Favourite Miyazaki film

anno's series nadia: the secret of blue water is also based on an original concept by miyazaki (hence its similarity to laputa: castle in the sky). nausicaa is still probably my favorite miyazaki film; as much as i like anno's work i'm not sure if i trust him at this point to do justice to the original.

Early reviews of the new one seem a little lukewarm.

IIRC Miyazaki said he was gonna retire after Princess Mononoke too... But then he went and made the most successful movie of his career.

Would the supposed Nausicaä sequel be based on the parts of the manga that came out after the movie? Because as good as the movie is, it still feels like it simplifies the complex, non black-and-white themes of life and ecology found in the manga a bit too much. Not sure if a sequel movie would rectify that, but it'd be cool to see them try.

i think you're right tuomas, he was supposed to bow out after ponyo

i had a hard time making complete sense of the nausicaa plot (even more than some of the other complex ghibli plots) but it impressed me the most visually. maybe b/c i first saw it in big theater unlike, sadly, a lot of the early-2000s/late-1990s stuff.

Japanese sites reporting that Hayao Miyazaki has announced his retirement from making films
http://mainichi.jp/mantan/news/20130901dyo00m200036000c.html

― ( X '____' )/ (zappi), Sunday, September 1, 2013 9:25 AM (10 hours ago) Bookmark

i'll believe it when he's dead

yeah hasn't he announced his 'retirement' like three times already?

i think so, i def. recall him saying this in early 00s

https://blog.twitter.com/2013/new-tweets-per-second-record-and-how

why would a 26 year old film generate so many tweets?

its become a cultural phenomenon, every time Laputa has aired on Japanese TV the number of people who've tweeted the "Balse" spell at the same time the characters do at the end of the film has grown.
supposed to be a press conference on Thursday about Miyazaki's retirement.

Cute phenomenon, I basically dig that. Rewatched Castle in the Sky recently to get through a bad hangover. Had my eyes closed most of the time so I went with the dub, which is bad, but not Kiki bad. Still basically a charming, harmless movie but the main appeal really is the animation of the collapsing train tracks in the chase at the beginning, and everything to do with the robot and the pastoral idyll of Laputa when they first arrive.

The robot on the rampage set piece is so good.

Oh god, yeah. The robot's eye-beam laser thing and the way it makes things swell up and explode is sort of the Platonic ideal of such things, like the broom-flying in Kiki. Also love how doomy it all is with the music and so on. Sells the dreadful potential of Laputa in the wrong hands much moreso than an "exciting" soundtrack or lots of jump cuts or whatever.

the press conference was earlier on today, Miyazaki quoted as saying “I think people are thinking, 'Oh, he's saying he's going to retire again,' but this time, I am serious.” There's a new Ghibli film scheduled for next summer but no details on what it is or who is directing it.

spending his retirement in the best possible way by making a samurai manga

http://24.media.tumblr.com/a6f942f71ddb0276ef40656b33f8543f/tumblr_mwi0xj090K1qbg80vo4_500.jpg
http://25.media.tumblr.com/c6b509762caefdfd96390a5993854c31/tumblr_mwi0xj090K1qbg80vo1_500.jpg
http://25.media.tumblr.com/54e234952a3639bbaa0b4dfcfb117d98/tumblr_mwi0xj090K1qbg80vo2_500.jpg

he should stick his hands in a lawnmower. that'd be the best thing he could do for the world

fp

i was gonna post how i always want to say "princess monkey monkey" and was that maybe wrong, so thanks for recalibrating my scale

Wtf, H4A?!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pWz2AyDD6Zc

https://vimeo.com/134668506

my daughter wanted to watch Princess Mononoke, that turned out to not be such a good idea

I can see how that could be a little traumatic. I'm not sure if my littlest one has watched Princess Mononoke yet. We watched Spirited Away not long ago. Not sure if my oldest remembers Mononoke. He wasn't really interested when I tried to show it to him at age 6.

Yeah Mononoke's not really for kids.

Of course, she's a little harder than me. Last night she accidentally ended up watching footage of some whale hunt, and I turned it off saying "I don't like people who hunt whales." And she was like "why don't you like people who hunt whales?" "I don't know, I just think they're too beautiful." "I don't think they're beautiful."

she's almost 8 and she wasn't traumatized by it (and I have never seen it/didn't get to watch it with her) so when I came home and asked her how it was she proceeded to relate the entire film to me in painstaking detail - when she got to the part about some guy getting his arms and head blown off I was like hmm maybe this movie was not for you. She has this penchant for asking to watch anime stuff and then when we do there's inevitably freaky demons and gore and just ugh why, I hate this shit

Totoro

i revisited totoro a few weeks ago and boy did i cry

totoro >>>>>>>>

totoro is just a bit plotless and kiddyish for me. it has moments, but i can't even really relate to it on a child-like level because there's not enough of a moving-along of the plot and a lot of drifty, waity parts.

that's why it's great! it's not a story it's an environment!

even so, i've never found it as absorbing as, say, Spirited Away which really is its own environment. Totoro is kind of pedestrian on the whole, with just these little cat things in the background who do, what, barely anything except sleep and fly around?

totoro is about being a child and transitioning through that magical ability to stay in a constant state of hallucination and wonder at the simple world

I acknowledge that's something that happens as a kid, but not really in the way it does in Totoro. So it feels more like an adult's take on childhood that rings a bit false to me.

for what it's worth, it resonated as accurate in my experience... though perhaps that's rose colored hindsight

even so, i've never found it as absorbing as, say, Spirited Away which really is its own environment. Totoro is kind of pedestrian on the whole, with just these little cat things in the background who do, what, barely anything except sleep and fly around?

your heart is cold

my little brother has grown up on miyazaki, princess mononoke was his favourite from a pretty young age. warmed my heart a bit how much he took to them.

these little cat things in the background who do, what, barely anything except sleep and fly around?

OK now you're describing me

forks otm, totoro is the only movies which perfectly captures my sense of being a young kid and endlessly fascinated by the mysteries of my neighbourhood and the local woods

maybe it has something to do with a rural youth upbringing?

i dunno, kids are pretty good at finding magic in mundane places no matter where they are

magical ability to stay in a constant state of hallucination and wonder at the simple world

I don't remember ever having this capacity!

one of my earliest memories is racing Mr. Rogers to my preschool alongside my mother's car. he was riding a bicycle. afterwards we shook hands and had interviews with the attending press. I also remember going to the zoo and seeing a tiger the size of a house walking around in an enclosure. Those are actual solid memories from childhood that come to mind that are surely hallucinations. I was probably about five.

yeah i have a lot of similarly crazy/impossible memories from childhood that i've assumed for years were dreams, but i find it hard to believe i'd remember dreams so vividly after decades. kids definitely live in a somewhat different world than the rest of us.

http://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/jun/07/childhood-hallucinations-common-research-psychotic-schizophrenia-why

i had a LOT of hallucinations as a kid; mostly just audio hallucinations these days

Oh don't get me wrong, I had a very active mind as a kid (and still do to some extent although logic tends to win me over) but Totoro somehow doesn't quite sum it up. Spirited Away is more in line with that strange dream/wake logic I think. I mean, I'd get freaked out by patterns in wood or be convinced there was a demon in the garage or whatever but Totoro feels forced and not enough at the same time. Sweet film, but sweet doesn't cur it quite enough. I'd it supposed to be more of a kids' film or an adult film?

https://english.kyodonews.jp/news/2015/08/371632.html

had a horrible feeling that was going to lead me to an obituary so *phew* i'm very glad that is not the case

Just watched "The Castle of Cagliostro" for the first time, it was terrific. It is Miyazaki's first full length film and is a sort of James Bond-style action comedy taking place in a fantastical moving castle, with several scenes directly referenced in the NES Castlevania. There is an amazing car chase, and secret trap doors, and a counterfeit money operation (which Speilberg probably ripped off for the Goonies), and a bunch of ninjas, and an epic battle on the face of the clock tower, and so much more. The whole time, of course, the artwork is utterly beautiful.

http://www.lasertimepodcast.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/Image-1.jpg

I always mean to revisit that one! I saw it early in my first wash of anime fandom, on a second- or third-generation tape; it might in fact be my first Miyazaki. I recall it being a fun romp and yet I've never gotten around to revisiting it beyond the first couple of minutes.