Completion screening event of new movie "Shippu Rondo"

The completion screening event of new movie "Shippu Rondo" was held on 13 October which was attended by the director Yoshida Teruyuki and cast members Abe Hiroshi, Ookura Tadayoshi, Ooshima Yuko, Horiuchi Keiko, Hamada Tatsuomi, Shison Jun, Nomaguchi Tooru, Asou Yumi, Totsugi Shigeyuki and Emoto Akira. In line with the setting of the movie at a snowy mountain, the red carpet was replaced with a white carpet.

The movie which is based on the popular novel by Higashino Keigo and had sold more than 1 million copies to date, features Abe as a middle-aged researcher who is told to retrieve a dangerous biological weapon stolen from his university's research facility at a ski resort and goes through a hard time while searching for leads about the whereabouts of the weapon.

Although the filming was done at Nozawa Onsen in Nagano Prefecture, it was not as cold as it seemed because it was a warm winter with very little snow. In contrast, the day when the screening event was colder due to the rainy weather so Ookura commented that today was the coldest as compared to when they were filming the movie. Ironically, the day when Abe arrived at the ski resort for the filming turned out to be extremely cold and there was heavy snow. As such, this led Ooshima to comment that Abe is a snow man i.e. one who brings the snow wherever he goes. In response, Abe joked that it turned out to be colder than when he was at Everest.

In the movie, Abe, Ookura and Ooshima had many snow-skiing scenes but Abe had not skiied in the last 30 years since the last time when he was in university. As such, he had to practice before the filming. Ooshima was very skillful in snowboarding and skiing since she has been doing it since she was 9 but Ookura turned out to be a total amateur even though he had written in his official profile by mistake that his hobby was skiing. Since this was only his third time skiing, Ookura had to start learning from how to hold the ski sticks. Upon seeing this, Abe was glad that he had company for the training and that he was slightly better than Ookura in skiing. As for the scenes where he was driving the snow mobile, Ookura stressed that he did them himself although viewers may find it difficult to identify him as he was wearing goggles.

"Shippu Rondo" will be screened in cinemas from 26 November.

Sources: Eiga.com / Oricon