Slashdot Mirror
Disney Aquires Sen to Chihiro, Lasseter to Dub
peter_gzowski writes "Disney
has finally announced that it will be bringing Miyazaki's anime masterpiece Sen
to Chihiro (Spirited Away) over to North American theaters. Sen to Chihiro is
the most successful non-U.S. produced movie in the world. It has grossed about 30 billion yen ($226 million U.S.), which is more than Titanic (the previous record holder). We can expect it to be here around July."
John Lasseter of Pixar fame is lined up to consult on the dub. No voices
yet confirmed, but John: I'm available and willing.
I thought the article was about Disney acquiring another senator... Hollings is annoying enough already.
This review contains some spoilers, don't read it if you like your movie surprises.
Sorry CmdrTaco, unless you have a SAG card you won't be dubbing anything :P
Actually, Titanic had a worldwide gross of nearly $2 billion. Sen to Chihiro still has some catching up to do.
unfortunatly Disney locked up all the Ghibli rights a while back. They control the distribution in the US. This the sucky dubs of stuff like Mononoke.
Well call me crazy because I'm becoming too passionate about something offtopic to this discussion, but if we're just going to forget it after one day, no wonder they're going to get away with it.
What time is it/will be over there? Check with my iPhone app!
1. You must not speak English better than a native speaker who is 5 years old.
2. The dubbing must be out of sync from the movie by at least 1 second.
3. At least one out every ten words must be a gross mis-translation to add to the humor.
4. Whenever there is a plot-clarification dialog, it must be mangled beyond the point of sanity and include a chicken-crossing-the-road joke.
5. The dubber must drink a shot of vodka for every time the end of the world is threatened. Or, one shot every five minutes, whichever is greater.
6. If there is no humor is in the translation, it must be substituted with a 'momma' joke.
Are Bob Goldweight and Gilbert Godfried going to be the voices for the english release ;-)
Eve Fairbanks says I drive a hybrid!LOL
. . . the only one to have read that at first as "Disney acquires Senator Tochihiro . . ."?
Ga'h! It's aCquires! a**C**quires! ! ! !
Heh, how does the Linux/Geek world look when one of its largest internet hubs misspells something incredibly simple like acquires? Grarr!
:*(
Another purely defensive license, before anime washes over the decks and the S.S. Wish Upon a Star founders.
So, how many theaters will this one appear in? Eight? Whaddya say guys? How about we go all out and book 100 theaters this time? Maybe a TV commercial or two?
While you're throwing money around, how about hiring some writers? You know, like the anime companies do? They've got television series for nine-year-olds with better dramatic structure and story quality than some Hollywood theater dramas.
Meanwhile, in other news, plans were just announced for (dalmatians, dalmatians<105, dalmatians++), Cinderella 3: I Just Want my Pumpkin Back, Your Honor, and Tron: The Musical.
..and that Suncoast anime DVD rack just keeps growing...
And as usual, the rest of the world scratches its head in puzzlement over Japan's antics.
Well, we really should cut 'em some slack. They're just in a hurry trying to figure out where to put all that anime licensing money.
Does anyone really want a dub of this?? I would rather have it properly subtitled, and shown with the original voices & music. Dubs almost never capture the mood of the scene, or the subtleties of the dialogue correctly.
Then again, perhaps I'm just bitter because of the horrible dubs made my companies like Funimation to some of my favorite pieces of Anime. Bad translations, awful voice work, and horrible replacement music. Let's hope the same doesn't happen with Sen to Chihiro.
I know a few people who work there and they make you sign a contract that says every thing you create while you are employed at disney is property of disney. It dosn't matter if you do it at home affter work. So for example you can't work on GPL software on your free time
Void and unenforceable in California. "Against the public policy of this State" I believe appears in the text of the statute. No amount of Tinkerbell fairy dust is going to make it any different.
Now, if it's related to Disney's business, and done on their time, then it should belong to Disney.
So are they going to bring in the tentacle pr0n stuff also?
When I first read the title of the article, my mind misread it as "Disney acquires Sen. Chihiro".
It sounds crazy, but Disney buying out a member of Congress seems somehow plausible.
Ergonomica Auctorita Illico!
Why in the world is miyazaki going with disney again. Disney has absolutely no understanding of japanese anime and only wants to do crappy releases to discredit it. IMNSHO, disney needs to get out of the animation business. Pixar doesn't need disney. Everything from disney the last 10 years has sucked (I don't consider pixar's movie disney produced). Here's to hoping michael isner is fired and some one with an understanding of movies takes his place.
When it's released in the States, the film will invariably have been Disneyfied beyond recognition. Maybe they'll even hire Pixar to add a few cute, computer generated creatures to it. :)
And Slashdot, should we or should we not support Disney? After all, they are the primary advocates of The Root of All Evil (tm), the SSSCA. (I loathe the SSSCA, for your information.)
Do you like German cars?
Please suggest that digital projection theatres have midnight showings with subtitles and the original Japanese voice tracks instead of the celebrity flavor of the month voices (like that X-files chick or the guy from slingblade). I already sat through a Miyazaki film with tacky Hollywood dub.
You appear to be correct. And I don't think that even includes rentals ($324m US). I really don't think Titanic's global performance will be beaten for a long, long time.
python -c "x='python -c %sx=%s; print x%%(chr(34),repr(x),chr(34))%s'; print x%(chr(34),repr(x),chr(34))"
When one works in a creative capacity for someone else, clearly they should be granted the right to copy and make derivative works and so on. But they should not be granted THE Copyright.
I'm not holding my breath though.
While I want to see all of Miyazaki/Ghibli's movies released theatrically in North America, I can't help but wonder about the order they are choosing.
Sen deals with Japanese Mythology (which many North Americans won't know/care anything about), and of course, there's the ghost/spirit angle which will drive the biblethumpers down south crazy...
Nevertheless, they perhaps should've stuck to some more genuine "crowd pleasers" to get the ball rolling. Frankly I'm amazed that they didn't already do a full theatrical release of Laputa (or Castle in the Sky as they're calling it). It always generates the biggest and best reaction amongst first-time Ghibli viewers IMHO.
Meanwhile, in other news, plans were just announced for(dalmatians; dalmatians<105; dalmatians++), Cinderella 3: I Just Want my Pumpkin Back, Your Honor, and Tron: The Musical.
Notably absent is Pinocchio II, possibly because another studio got there first and f*cked it up.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Why even this? The whole work-for-hire thing is crazy.
Well, technically it isn't Work for Hire either. Work for Hire is someone independently producing something (not as an employee) for the specific purpose of being purchased by someone else. With the work of an employee, this is assumed, since the employee is paid for their time already.
Did Disney create that character design? Only legally. At the end of the day, some individual or a small group did so. Yet they don't even have moral rights to their work!
Unless they negotiated them in advance, then that is correct.
When one works in a creative capacity for someone else, clearly they should be granted the right to copy and make derivative works and so on. But they should not be granted THE Copyright.
Agreed, under a couple of conditions: Any derivative works should not be commercially competitive with the original, and copies should obviously be limited in that they cannot be sublicensed elsewhere.
Most companies that hire creative works are *very* heavy-handed about this stuff so they can "maximize their potential upside" and all that. I really don't think it's necessary.
Not only in the US--they control the distribution world-wide, including in Japan. That was what they really wanted when they went after the Ghibli library a few years back--the lucrative Japanese market. America was just an afterthought, and we can see the results of that now.
That was why the Mononoke DVD almost didn't have Japanese audio--Buena Vista Japan objected, fearing that the Japanese would import the DVD back into Japan, and DVD pirates would make cheap knockoffs, and it would hurt their bottom line.
The thought over on the Miyazaki Mailing List is, in part, that Spirited Away might just be Miyazaki's second chance in the USA. If it turns out to be a big hit, then that might kick Disney into gear cranking out the DVDs, if they can put "From the director of Spirited Away" on the cover in big letters. See this message from Marc Hairston for the reasoning.
Editor Emeritus and Senior Writer, TeleRead.org
I'm sure Sen to Chichiro is very good but let's not get too fan-boyish about it, eh?
Rob buddy, you'd just better pray that Kathleen didn't read this one.
"I may not have morals, but I have standards."
It's been out for 5 weeks already.
Is this the same Disney that wants to destroy your right to enjoy your computer hardware and software technology just so they can methods to prevent you from accessing the content you have already bought and paid for? Is this the same Disney that so many people are now telling friends and family to boycott? Is this the same Disney that has bought and paid for Senator Hollings, D-SC?
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
Lassiter lives in Sonoma, where I live. Maybe I can get a job.
Oooh, oooh, Mr. Kotter, I can do voice overs!
144l. ph34r my 133t l3g4l 5k1lz!
So... doesn't this put this in a bad position.
From one perspective we have a great movie translated and dubbed into English.
On the other hand, profits from this movie will go right to back the SSSCA.
The SSSCA will basically mean the destruction of the Open Source community. Microsoft has a patent on DRM based Operating Systems and even if Linux, at some point, does become compliant with the SSSCA, I am sure MS will not license the patent to the OSS community.
What am I going to do? I am not going to be watching or buying any more Disney movies.
I don't think I could look at myself in the mirror.
I don't know what you guys are going to do but I think you should think long and hard about the situation.
Just as long as the dub is reasonably well-done, I think the movie will do well here in the USA. I thought the dub of Mononoke Hime actually quite good considering the translation from the original Japanese.
:-)
However, given the finicky demands of DVD owners, I expect the DVD version of Spirited Away to have both the English-dubbed version and the Japanese language original complete with literal English translation subtitles of the original Japanese. That's why I really liked the DVD version of Princess Mononoke.
Although this movie has made more than Titanic In Japan, Titanic has grossed 1.8 trillion dollars worldwide. That's a lot. Cartoons do not have the same wide appeal in the United States (or the rest of the world) as they do in Japan. The highest grossing cartoon ever, The Lion King, made less than half of Titanic worldwide.
The entire audience I saw it with squirmed uncomfortably when they saw what was going on.
"Otaku" does not mean hard-core anime fan. This is a mis-use common amongst American / western anime fans. Otaku is a word used to refer to someone who is REALLY into something, a fanatic, someone obsessed with something.
I have lived in Japan for the last 5 years. I have met people who take pictures of trains. They are otaku. My friend jokes that I was an origami otaku when I spent a few weeks making origami during all my free time at work. My (Japanese) wife says her boss is a computer otaku. This is a lighter joking way to use otaku, but it can be applied to any kind of hobby. The word in no way carries any connotations that are exclusive to manga or anime. An 'otaku' is someone who is a little strange.
Most of the perfectly normal Japanese kids I have known who enjoy reading manga and watching anime are NOT otaku. I have heard of a guy who had finished high school and hadn't looked for a job - he stayed in his room all day with the door closed reading manga, only leaving the house to buy more manga. That WOULD be a manga otaku.
Now about this story... I am really excited to hear that Sen to Chihiro will be available in English. I recal seeing the trailers for this movie for months while in the theatre to see other movies. It looked wierd but wonderful and the author is legendary.
Whilst I scratch my head and try and figure out how that POS brought to us by Celine (I'm a Canadian, we hate her too) and Leo made so much cash - even in Japan.
Part of the tackiness comes from having to fit the english dialog to the japanese lip movements. It gets very stilted when you have long pauses and then rushed strings of words to get the lips to match. It sounds like every character is doing a Captain Kirk impression.
Subtitles all the way for me...
I really hope Lasseter dubs one of the lines in the movie as "rip, mix, burn."
I have a website. It's about Macs.
You are wrong in so many ways I don't know where to start. Disney is just marketing for Pixar, nothing more. Pixar is fucking rich, and has enough money to do whatever they want, least of all is buy their own hardware. Disney simply promotes and distributes their films. Pixar has a very long history and Disney is not part of it. Do a little more reading.
How exactly would someone buying out the horribly unsuccesful square pictures and hiring away animators from Pixar make it a profitable company? Profitability comes from a succesful buisness plan. That would probably mean making an entertaining movie, and that is something that animators are not the main source of. Final Fantasy was a rediculously bad movie sugar coated with beautiful CGI and quirky, unrealistc combonations of motion capture and traditonal animation. Pixar's movies are clever, well thought out, well written, well acted, well animated, and well marketed. Yes they have some of the best in world working for them, but that alone doesn't make good movies, and certainly doesn't make profitability.
True, Pixar does have compitition that isn't run by disney. However DreamWorks was started by Steven Spielburg.
This has no relevance to anything in your post.
however the talent that is making pixar so great could easily find a way out of any contracts they have with disney and work for another studio
How exactly do you know this? How do you know they have contracts, could go somewhere else, or even want to?
Please tell you have been drinking, or are just a very skilled troll.
This Wiki Feeds You TV and Anime - vidwiki.org
You're mistaken.
... if the parties expressly agree in a written instrument signed by them that the work shall be considered a work made for hire." U.S.C. Title 17, Chapter 1, Section 101
A work for hire is a work prepared by an employee within the course and scope of his employment.
OR
"a work specially ordered or commissioned for use as a contribution to a collective work
"Work for Hire" is traditionally used to describe cases of independent contribution to a larger work. It is rarely if ever used to describe the work of an employee, where it is presumed as part of employment.
And, while I would love to see it in the theatres, I'm not going to put money in their pockets by doing it.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
Frankly speaking, I do not believe that either Hollings or Disney have anything but the best of their interests in mind.
I do not think that Disney deserves the time or money that they seek to get from me. I do not think that I should be supporting a company that so callously thinks of me and everybody else in this country- that they presume that all of us are thieves and that they need to get the government to make it such that their stuff is protected from us.
When someone falsely accuses me of something, I generally do not associate or do business with them. And, that's what Disney and all the other businesses and politicians are doing by supporting the SSSCA- they're accusing all of us of being thieves. I'm going to do what I can to not put money in Disney's pockets. I was thinking of going to Disneyworld this summer. Now, I'm not so sure. I don't think I'll be going to their movies at all until they change their tune, and very likely all movies because I suspect the other MPAA members are for this bill as well. I don't think I'll be purchasing anything licensed from their properties either for the same reason. I'll make it a point of mentioning that they were the biggest backer of the SSSCA and what the SSSCA is all about when opportunities present themselves- and I've already done so several times this last week. The results seem favorable as the people that I told didn't know this all was going on and they had issues with the idea and with all of what has gone down about the hearings and all.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
Agreed. Subtitles are fine for the second or third time I see a movie, but I vastly prefer dubs for the first showing. I want to be able to see what is going on, and the subtitles take that away.
Because of this litigation has concentrated on Section 1 of the statute, which states that a work made for hire is "a work prepared by an employee within the scope of his or her employment".
thus,
used to describe the work of an employee, where it is presumed as part of employment.
For the sake of completeness, shall I quote the entire text of the title next time? Once I'm found quoting myself, that would seem to indicate all of the relevant information has been covered adequately.
Literally "otaku" is "[your] house". It's a personal pronoun meaning "you," but quite formal, cold, and distant (see note). People who use "otaku" to mean "you" outside its normal usage pattern (essentially certain types of sales situations) are socially challenged individuals who have difficulty connecting with others. Since this social trait frequently coincides with an intense interest in something other than people (like anime or trainspotting), it's a hallmark of nerdiness, and so "otaku" has come to be the name for such people.
Note: This shift in meaning from noun (house) to pronoun (you) to noun (nerd) is not unusual in Japanese pronouns. There are about 80 well-known ways of saying "I", about a dozen in common use, and countless more in literary/historical use.
Let's consider a case in point: young boys refer t themselves as "boku," which originally meant something like "manservent." Since people often refer themselves and others by their roles, "boku" would indeed once have been a word for onesself, in certain circumstances. At some point in the past hundred years or so, it shifted from roughly "squire" to to a general word for the squire-like self, i.e., a young bou. Interestingly enough, the word "boku" can also mean "you," when used by someone else to address a boy; for example, his mother may call him that. (In English, we have the opposite -- parents call themselves what the children call them.)
Another example is "kimi," which originally something like "prince" (I think), but is now a warm and close "you" for certain social standings, perhaps like the French "tu" but with more restrictions on social use, age of participants, etc.
A related word for you is "kisama." But don't use it! Even though the "sama" suffix is an honorifi (a step more monorific than the well-known "san") using the resulting "kisama" to an individual is an invitation to a fistfight.
Japanese is a fascinating language, and has had hundreds of years to evolve nuances of meaning and usage in pronouns, nouns, and verbs expression relationships between people.
It's a very important fact since it's the first time that an animated movie which, moreover, happens to be a japanes animated movie won such an important prize. I don't know how many of you US based folks (I'm italian and I live in Italy, at the moment) heard of this movie festival but it's a pretty important festival here in Europe and the movies which get the prizes are usually considered to be high quality movies. I hope this will help animated movies to exit from the ghetto where they are (childish movies) and start being considered only movies; moreover I hope the prize will help the anime to be considered normal movies and not porn or low quality movies.
Ok, enough for the rant now,
Andrea
PS some more rant ;) I submitted the Berlin Prize story some weeks ago but it didn't make it to the main page, don't know why though. Sic transit gloria Slashdoti.
Alright. I don't call Hacker Otakus "Otakus". I call them "l33t Hax0rz". I don't call Otaku Ravers "Otakus". I call them "candyravers". I don't call Renn Faire Otakus "Otakus". I call them "Fucking annoying SCA people".
Primarily in English-speaking culture, "Otaku" came from and tends to stick in the domain of anime. The only people that tend to use the word, in North America at least, use it in a reference to Anime fanatics. And anybody who overextends the name understands that its bridge into this culture is from the Anime fans. As a result, on the most part, the only people who complain about Otaku only being used with reference to Anime fans are, in fact, anime otakus.
I'm a Rocky Horror Picture Show Otaku. But I never really refer to myself as that (Usually I stick to "Rocky Horror Freak").
And yes, I realize how ethnocentric that attitude is, but the fact that this board is in the English Language kinda limits the jargon in this case. In the english language, the jargon term "Otaku" refers to a hardcore Anime fanatic.
Except to Otakus.
*runs to see if this is actually in the jargon file anywhere*
Crap. Someone wanna bug ESR about this?
Karma: Non-Heinous
You should learn to read.
I watched an old Hong Kong Kungfu flick once with sub-titles that went like this:
Distraught hero is discussing his next course of action after taking a drubbing from the bad guy, he is talking with his teacher
Student: should I challenge bad guy to a duel and restore my families honour?
At this point the teacher speaks for about 2 minutes, then the sub-title:
NO!
Cracked me up.
I've also found different sub-titles on the same movie, one was abridged, the other was a fair bit wordier and told the sory much better.
The point is, bad sub-titles can be just as bad as bad dubbing.
Anarchists never rule
The entire audience I saw it with squirmed uncomfortably when they saw what was going on.
Really? I didn't notice that in the audience I saw it with, and the theater was quite literally a few blocks away from where the WTC used to stand. In fact the theater itself was most likely closed for a while after 9/11...
Wow, I'm glad that you know so much about pixar. So I guess the guys I know who work for pixar are mis-informed. I don't know where you get your information from, but disney doesn't own all the hardware. On the contrary, pixar acts like a division. Here is an old article in businessweek feb 24, 1997.
On Monday, Feb. 24, Eisner and Pixar founder Steven Jobs announced a $15 million deal in which Disney bought a 2.5% stake in Pixar Animation Studios, the computer animation shop that made 1995's hit Toy Story. Disney also gets warrants to buy another 2.5% of Pixar if it chooses.
Pixar doesn't need disney. Pixar had tons of studios wanting to partner with them, so the idea pixar will die without disney is ludicruous.
"Disney Acquires Senator Chihiro, ..."?