Favourite Miyazaki film

oh wow did not know that stuff, have never read/seen an interview w/ him. thanks!

he's so careful w/ antagonists, at least in his more recent period. either they have good reasons or they're honest within fairy-tale-style rules or they don't exist at all. i love how spirited away is mostly a movie about a girl who gets a job: dealing with weird customers, bitching with co-workers after hours, hating the boss but eventually understanding she has a business to run.

interview is here if yr interested. it's a bit disjointed but i dont know if that's a translation problem or if it was just kind of a rambling conversation.

http://www.nausicaa.net/miyazaki/interviews/afternausicaa.html

there's actually a ton of interviews there.

i love that nausicaa.net hasnt changed a thing in like a decade+

btw you nailed it strongo - that tension between inspiration & cynicism has basically defined miyazaki's career. i think the cynic in him is winning these days though. i mean, re:

the non miyazaki/takahata ghiblis have been kinda all over the map, quality-wise.

― death to ilx, long live the frogbs (strongo hulkington's ghost dad), Sunday, July 3, 2011 1:04 PM (4 days ago) Bookmark

ghibli's approaching a crossroads, sort of like where disney was in the 70s when the nine old men were drifting away or dying. they relied on those guys for decades without really doing anything to nurture fresh talent, and the disney golden age ended up shuddering to a halt instead of smoothly transitioning into the next era.

miyazaki has little regard for the work of anyone besides himself and his mentor takahata, and i think miyazaki hates the idea of anyone spoiling his legacy with subpar work after they pass. ghibli's resources are formidable, and if they wanted to they could easily develop ghibli into a creative powerhouse where young talent is nurtured. but the lack of interest in that future is why anything by the junior ghibli crew ends up being a crapshoot.

Did you all see the trailer for Ghibli's adaptation of The Borrowers, 'Arrietty' http://t.co/q9nTu5V ? They're doing separate dubs for the US and UK. This one's the British one.

― Alba, Sunday, July 3, 2011 4:51 PM (4 days ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

oh wow, i loved the borrowers as a kid. that actually looks pretty faithful... but i hope the rhyming voiceover is only on the trailer since it made me want to kill everyone involved with knives.

secret world of arrietty...due in Feb...

http://kottke.org/11/10/the-secret-world-of-arrietty

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Secret_World_of_Arrietty

I guess Miyazaki is playing an advisory role these days.

for anyone in toronto tiff lightbox is doing a studio ghibli series during march and april w/almost all of miyazaki's films but also takahata and others

IFC just did something similar in NYC. caught only yesterday. it was good!

I wasn't a fan of "Ponyo" at all, but I thought "“The Secret World of Arrietty” was absolutely lovely and satisfyingly melancholy. Mayazki didn't direct (he wrote and produced), but he may as well have. It bears some similarities to "Totoro" and the attention to detail is gorgeous. In fact, its languid, even slow pace was such a nice change from the usual. Loved it.

Loved: Spirited Away
Liked: Howl's Moving Castle, Kiki's Delivery Service
Indifferent: Princess Mononoke
Disliked: My Neighbor Totoro
― Nurse Detrius (Eric H.), Monday, April 6, 2009 12:16 PM (2 years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Put Ponyo into the "liked" category as well. Maybe someday I'll see what everyone loves in Totoro so much.

going to see arrietty today if I can convince my son to do it.

Took my kids, 7 and almost-4, to Arietty yesterday. They both dug it, and so did I. 2nd everything Josh said about it above, it's gorgeous and gentle, but enough action to keep things moving.

is it MIYAZAKI good or is it just good?

Loved: Spirited Away
Liked: Howl's Moving Castle, Kiki's Delivery Service
Indifferent: Princess Mononoke
Disliked: My Neighbor Totoro
― Nurse Detrius (Eric H.), Monday, April 6, 2009 12:16 PM (2 years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Put Ponyo into the "liked" category as well. Maybe someday I'll see what everyone loves in Totoro so much.

― dead-trius (Eric H.), Monday, 20 February 2012 15:55 (29 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Pretty much the same as me, although I warmed to Totoro after maybe 3 watches. Seems people appreciate it as a very gentle film for very young children with some poignant moments added on, but for me there's just not enough going on. Mononoke is okay in that it lays down the artistic groundwork for Spirited/Howl's, but the plot starts to wear about 3/4 of the way through and it lacked light relief.

xp Just good, but that's enough. It's no Ponyo, though.

Totoro is not for very young children or any age group in particular.

I'd count the baby / flappy bird / sootlings as light relief - the bit where the plot shifts about 3/4 of the way through is lovely I think, and genuinely dreamlike - "enough about that, we need to go do this!"

Arietty is Miyazaki-good. Totally feels like his movie.

Maybe someday I'll see what everyone loves in Totoro so much.

catbus

http://images5.fanpop.com/image/photos/27600000/Cat-Bus-my-neighbor-totoro-27648508-476-352.jpg

Haha guess who has completely mistaken Princess Mononoke for Sprited Away!

catbus otm

skip the first two-thirds and just watch the bit with Totoro and the Catbus in imo

(I am sort of kidding, or am I? I can't tell any more)

So how is the Earthsea film? I liked the books as a kid but I read that Le Guin was not pleased with it so I didn't bother with it at the time. But the talk on this thread is not overwhelmingly negative. Not positive either, mind...

my thoughts on it, as i recall, were that it was so ghibli-by-numbers that there wasn't very much space for earthsea-- but tbh the experience of watching the film is such a rage blackout i can't remember many details

catbus otm

agree

Loved: Spirited Away, Castle In the Sky, Princess Mononoke
Liked a Lot: My Neighbor Totoro, Castle of Cagliostro, Porco Rosso, Ponyo
Liked Okay: Howl's Moving Castle, Kiki's Delivery Service, Nausicaä
Disliked: uh...

wish someone would put out a comp of miyazaki/ghibli shorts

I really liked Arrietty, I saw it on Saturday and 2 days later it's still gently floating into my consciousness, which imo means it's fabulous.

the disney-created trailers for arrietty made it look kind of insipid, so i was really happy with how beautiful + engaging it ended up being. also, there were three little 5-year-old girls seated directly behind me in theater, and at first i was like "oh man they are going to get bored and noisy halfway through." but they ended up being equally enthralled! and when they did talk it was pretty funny. they couldn't figure out if the housekeeper character was good or bad for a while, and the ambiguity REALLY troubled them.

ha yes a girl behind me said, "I think she's bad" when the housekeeper had uprooted the boards.

The voice casting for Arietty (English dub) was so weird, though – Will Arnett as the strong but gentle, levelheaded, pragmatic Borrower dad. He sounded pretty sedate most of the time but every once in a while it was jarringly Gob Bluthy.

I got the UK edition, which has Mark Strong as Arrietty's dad with a gruff but caring approach. It seems odd that the UK dub (in this instance) might have more starpower than the US one; Saoirse Ronan plays Arrietty, vs Bridgit Mendler - is she a star over there? I've genuinely never heard of her.

Howls is on UK TV now. Definitely my favourite Ghibli now, and for ages Spirited Away was my alltime favourite film.

Caught the 2nd half; I've got the dvd, but there is something about a favourite film being on telly that makes me want to watch it even more. It is just superb, enormous rewatching value and there's something new every time I see it. Showing it on Saturday afternoon tv is excellent scheduling, I bet loads of children saw it for the first time - I envy those kids :)

Arietty was good except for the stupid stupid voice of the stupid boy with his breathless DYING RASP, and the terrible terrible coda at the end because I AM STRONG SINCE YOU ARE IN MY HEART. What the hell? Arietty could probably just climb inside his actual malfunctioning heart with a long-ass snorkle and keep it beating by kicking at the inside of left ventricle. I think I will love a dubbed vers, but everything done to translate/Disnify the film made it ∞ times worse.

What, you think the boy should have died at the end?

xpost You think? In my experience, Disney has done a great job (often with Lasseter) doing Ghibli dubbing and voice casting. I'm sure the boy was no better in the inevitably breathless Japanese language version.

Also, want to say from memory that Miyazaki (et all) have trouble with endings, a la Hitchcock and Spielberg.

Only ones that have stuck out as being bad choices to me were Arnett in Arietty and Billy Crystal in Howl's ––– both of whom were really subdued but I just had too strong of previous associations w/them. I can grouch with the best of them about celebrity voicecasting but Josh in Chicago is basically OTM.

Also I loved that dying boy so much, more kids movies should have a character who is just a walking, talking memento mori.

I also liked that he was kind of an ass and put his foot in his mouth constantly.

Ehh, I didn't mean to imply that the kid should have died, just that the line 'strong because you are in my heart' was morbidly sentimental and undermined any potential poignancy of the parting.

i will never forgive disney's dub team for making the cat in kiki talk at the end. kills the entire metaphor.

Billy Bob Thornton's voice casting in Princess Mononoke was particularly jarring for me

billy bob in mononoke was inspired!

I don't like Miyazaki still.

huh?

Also, want to say from memory that Miyazaki (et all) have trouble with endings, a la Hitchcock and Spielberg.

― Josh in Chicago, Saturday, February 25, 2012 8:58 AM (3 hours ago) Bookmark

yeah, maybe, but howl is the only miyazaki flick that i think is seriously undermined by its ending. the rest i'm good with. haven't seen arrietty (wtf is up w that name).

english voice acting has never bothered me, cuz i mostly watch these in japanese. did like bbt in mononoke.

Arietty is the actual name of Mary Norton's main character –– a corruption of Harriet, if I remember rightly.

lol, never read the borrowers. okay then.