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New Yorker on Miyazaki
An anonymous reader writes "The New Yorker issue of 17 January has an in-depth article on Hayao Miyazaki. It gives a nice look at the arc of his work, short interviews with him, and more extended interviews with his co-workers. Here is an interview with the article's author."
For those of you who do not instantly associate that name with anything, a link.
Lurking at the bottom of the gravity well, getting old
If you like Miyazaki and are around Paris, you might want ot check out the exposition at the museum de la Monnaie (right in front of Pont Neuf). I went there yesterday and it is quite interesting: it is centered around a comparison of Miyazaki's work and Moebius' work (one of the best french cartoonist). The most interesting stuff to me was a cross-interview of Moebius and Miyazaki, good stuff. They also show other two documentaries on their respective work, but I don't know if it is worth it for 9 euros.
I just saw Howl's Moving Castle, Miyazaki's latest work, and I just have this to say: It's excellent!
I've been told a few critics around here (in France) were disappointed or something -- I haven't have the chance to read them yet. Many others were enthousiastic, and I join their rank!
Like many other Miyazaki movies, there's plenty of everything, for everyone, to be seen, felt, understood, admired. There's entertainment for sure, suspense, chasing, quite a bit of war, beautiful machineries and landscape, music, great characters (including a most excellent demon of fire!), etc. There's also a classical but well-told love story, some insights about power and corruption, and interesting and thought provokind depictions of age, old age mostly (an unusual subject for an animé, but very tastefully done), and young age in contrast to the elderly. There's also plenty of English-tale feeling, since the story is adapted from a recent (1986) English children-book. Miyazaki manages to blend the English and Japanese cultures masterfully.
Overall, and almost as usual with Miyazaki, this is a movie you can go see with your children (or nephews, or whatever), they will immensely enjoy themselves, and you certainly won't be annoyed or bored either.
The reason why the Japanese love manga is the fact they had the equivalent of modern manga back in the 18th Century!
From Frederik L. Schodt's book Dreamland Japan, he said the Japanese back then produced extremely popular toba-e and kibyoushi books (that look very much like modern comic books in style) using woodblock printing in that the same way that manga artists produce their works in Japan today: a overall creator helped by a small group of assistants to complete each work. Indeed, today's Japanese manga is essentially like toba-e and kibyoushi production, only using modern drawing techniques and vastly larger reading audiences thanks to modern printing methods.