SPIRITED AWAY -- or This Week In Acid Casualty Anime Fairy Tales That Will Haunt Your Dreams For A Long Time But Make You Want To Watch Them Over And Over Again

castle of cagliostro: his first feature as an "auteur", although not 100% his own creation as it's a feature based on the popular lupin III manga/anime characters. but the execution is pure miyazaki: lupin goes from slavering, sexmad criminal to heart of gold criminal with little to no icky saccharine aftertaste. the most impossible car chase evah (one of the joys of animation), sexy catburglah, a royal wedding, and a climax in a clocktower that disney ripped off for the great mouse detective. marx brothers X cheezball 70s caper movies -/- fairy tale. it's ace.

nausicaa of the valley of wind: as martin said above, based on miyazaki's manga bildungsroman about a young princess in a post apocalypse blah blah where most of the planet has been rendered poisonous and small portions remain inhabitable owing only to the vagaries of tradewinds and luck. and giant bugs! it's a bit truncated, at least when compared to the comic which is much more complex (one of the most complex i've ever read) and wouldn't end for another dozen years after the film was released in 1984. an edited, dumbed down version was released in america under the title "warriors of the wind": AVOID AT ALL COSTS.

laputa: castle in the sky: miyazaki makes a boys own adventure (since most of his films feature female protagonists), but one which is still highly feminized. based - ever so vaguely - on gullivers travels. neat society of benevolent (yet dangerous) robots; bumbling keystone-stylee air pirates led by their ballsy mother. not his best, but highly enjoyable in a saturday afternoon kind of way. streamline released a dub of this which didn't get wide release but still shows up in video stores every now and again. it's pretty good.

my neighbor totoro: the best film ever made. okay, not really, but on most days my favorite film of all time. pastoral picture book tale of two sisters moving to the country where they encounter giant, plush-toy ready beastie. very japanese, in that not much "happens." very keenly observed, detailed (and not even in an animation quality sense.) the portrayal of children is brilliant (if a bit idyllic.)

kiki's delivery service: story of a young witch. saw it once and can't remember a thing about it. therefore i'm tempted to call it his weakest film, but i think it probably deserves another viewing or two before that. some people rate it very highly.

porco rosso: possibly miyazaki's first truly "adult" film, but definately shot through the lens of a family adventure movie still. ther story of porco rosso, "the crimson pig", who was cursed during world war I when he woke up as a squat, fat little pig man. he's also a pilot, and this film represents the apex of miyazaki's fascination with air travel. plenty of great bi-plane action scenes, the spectre of fascism (italy in the 30s, keep in mind), a spunky female mechanic (of course!), and more bumbling air pirates. there's slapstick, but there's something oddly elegiac about this film. it's definately the film of a post-middle aged man who is coming to terms with, well, himself. people think i'm nuts for think this is his "best" film (from an objective, non-totoro standpoint), but i think it's far deeper than most give it credit for.

princess mononoke: certainly his darkest film (although from the description above the new one might trump it), and the one most people have probably seen since miramax gave it wide release in both theaters (!) and video. a pretty bleak view of man vs. ecology (which is a subtext of most if not all his films to one degree or another), but ultimately a redemptive vision, again like all his films.

obviously i could talk about these movies (and the movies of his partner in studio ghibli, isao takahata) all day; i cut a lot out of the capsules above. miyazaki represents pretty much everything i love in film - populist popular entertainment for a broad audience which doesn't sacrifice brain-engagement and minus the cloying nature of most "feel-good" american film. he was a big part, maybe the biggest part, of why i went to film school. he was also a big part of why i dropped out, realizing i would never be able to make these kinds of films in this country, animated or otherwise.

I saw this one, some three times

disagree about 'warriors of the wind' though. if the choice is between seeing 'warriors of the wind' or not seeing it then see it. great flying sequences (something of a common thread in his films) and BIG insects.

the catbus in totoro is, if nothing else, proof that they have LSD in japan 8)

and much as i heart claire danes, she made mononoke sound like she came from The Valley. like, totally.

andy

One of the scenes in the movie that still haunts me and confuses me is the earlier No Face scenes where he makes these really disturbing, almost orgasmic grunts to produce the gold and offer it. It still sends shivers down my spine.

The (US) copy I've seen on sale lists Japanese as one of the english language options, with english subtitles. Does this mean you get the "untampered" version too?

From everything I have read, the Disney DVD will have the original version (w/subtitles) as well as the dubbed version. Though I must say, having heard the dubbed version it's a vast improvement on the dub for Princess Mononoke.

!!!

Heavens. Dare I ask the details?

*googles*

Yeah, that would qualify him, wouldn't it?

http://www.discountanimedvd.com/detail.asp?dvdno=158

?

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=1345&item=5946452010&rd=1&ssPageName=WD2V

I actually watched Spirited Away last night at home, as I had brought it along for my Xmas holiday to show my mom, who I thought would enjoy it and unsurprisingly did, very much. However, as she's not fond of reading subtitles on the small screen, we watched it in the American dub, in my case for the first time -- all previous times have been with subtitles. Now, I know that John Lasseter oversaw that and the other recent American dubs, and I know that it kept a large amount of the original intact, fair enough -- but there were still a number of changes that grated horribly, I mean REALLY horribly. I particularly couldn't believe the final two lines of dialogue in the dub in the final few seconds, which from what I recall had absolutely no equivalent in the original version -- it changed the ending from a wonderful, beautiful and ambiguous meditation on what really 'happened,' as the car drives away to what's essentially an unknown fate, to a miserable Afterschool Special of the worst variety. I felt like I had been smacked in the face.

Huh. I have yet to watch the dubbed version, I am surprised to hear it turned out to be this bad. I guess it could be due to Disney's influence, though.

xpost -- Actually I'm lying and Dan is quite correct. Also, the Overfiend appears and...well, anyway.

The dub for this turned out to be surprisingly good, probably because John Lasseter was in charge of it.

-- Nicole (nicolew1...), May 12th, 2003.

I should say that it wasn't consistently and constantly horrifying or anything, in fact technically it's a superb piece of work in terms of matching words with characters' mouth movements, and most of the dialogue does match the subtitles while occasional changes for those technical reasons often are fine enough. But again, it's just those couple of moments that bug me -- and I think you're right, I could easily see some Disney hack saying "Just make sure it's a happy ending." Dorks.

"Mom, I'm not going to eat bacon sandwiches anymore."

Maybe I did, but I don't even remember even watching it now! My memory seems to be getting worse each day. :(

Isn't this like asking, "Do you like the Cure or something?"

1. Nausicaä is being released on video/DVD in America with voices of Uma Thurman and Patrick Stewart. This will be a Miyazaki-approved edit with the option to watch the japanese version with subtitles, like Spirited Away. It will be released Feb 22 along with Porco Rosso and The Cat Returns.

2. The next Miyazaki film is an adaptation of "Howl's Moving Castle." Possible US release date of June 5.

Here is an interview with the author of the new yorker article:
http://www.newyorker.com/online/content/?050117on_onlineonly01

It was a really really good article, it made me want to have kids so I could take them to Miyazaki movies.

the manga is really, really worth your time as well. serialized monthly for 12 years straight, he wrote and illustrated it himself (a rarity in the manga industry) and didn't actually complete it until 10 years after the movie was finished. some of the most beautiful and utterly berserk comics ever produced.

From a 15 January Chinese news article:

----
Impressed by the success of the movie "Howl's Moving Castle", Studio Ghibli decided to make a "sequel": but this is no ordinary sequel. It will be a "Big Circus Show", with a story that begins with Sophie and Howl's thought of forming a circus together.

The "Big Circus Show" will be started in late April (27 April) and will last for about 100 days (till 21 August). Howl, Sophie, Witch of the Waste and all other important characters will jump out of the screen as actors and let the audience to experience a fantastic voyage of circus.

The nature of a "sequel" and a "circus" seem to be fundamentally different. What made Ghibli to come up with such an idea? Producer Suzuki explained, "Outwardly there seems to be no correlation between the 'sequel' and the original story. In the 'sequel', the characters will make you feel that they have feelings of isolation. But when we examine the outward appearances and the inner hearts of the characters again, you can find that it is related to the original story."

There will also be a gigantic "Howl's City" in the site of the show. All the characters in the story will be displayed as puppets. In the middle of the site, an old-style "tent house" will be built. There will be even more surprises waiting for the people. It will be a new record of the Museum of Contemporary Art of Tokyo that a movie-related show can occupy the museum for 100 days.

According to the the people in the movie industry, probably Director Miyazaki was influenced by the idea "Circus is the source of movies" which made Ghibli to come up with the decision of making a circus show. Producer Suzuki said, "we don't want to be limited to animation which is just a narrow form of creation. We hope that through the circus show, people can grasp the new charms of 'Howl's Moving Castle'."

http://www.nausicaa.net/miyazaki/interviews/miyazaki_moebious.html
http://www.miyazaki-moebius.com/
http://animeland.com/index.php?rub=articles&id=623

so ashamed to have only just watched this.

But you enjoyed it, right?

I think my favorite bit is when the stink monster comes in, and it turns out to just be a polluted river.

it's all about the scene on the train and all the ghostly passengers getting on and off. i must watch this again soon.

Giant radish spirit!

terrible film.

you mustn't say such silly things.

But you enjoyed it, right?

hell yeah, even tho it was the dubbed version. great fun - haters puzzle and sadden me. the 'domestication' of No-Face at Zeniba's amused me (amongst 99 other things) and i liked that Chihiro seemed to always have some new challenge to overcome every 5 minutes, and the general increase in scale of these challenges. now for My Neighbour Totoro i guess.

I prefer the dubbed version, even of Mononoke, where the celebrity voices are a bit distracting. You get more information. The subtitles are so... terse.

I tend to enjoy Miyazaki films a bit more if I don't parse for information so much, actually. Few of them make perfect linear sense.

Really NONE of them make perfect linear sense.

re dubbed i enjoyed hearing Susan Egan's voice as Lynn. and i thinki recognised Principal SKinner's Mom as the voice of the twin witches.

HEY if yr an adult and you expect good movies to make perfect linear sense then maybe you should watch more good movies amirite

I never watch Myazaki films with subtitles. I don't like to have half of the animation covered with superimposed words, and some of the young Japanese girls voices are really shrill to my ears.
In any case, both the Japenese and the Western versions are 'dubbed' - they're cartoons not real people!

otm.

wow i never realised

hahaha! you dumb man!

Hm!

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/hayao-miyazakis-spirited-away-to-get-stage-adaptation

(What's potentially all the more interesting -- though I'm finding it a little hard to believe -- is that it doesn't specifically say it's going to be a musical.)

this is the thread title huh

It is indeed.

That stage production has launched

A stage production of Spirited Away has opened in Tokyo and it might be the greatest thing you’ve ever seen. ✨

Photos via puppet designer and builder @TobyOlie. pic.twitter.com/e1sRxqt0T7

— Letterboxd (@letterboxd) March 5, 2022

Will be seeing this next Friday in London. Very excited!

Yes! I'm going later in the month and I am psyched!

(Is that the play of My Neighbour Totoro, though?)

The start of this thread is the least grumpy I've ever seen jess!