Nominees from Japan in the 10th Asian Film Awards (2016)

Best Film: Koibitotachi

Best Director: Koreeda Hirokazu (Umimachi Diary)

Best Actor: Nagase Masatoshi (An)

Best Actress: Ayase Haruka (Umimachi Diary)

Best Supporting Actor: Asano Tadanobu (Kishibe no Tabi)

Best Supporting Actress: Tsuchiya Anna (Gonin Saga) / Ueno Juri (The Beauty Inside - Korean film)

Best Newcomer: Fujino Ryoko (Solomon no Gishou Part 1 and Part 2)

Best Screenplay: Ujita Takashi & Kurosawa Kiyoshi (Kishibe no Tabi)

Best Editing: Ozeki Yasuyuki (Bakuman)

Best Cinematography: Sasakibara Yasushi & Yamamoto Yoshiaki (Gonin Saga)

Best Original Music: Otomo Yoshihide (Kishibe no Tabi)

Best Costume Design: Miyamoto Masae (Kakekomi Onna to Kakedashi Otoko)

Best Production Design: Harada Tetsuo (Kakekomi Onna to Kakedashi Otoko)

Best Visual Effects: Onoue Katsuro (Shingeki no Kyojin)

Best Sound: Watanabe Shinji (Bakuman) / Nishiyama Toru (Zane - Sunde wa Ikenai Heya -)

Source: The 10th Asian Film Awards

Takeuchi Yuko & Hashimoto Ai appear at special talk event for new movie "Zane ~ Sundewa Ikenai Heya ~"

The special talk event for new movie "Zane ~ Sundewa Ikenai Heya ~ " (Zane ~ The Place which you should not stay at ~) was held at Namba Parks in Osaka on 17 December which was attended by the leads Takeuchi Yuko and Hashimoto Ai as well as the director Nakamura Yoshihiro. Despite the weather being a freezing 2 degrees Celsius, 700 people came for the talk show.

As it is nearing Christmas, the actresses were asked about their memories of Christmas. However, Takeuchi said that ever since she and her siblings fought over the presents, there were no more coming from Santa in subsequent years. For Hashimoto too, she has no fond memories of Christmas because her birthday is 12 January which is rather close to Christmas so she usually gets a 2-in-1 present (for Christmas and her birthday).

The movie which is based on the novel by Ono Fuyumi, features Takeuchi as a novelist and the narrator of the movie addressed as "Watashi" while Hashimoto plays Kubo who is an university student and reader of the former's novels. When the novelist receives a letter from Kubo about the apartment she is staying at now having strange sounds, the two of them start investigating out of curiosity and uncover a frightening story which happened more than 10 years ago.

Takeuchi admitted that she gets scared by the Japanese horror stories even though she is OK with watching zombie movies. As such, it took her a month just to finish the script as it was too scary to read. During the movie's screening at the Tokyo International Film Festival in October this year, Takeuchi sneaked out before the movie was over because she was too scared to watch it. However, she made sure that she stayed till the end of the movie for this round's screening. Hashimoto also stressed that for people who don't like horror movies, they can watch this as a human tragedy as it depicts the lengths that people can go to in their moment of madness.

The movie will be shown in cinemas from 30 January 2016.

Source: Eiga.com