Watch Party: Water Boys & Swing Girls

On Saturday, October 5th, it is finally time for the next of my celebrated live action focused watch parties! I’ve been kind enough to choose the films we’ll be watching in advance, and this time it’s a pretty random, but likely very fun theme! The theme is “Boys & Girls”. So what does that even mean? In this context it’s two films directed by Shinobu Yaguchi that happen to have the words “Boys” and “Girls” in their titles. More specifically, the films are Water Boys (2001) and Swing Girls (2004). I haven’t looked too much into it since I haven’t seen the films myself, but it seems that both films follow groups of young people that start from 0 and attempt to get good at an activity (riveting stuff). Apparently both are also based on true stories? Both films were nominated in the categories “best picture”, “best director” and “best screenplay” at the Japanese Academy Awards in their respective years, with Swing Girls actually winning the screenplay prize. Swing Girls has also seen a slow but steady rise in popularity outside of Japan in recent years. Just a few weeks back it officially entered the Letterboxd “Top 250 Narrative Feature Films” list, currently residing at #243. Water Boys hasn’t seen the same international acclaim yet, but in Japan it was successful enough to spawn a 3-season television series. So, join us for a cozy time with these feel-good films and bring all your friends! Snacks and tea and saft will be provided (it’s the ACCS guarantee™️) edit: I researched it some more, and both films were nominated for many more Japanese Academy Awards prizes than I initially realized. Water Boys was nominated in eight categories and won the “Outstanding Achievement in Music” award, while Swing Girls won seven awards, and was nominated for another two, making it the film with the highest amount of awards that year.