As mentioned here, actress Miyazaki Aoi is going to play the guitar and try herself at singing in her next movie called "Solanin" and now movie distributor Asmik Ace released the first photo of Miyazaki playing the guitar.

The movie is based on a manga of the same name by mangaka Asano Inio that has been serialized in Shukan Young Sunday. It's about Meiko (Miyazaki) who quit her boring office job during her 2nd year and her boyfriend Taneda (Koura Kengo) who works part-time and aimlessly pursues his dream of music. Overall it's a love story about youth and their restless struggle for happiness. They filmed it from April 25 until May 31.

About 1 week before the end of the filming, Miyazaki had to face a live scene in a live music bar in Tokyo that is going to be one of the highlights in the movie. Together with their band, Meiko and Taneda take up the challenge of performing live. They both are enthusiastically singing their song "Solanin" that is packed with their feelings, with Meiko doing both the vocals and the guitar. It's an absolutely incredible stage performance with perfectly clear and comfortable voices, gorgeous postures and a feel-good rhythm. More than 150 extras have been used for the audience and together with the other band members played by Kiritani Kenta and Kondou Youichi (of Sambomaster) they really set the roof on fire, like they say.

People from the production explained that Miyazaki hasn't really been listening to rock music before the filming, but she went through some extra hard training to learn how to play the guitar and to improve her singing. Only the guitar had to be dubbed for that take, but the singing and everything else has been left completely untouched. It's also the first full-length movie for director Miki Takahiro, but he definitely is a "music-pro" and an expert when it comes to bringing music alive in videos as he already did many music videos for artists like ORANGE RANGE or YUI, and so it's good to hear that he clearly approves of Miyazaki's skills. "Miyazaki has an exceptional strong singing voice, I even got goosebumps. Due to the tight schedule we unfortunately haven't been able to record her playing the guitar, but she's definitely rocking it as well. She's a person with a really great intuition."

Miyazaki refrained from doing interviews during the filming to completely concentrate on her role, but after they finished she finally gave some comments again. "It was a really big thing for me to end the filming with a live scene. In that scene we had to play every single tune from the beginning to the end of the performance, it was also very tough for the whole staff and extras, we've worked together until the end and I'm glad that we've been able to do a satisfying finish. Everyone worked really hard, we all wanted to make sure to create a really cool scene and I hope that you will look forward to it." She said with a lot of self-confidence.

During the movie, Miyazaki's band is going to perform "Solanin" and 2 other songs, "each of them being original songs, written and composed by leadings musicians", as the production company says. About a possible CD-Debut of Miyazaki herself they only said, "We don't know". Is it even possible not to make a CD, if even a pro is lost in and captivated by Miyazaki's voice!? We'll see.

The movie "Solanin" will be coming out in 2010.

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Written by: jyoyu.blogspot.com
Source: CinemaToday.jp
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