Kinejun Best Ten, Tokyo Ramen update

[mark schilling]

Thought I'd share the following news item I wrote for Screen on the Kinejun
Best Ten for 2004.
That Nobody Knows heads the list is no surprise, nor is the Best Actor prize
for Beat Takeshi in
Blood and Bones. As always, I missed reviewing a couple of films on the
list: The Stars Converge (Chirusoku
no Natsu) and Embers (Toko no Ki). I may catch the latter this weekend -- 
it's still playing in
Yurakucho.

Also, while I'm on (off?) the subject, I've updated the Tokyo Ramen site
(http://japanesemovies.homestead.com/index.html) including a new long
interview with Tsukamoto
Shinya on Vital and a tribute piece on the Godzilla series for The Japan
Times.

Mark Schilling


Hirokazu Koreeda's Nobody Knows has topped the Kinema Junpo magazine Best
Ten
critics poll -- the oldest and most prestigious of its kind in Japan -- for
2004. The top
foreign film was Mystic River.

Koreeda's film, about the lives of four children who are abandoned by their
mother, was
screened in competition last year at Cannes, where lead Yuya Yagira was
awarded the
Best Actor prize.  Other Japanese films in the Best Ten, in order, are Blood
and Bones,
Kamikaze Girls, The Face of Jizo, The Hidden Blade, The Motive/RIYUU, Swing
Girls,
The Chicken Is Barefoot, The Stars Converge and Embers.

Among the individual prizes awarded were Best Director to Yoichi Sai (Blood
and Bones
and Quill), Best Script to Chong Ui-Shin (Blood and Bones), Best Actress to
Rie
Miyazawa (The Face of Jizo), Best Actor to Takeshi "Beat" Kitano (Blood and
Bones),
Best Supporting Actress to YOU (Nobody Knows), Best Supporting Actor to Joe
Odagiri
(Blood and Bones), Best New Actress to Anna Tsuchiya (Kamikaze Girls and The
Taste
of Tea), Best New Actor to Yuya Yagira (Nobody Knows) and Best Director of a
Foreign
Film to Clint Eastwood (Mystic River).