Sen To, X-Men 2

liquidbrains writes "With 'Princess Mononoke' fresh in our memories, the number one highest grossing film in Japan -ever- is coming to the US. Thanks to Disney and Pixar's John Lasseter, who has supervised the dub, we can soon expect a fine English adaptation of animation master Hayao Miyazaki's latest masterpiece, 'Spirited Away'. See the trailer here." Reader thefalconer writes "It seems that Apple has just released the very first trailer to X-Men 2 on their website. From what I've seen this movie looks like it's going to rock! Too bad I have to wait for May of next year!"

Comments

Direct XMen2 trailer links

[Sparr0]

well, not quite direct, damn akamai

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Re:Direct XMen2 trailer links

[PhoenxHwk]

Choose to save those links in the parent instead of opening them - you'll get the shot to save the 13 MB video to hard drive :-P

Boycott Disney

[HanzoSan]

I dont care if Disney made this movie or not, any movie where Disneys name is anywhere in the credits I will not buy, rent, or support in any fashion whatsoever.

Re:Boycott Disney

[David Jao]

I dislike Disney as much as you do. In fact, I've been boycotting MPAA movies in general -- I haven't watched an MPAA movie in a revenue-generating manner since Star Wars (episode I, not II).

But in this case there is a legitimate way to get the movie without lining Disney's pockets. Just buy the DVD from Japan, where it's already been released to DVD. You don't have to go to Japan either. You can order online from CD Japan or many other places. The DVD even includes English subtitles, so you'll have no problem following the movie.

Although Disney's name still appears in the credits of the Japanese DVD (if you can read Japanese...), they don't get revenue from the sale. That's because Disney bought only the worldwide distribution rights to the film. They don't get anything from sales within Japan.

Be warned that the Japanese DVD is region 2. Most DVD players in the US can't play region 2 discs (if you have to ask, then yours can't).

If you need help/want to save these trailers

[BathTub]

I have put up some direct links on a page here :
http://homepages.inspire.net.nz/~bathtub/traile rs. html

Re:Sen to Chihiro no Kamikakushi

[BJH]

Be aware that Japanese fans have been up in arms over the Japanese DVD release. Apparently, the color balance is way off the original theater release - it's heavily red-biased.

Four Words:

[NeuroManson]

alt.binaries.multimedia.anime

See it without excessive mouse raping (and it's subbed, sorry, some of you will have to deal with the horrors of reading)...

Or try for it on any P2P service...

For an early review of the English dub...

[parliboy]

Anime News Network claims to have seen a 35mm. Read about it here.

The short version: Absolutely nothing was cut from the movie. Not the smokes, not the booze, nothin'. However, a few lines have been added to help fill in certain blanks. He also claims that the dubbing was better than on Mononoke.

A non-literal translation

[JeFurry]

One of the things that made the US release of "Princess Mononoke" more accessable to Western audiences was the excellent translation by Neil Gaiman. Gaiman didn't just make a literal translation (try comparing the soundtrack to the "literal translation" subtitles if you have the Region 1 DVD), he also adapted the narrative slightly so that some assumed cultural references were replaced with ones which would be more familiar to us, and conversations would flow in a way more natural to English speakers. He even went as far as to use words that would roughly lip-sync to the film, unlike the literal version. This is a heck of a lot of work to do, and shows real dedication.

True anime fans, used to subtitles, might balk at this - they'll get the cultural references and know the background. But think back to when you saw your first anime, and how alien some concepts seemed, and don't forget that the R1 DVD edition also contains the original soundtrack and literal translation subtitles, so you still have that option as well as the greater audience appeal resulting from the (respectfully done) Westernisation.

I hope future dub projects get this kind of attention... it makes quite a big difference. Gaiman said he'd have to be mad to ever do it again. Not an easy job, it seems.

Has anyone seen other well-done dubs from studio Ghibli on DVD? My other half and I love their work, and want the option of the literal sub/japanese dub, but would also like an English soundtrack if possible...

Re:A non-literal translation

[Mononoke]

The Mononoke dub was indeed excellent, but it still falls short of the original audio.

Agreed.

There was a nice review of a pre-screening of Spirited Away on the nausicaa.net mailing list. Sounds like Disney put more effort into getting it right this time. They've used talented voice actors (Quoting from the review Daveigh Chase as Chihiro/Sen, David Ogden Stiers as the Kamaji/Boiler Room Man, Suzanne Pleshette as Yababa and Zeniba, and Susan Egan as Lin) instead of 'name stars' as they did on Mononoke. Chase was voice of Lilo in Lilo&Stitch. John Ratzenberger (Cheers, Toy Story) also has a roll.

I'm glad to see they went with talent this time.

Re:A non-literal translation

[Ashyukun]

The dub of Tonari no Totoro that was released some time ago was for the longest time, at least in my eyes, the benchmark for quality dubbing. The voices actually very very closely matched the original voice cast- and the acting was pretty much spot on. They also didn't change much in the way of dialogue or cultural references, or at least stayed with the spirit (no pun intended) of the original dialogue (at least as I've seen it subtitled- as I don't speak Japanese nearly well enough I can't say for certain). The Mononoke Hime dub wasn't bad- it was impressive that it tried hard to convey the spirit of what was going on and while they didn't particularly keep with matching up voices they didn't do too bad- but I still think the Totoro dub was far better (though admittedly easier- it had a much smaller cast, somewhat simpler plot, and less action to deal with).

Sen To Chihiro ..

[denisb]

Saw the R2 DVD with English subs yesterday, and it is indeed an amazing movie. I wish it would appear here in a cinema some time. Not much chance of that happening though (I am living in Norway).

Not as epic as Mononoke, but definitely magical, and no not comparable to any Disney animated feature I ever saw.

Could happen it didnt go down too well with the general US moviegoers though, it is indeed quite asian when it comes to all the gods and spirits etc. And the lovestory plotline is not exactly conventional :-)

Re:highest EVER?

[M-2]

Mononoke Hime (Princess Mononoke) was the highest grossing film in Japan that year. Then Titanic came out, and it surpassed Mononoke Hime.

Then 'Spirited Away' came out and surpassed Titanic in gross profits.

Re:Trailer Music

[cjpez]

The music... is Mars by Gustav Holst... It just doesn't work with this trailer... Almost like they threw it on at the last minute because they didn't have anything else.

I've got some friends who work on music for movies (orchestration, etc), and as it turns out, the music for most movies tends to be quite incomplete until just before the release, which is why movie trailers tend to use well-known classical pieces (Carmina Burana comes to mind), or clips from other movies' soundtracks (the themes from Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves and Stargate come to mind). They had to completely re-record all of the music for one pretty major film mere weeks before it was hitting theatres.

That said, I didn't mind the music from the X2 trailer. :)

No changes, no edits, just dubs

[Tenebrious1]

While I realize they aren't Making this movie, I can't help but wonder how much of it they will chop out, or change to fit their idea of what a movie should be.

If you'd read the article at Nausicaa.net, you'd see that there will be no changes except the dubs.

According to Mr. Suzuki, the producer of Ghibli, other companies such as Fox and Time-Warner contacted Tokuma, but Disney was the only company willing to agree to this condition, and that was the main reason why Tokuma chose Disney as a partner.

The VHS release of Kiki's Delivery Service had a ton of Disney previews before the movie. The Princess Mononoke US DVD release had very little if any Disney spots, I don't know if it even showed the Disney castle with Twink flying over it as in other Disney movies. AFAIR it was the the least "disnified" Disney release ever. Most people were satisfied in the DVD release- but felt they bungled the theatrical release. Let's hope they do better this time.

So no, Disney is doing nothing with the movie except possibly throwing in some previews, distributing it, and making money off it.