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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."
http://www.nausicaa.net/miyazaki/films/#film_g_t
a good idea to include some info about who the heck this guy is?
I had to do a search. May I suggest that the editors/posters re-read their submission instructions?
In related news, Wilbert Rideau has been released.
BP http://www.card-central.com
If the editor wrote Linus Torvalds, every computer geek would know it was the founder of Linux. If the editor wrote Hawking, every science geek would know who he was. If the editor wrote John Carmack, every developer would know who he was. Hayao Miyazaki is no different for animae. He is arguably the greatest animation director of all time. If you don't know his name, you definately aren't an animae geek. But considering that there have been many articles here on Slashdot, you would figure that his name would be in the collective knowlege bank. At what point do the Slashdot editors have to stop prefixing an article "Programmer Linus Torvalds ..." or "Cosmologist Stephen Hawking ..."?
You find Nausicaa (the manga) and Princess Mononoke too "cuddly"?
Is it just me, or is an interview with the guy that interviewed Miyazaki just a bit... much?
I hate admitting ignorance...
There is no shame in not knowing everything. Nobody knows everything. There are plenty of time in Slashdot where I need to look up some acronym, Just to know what the story is about. People have interests in different areas and know different things. So even a site like Slashdot which is ment to focus on technical and geeky people there are still a wide range of information that people may not have come across before in there life. The smartest people I know are the ones who are not afraid of saying that they are unfamiliar in that area and ask to learn more. The dumbest people I know feel that they know all the information and are afraid to admit that they don't know a thing about it. The reason why this is true is simple. The person who isn't afraid to admit that they dont have all the knowledge seek it out and learn more. Those who don't avoid the seeking of knowledge and fail to grow.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
I'm sorry this topic got hijacked. As an animation buff, I consider Miyazaki's work to be some of the finest in the genre today, and I dearly wish his body of work were much larger. Much like HR Giger (Alien), Miyazaki melds a strong sense of the organic into the fantastic in a kid- and family-friendly way. Miyazaki's work extends far beyond just Japanese culture. His vision utilizes influences as diverse as Alice in Wonderland and Jonathan Swift to tell his stories.
Miyazaki's flying machines look like they were grown in some massive garden or hewn out of a redwood tree using an ax, but with the added bonus that they can really fly. His cities are exquisitely and almost painfully rich with detail, with kitschy lofts, alleys, shops, and access roads that meld the charm of Old World Europe with the practicality of a cleaned-up New York City. Miyazaki obviously cares about place and time every bit as much as character development, which is why it is so easy to get lost in his anime. (My DVD player's pause button gets a workout every time I watch a Miyazaki feature).
There is a refreshing lack of the judgmental in Miyazaki's body of work. Like Samuel Goldwyn, he apparently prefers to let Western Union or NTT relay his messages. While Miyazaki obviously recognizes that there is great evil in the world, he also knows that even the most evil often have valid reasons that they did what they did, and he leaves it up to the audience as the court of last resort when it comes to their "guilt" or "innocence".
And the best part of statements like Princess Mononoke? Miyazaki's creatures and environments are not passive victims or Bambi - they have teeth and claws and weapons of their own, and they are not shy about using them if driven to do so. You gotta respect it when the deer breaks out a Weatherby .454 and starts shooting back.
No mod points, no meta-moderating/Firehose/all the other free work Slashdot wants me to do.
Another aspect of this is that if I allready knew everything on slashdot I wouldn't bother coming here to read the news, I expect most people feel the same.
To stay on topic I think it's great that Miyazaki and ghibli are finally getting mainstream recognition in the western world, lots of good movies from that source.
If noone rtfa, then what's the slashdot effect?
I always find anime geeks fascinatingly hilarious. "Oh, Akira, that sucks... you should watch mymoviexyzaboutlotsofrapesandexplodingshit"... "Miyazaki? For poseurs!".
I don't pretend to know about anime, but every time I've watched a movie recommended by an anime geek:
1) It's been psuedo-porn, often featuring women being raped by tentacles or other such frankly pointless escapades.
2) The animation has been hilariously crap. Good animation goes a long way, and a lot of anime doesn't really cut it.
3) The dialogue was either incomprehensibly translated or crap to begin with.
4) It's been something akin to a crappy sci-fi novel in terms of plot, and usually ends with half of the world getting blown up or trashed by something. Either that or it's been a "character study" with characters with even less dimensions than the animation.
Guys, there's a reason that some anime movies get a bigger audience - often it's because they succeed as movies on a wider level beyond anime. A lot of anime is, while appealing to geeks, not that strong for the rest of us. Movies like Akira or Spirited Away have production values, writing standards and resonant themes that manage to trancend the "Oh god, another anime movie..." feeling that much of the rest of the world has about the form.
If something works as a movie outside of a "Scene", it has a chance. It's the same with any national culture - I'm sure the Spanish will argue that they have cinema beyond Pedro Almodovar, and as a New Zealander I would like to point out that we do have more directors than just Peter Jackson. However there are certain things which tend to bust out of a mould and reach mass appeal - that's not a bad thing!