Eiga Geijutsu Best Ten 2006

[Aaron Gerow]

The results of the Eiga Geijutsu Best Ten for 2006 are in and they are 
as follows:

1. Yawarakai seikatsu (Hiroki Ryuichi)
2. Yuki ni negau koto (Negishi Kichitaro)
3. Strawberry Short Cakes (Yazaki Hitoshi)
4. Toki o kakeru shojo (Hosoda Mamoru)
5. Kiraware Matsuko no issho (Nakashima Tetsuya)
6. Hula Girl (Lee Sang-il)
7. Noriko no shokutaku (Sono Shion)
8. Loft (Kurosawa Kiyoshi)
9. Germanium no yoru (Omori Tatsushi)
10. Mamiya kyodai (Morita Yoshimitsu)

Eigei also has a Worst Ten poll, but we will have to wait until the 
best ten issue is published to see that.

The Eiga geijutsu poll is a bit peculiar, but often interesting for its 
originality. Given the publication date of the magazine, it covers the 
films that opened between December 16, 2005, and December 15, 2006 
(thus a film like Germanium, which opened at the end of December in 
2005, actually appeared in last year's KineJun poll). It also has a 
unique voting system in which, first, voters can spread their votes 
among films so long as they don't exceed more than 10 votes for a film, 
vote for more than 10 films, or use more than 55 votes total (one could 
thus give 10 votes each to five films); and second, the results of the 
worst ten voting are subtracted from the results in the best ten voting 
(Matsuko probably went down a few spots because of that). The results 
can thus sometimes seem a bit skewed, as a few nasty voters can sink a 
film through worst ten votes. Eiga geijutsu is the second oldest film 
magazine in Japan (it started in the late 1940s), but it is currently 
published by the screenwriter/director Arai Haruhiko, so his films, 
like Yawarakai, sometimes do well in the poll (though, that said, Arai 
is one of the best screenwriters in Japan, and Yawarakai is a good 
film). But the range of voters, from filmmakers to critics, from pink 
film fans to henna gaijin (me!), do produce results not seen elsewhere. 
Unlike some of the other major polls/awards, Eigei still can pick truly 
small or independent films like late night releases and pink films.

Since we are in the awards season, perhaps I should give a brief review 
of the competing awards, if only to clarify their differences. These 
impressions are mostly from my experience, but they are confirmed by 
many conversations.

Kinema Junpo: The oldest and arguably the most prestigious award. Today 
it tends to be rather safe and middle of the road: few major studio 
films but also few daring independents (KineJun has long stopped 
picking pink films). Perhaps one can argue it is getting even more 
conservative in recent years (as the magazine itself has become more 
commercial), going for safe "well-made" or "artistic" films in 
established genres by known filmmakers (one colleague found this year's 
selection to be little different from the KineJun readers poll, which 
tends to favor the well-known "well-made" films even more than the 
critics poll).

Mainichi Concours: The second oldest, but also the most conservative, 
primarily because only a small number of critics decide the awards and 
they tend to be older, established people (few young upstarts). Their 
technical awards are very important, however.

Japan Academy Awards: Maybe this is opening up, but the primary 
impression among many observers is that this is the major studios' way 
of congratulating themselves. Some films not distributed by the majors 
do win awards, but the fact that nearly half the eligible voters are 
employees of the majors studios and their subsidiary companies stacks 
the deck against all other films. Not a few people dismiss these awards 
altogether.

Sports paper awards (Blue Ribbon, Hochi, Nikkan Sports, Tokyo Sports): 
These tend to be fairly commercial, but there are some occasional 
surprises. The Tokyo Sports awards were long chaired (and still 
chaired?) by Kitano Takeshi, and he tended to give awards to his own 
films and those of friends.

Eiga geijutsu: Described above.

Yokohama Film Festival: A fan-run festival, but they tend to have 
less-commercial tastes and thus come up with results, like this year's, 
that are closer to Eigei's than to KineJun's.

Nihon Eiga Professional Taisho: This is one of the few awards that 
narrows its pool of films: major studio films are all removed from 
consideration to focus on independent release films that garnered less 
attention. (One gets the impression this was started in part to counter 
the Japan Academy Awards.)

There are awards in particular genres (such as bunka eiga or pink 
films), and in recent years, some internet-based awards have appeared, 
but I have stuck with the above, all of which have been around for a 
decade or more.

Aaron Gerow
KineJapan owner

Assistant Professor
Film Studies Program/East Asian Languages and Literatures
Yale University

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