Favourite Miyazaki film

for me, it's "fly"

both for me. it's got some of the most relevant-to-me-as-an-adult themes of any kids' film i can think of. all-time fave.

first time i saw it, i was in a real slump. i'd lost my job, couldn't get the motivation to find a new one and was generally sinking into a hole. the film was like therapy

One of the themes of Kiki that I don't feel is talked about enough is the disparity between the smalltown and city life. The film exhibits it most with the younger characters in the city of Koriko who come off as spoiled, unappreciative and don't respect elders.... Even Jiji senses it from the urban cat. Such disparity is definitely not universal to Japan* and for those of us who traveled far away from rural areas to make a living and take up residence in a large city, it's definitely something that quietly appeals to me.

*Japan has a very complicated relationship with the countryside/remote areas of Japan as 92%(!!!) of the population lives within the urban boundaries of large cities, so Japan has perhaps a more severe snobbery towards quaint countryside culture. Many newcomers to big cities quickly lose their local dialectical accents in an attempt to blend in.

it was an early in-the-theater date with my partner (i think the first movie we saw together!) so it has special significance and we try to see it once a year when gkids screens it... not this year of course.

Xpost
Albert, if you haven’t already seen Takahata’s Only Yesterday it sounds like you’d be into it

Also maybe Makoto Shinkai's /Your Name/ though that involves a lot of emo teen whatnot that didn't really work for me. But very much a "small town/city" movie.

Kiki was first described to me as a movie about freelancing. I watched it and thought of it as a movie about burnout. I think it sort of picks up and reflects to you whatever aspects of adult career responsibility you happen to be struggling with at the moment.

yes

xp to rob: haha yes... Only Yesterday not only explores urban/rural dynamics but also serves as propaganda for organic farming in Yamagata-shi haha.

i teach in an architecture school, and I daydream about someday helping run a creativity/inspiration/mental-reset film series. Kiki would always be in there, along with Mystery of Picasso.

What a cool idea! What else is on your list?

lily, that's insightful!

aw thanks Lily! haha the list usually gets about this far in my head and i just start thinking "man, kiki is so great" and get distracted.

might be the kind of thing that would be best if it polled multiple professors for ideas, or was a collaborative thing with students... different sensibilities, different ways of thinking about creativity and stuff.

maybe other art documentaries.... i haven't seen that many. the ones about Andy Goldsworthy (Rivers and Tides, Leaning Into the Wind), i find really soothing and maybe similar to Mystery of Picasso (where painting is a form of play and nothing is a precious masterpiece) since they're about impermanent art. the work is more meticulous and tedious in a way but seems restorative and meditative which i think is something a lot of students would like to feel. my kids this semester responded more than usual to the early Bauhaus period, heavily influenced by Arts and Crafts and Expressionist ideas about making --- they want to be off screens and working with their hands, they really respect it and certainly romanticize it somewhat. but i can also imagine some other kind of student really responding to something maximalist, saturated, dynamic, etc.

(i would also include Kedi, the Turkish documentary about street cats and their wonderful world, which sits alongside Kiki in my Letterboxd top 4.)

Rescreened tonight with my family and my wife has a theory that I think forks might entertain:

Kiki is celiac and her residence (the flour-coated storage room converted to bedroom) triggered the loss of her magic as well as depression, anxiety, loss of ambition.

i... i like this theory?
(she's going through puberty tho)

(also the mom in totoro is pregnant)

The mom in Totoro is the only survivor of the accident that killed the rest of the family, they are all dead

Some other theories: Tombo (or Osono's husband... or the man who works in the clocktower that the dirigible crashes into) impregnated Kiki and she gave birth secretly off-camera (but is all alluded to via Jiji and Lily) and suffers post-partum depression.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ncs4AGA8Sfc

Ghibli have finally gone full CG. Not a direction I had expected (or hoped) they would ever go in.

It's a baffling decision given Miyazaki's previous hard-line stance on the matter. I always appreciated in previous films that they used CG in a limited way but which served the material - e.g. the movement of Howl's Castle. This just looks like a blatant attempt to compete with Pixar, Sony et al. Not great.

hmmmm...

Yeah looks like total shit compared to their usual work. Is that a proper trailer or an animatic type thing or...

https://www.awn.com/news/fans-already-disgruntled-studio-ghiblis-earwig-and-witch

I have a lot of time for his work on Ronja the Robber's Daughter (think Gillian Anderson tested out her Thatch impression on it!) but Goro M is shaping up to be a terrible custodian of Ghibli.

Supported completely by his father, Goro states, “I was the only one among the people at Ghibli who knows that method of creation… I made the anime with a young staff and didn’t consult with the old guys at all.”

This is super cursed and also the funniest goddamn thing I’ve seen all week pic.twitter.com/OOAblOwomM

— JR (@USofJR) February 24, 2021

I need to be careful who I share that with, but it *is* incredible

Howl's Moving Castle would be vastly improved by a special edition that replaces Billy Crystal with anyone else

no argument

is the Jar Jar Binks guy available

We've tried to get through the new one 3x I think? Longest we've lasted is 10 mins.

What new one?

is the Jar Jar Binks guy available

― so tonight that I might ramona quimby (f. hazel)

Donald Trump doesn't have much on.

What new one?

― chap, Sunday, March 21, 2021 6:52 AM (two hours ago)

scroll up to December 18th posts^^^

Finally watched Porco Rosso, one of the few I hadn't seen. Great, odd movie, Porco is a fascinating protagonist.

scroll up to December 18th posts^^^

― Jersey Al (Albert R. Broccoli)

Oh yeah I'd suppressed that trailer.

London folks - https://www.timeout.com/london/theatre/my-neighbour-totoro

i see your totoro and raise you kabuki nausicaa

https://gizmodo.com/studio-ghibli-nausicaa-stage-adaptation-returns-hayao-m-1848844119

(looking at that little clip, an ohmu nightlight would be good)

(finally watching cagliostro)

tintin, ape-ninjas, little 60s cars, flared orange 70s suits and haircuts, bond in marienbad, unexpected soundtrack

maybe absurd to say this about anything Miyazaki, but I think that one is underrated. I spent a while looking at gifs from it the other day, it's such a great classic cartoon

the girl seems a bit feeble (i'm only half way thru)

oic there's also an amazonian non-feeble girl

Cagliostro is of a piece with earlier Lupin III cartoons, if somewhat elevated

also the animation is crazy awesome

(in a ghibli movie? no way? lol)

but i really do love the like... kineticism of the animation in cagliostro, which feels like it's allowed to be that way for longer stretches of time than the films that came out afterward (i could be INCREDIBLY wrong about this)

The opening car chase in Cagliostro justifies cinema in itself.

yes kineticism is exactly what I meant by "classic cartoon," there's so much good physical action in it

I haven't seen anything else Lupin, is there stuff as good as this in it?

https://64.media.tumblr.com/43fccdd08d353354393473f8e74bbee2/tumblr_mlco9qWYma1qzqnxxo1_500.gif

that gif is the essence of lupin yes