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Ponyo, Miyazaki, Hisaishi Pick Up Asian Film Award Nods

The Hong Kong International Film Festival Society (HKIFF) announced yesterday that Hayao Miyazaki's Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea picked up a Best Film nomination for the third annual Asian Film Awards. In addition, Miyazaki himself was nominated for the Best Director award (which will be shared with Frank Marshall, one of the producers for Ponyo's American release.) Joe Hisaishi's score for the film gave him a Best Composer nomination.

No other anime is in the running for the awards this year, but Ken'ichi Matsuyama's lead performance in Toshio Li's live-action adaptation of the Detroit Metal City manga put him in the Best Actor category. Shota Matsuda earned a Best Newcomer nod for his acting in Hana Yori Dango: Final, the theatrical finale to the recent live-action adaptation of Yōko Kamio's manga.

Paco and the Magical Book, the live-action fantasy film by Kamikaze Girls director Tetsuya Nakashima, earned nominations for Best Cinematographer (Shoichi Ato), Best Production Designer (Towako Kuwajima), and Best Visual Effects (Kamikaze Girls's Masahide Yanagawase). It also gathered nine nominations for the Japan Academy Prizes on Thursday.

HKIFF launched the Asian Film Awards in 2007, and this year's awards ceremony will take place at the start of the annual Entertainment Expo Hong Kong on March 23. The only anime that had previously received a nomination was Goro Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli's Tales from Earthsea; that film's Tamiya Terashima competed in the Best Composer category in 2007. That same year, Tetsuya Ōishi and Shusuke Kaneko were nominated in the Best Screenwriter category for Death Note: The Last Name, the live action film based on Tsugumi Ohba and Takeshi Obata's manga. The following year, the Always: Sunset on Third Street 2 film garnered three nominations and another manga-based live-action film, Sakuran, garnered two.

Images © 2008 Nibariki, GNDHDDT
© 2008 Detroit Metal City Production Committee