts that were shown
> in small theaters. I don't believe Eiren includes those. The JMDB is also
> probably not up-to-date on 2002 yet, so more films can be expected to
> appear later.
>
> Aaron Gerow
> Associate Professor
> International Student Center
> Yokohama National University
> 79-1 Tokiwadai
> Hodogaya-ku, Yokohama 240-8501
> JAPAN
> E-mail: gerow at ynu.ac.jp
> Phone: 81-45-339-3170
> Fax: 81-45-339-3171
>
>