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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
Ah, as warm and cuddly goes it doesn't get much better. Not what I'd watch all the time, but sufficiently well executed that it's worth getting excited about something new. And I reckon a lot of his stuff is a nice balance of mature themes with stuff that's interesting for kids. More food for thought than, say, a Disney movie.
But then, I'm not an anime geek. I tend more towards David Lynch and Atom Egoyan than most anime, so maybe I'm grossly misinformed.
It still amazes me that the whole comic book / manga artform is so well respected in Japan. I love Manga as much as the next guy but to see EVERYONE relating to it astonds me. Unless you visit Japan (as I have done twice now) you can't really fathom the impact that this artform has on Japanese culture. The people I spoke to in Japan about it think that what we consider Manga and the Manga we have access to in the west is pretty light weight.
So when do Disney hijack THIS and claim it as their own original work?
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
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 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.
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"?
A long time now I have been a fan of Hayao Miyazaki. I find his movies strangely unique, and moving. In fact, I would call them more of an experience. Especially with his latest masterpiece Sen To Chihiro(Spirited away.)
this man really knows how to take you into a world of awe and amazement. He can take you to world filled with ancient gods, and mysterious magic, or to the skies and ancient forgotten cities who's only surving inhabitans are it's gargantuan robot caretakers.
I would have to say I dislike this being classified as Anime though, as while it is Japanese, it is nothing like any other Japanese animation. These are truly works that will outlive Miyazaki to become classics, and his own name will outlive him to become legend.
I highly reccomend this mans works to everyone here, even if you dislike anime, you may be pleasently surprised by the experience.
Go ahead and call me unreliable; reliable is just a synonym for predictable.
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.
If you like the weird stuff, try hunting down Visitor Q or other movies down by Takashi Miike. Truly wonderful.
riding round the world on an old motorcycle
Is it just me, or is an interview with the guy that interviewed Miyazaki just a bit... much?
I just watched Spirited Away last night. Then I went to www.nausicaa.net to find out more info... and then I came to /.
Rather odd.
Anyway... to make this post semi-legit, I figure it's worth mentioning a related 'news' item: Disney's Nausicaa version (with Mark Hamil and Patrick Stewart!) is due to come out on DVD next month.
I find that one of the most striking features of his films is the abundance of details. Quite often (most of the time, actually), animated films omit a lot of background activity, irrelevant details, robbing the fictional world of it believability. In Miyazaki films, however, I always notice how details such as hand movement when opening a door always appear well thought out and natural. Instead of glossing over such trivialities and using overly broad strokes (just to tell the story and set the general tone for scenes) he (and his artists, of course) enjoys details, which really makes the world feel real and interesting.
Future Wiki -- If you don't think about the future, you cannot have one.
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.
In the article ./ linked with an interview of the author Margaret Talbot answers:
Are there countries other than Japan where animation is as popular across different age groups? I think that Japan is unusual, if not unique, in its animation and comic-book culture.
I think france is another country where animation and comic books are consumed at all ages. One can find grown men reading hard cover and paperback comics on the metro in paris and the average age of movie goers for animated films is definitely not 10. Japan is not unique in its passion for animation and comic books...
~f()bz
some can add belgium and netherdlands to that too
despite im portuguese, belgium scene is huge, and has its own authors, culture, comic book dedicated streets etc
Nine euros works out to, less than $15? For an exhibition of any artist in the States that's a bargain. I live outside of Boston, which is supposed to have a lot of culture, but the museums and music events are really expensive.
Maybe there's more to the world than the United States?? Just because you -as an american- have never bothered to take a glance outside your cultural landscape, doesn't preclude his influence on the rest of the world...
The thing with me and Anime, is that I pretty much perfer what looks like it would be considered kiddie by the mainstream American audience. There's always something in the lighthearted anime that I will take over the darker kind like Ghost in a Shell. Hayao Miyazaki's anime is no exception in terms of the fact that it was more made for kids. However, there is always something deep within Miyazaki's anime that other animes don't have. It's like a candle lit brighter than the other candles. Then again, there are collections of Hayao Miyazaki films out there.
The number of articles that appear on Slashdot regarding Hayao Miyazaki is probably outnumbered by the number of articles regarding Linus Torvalds and Stephen Hawking by a factor of about 10,000 to 1. It's reasonable to assume that a much smaller segment of the Slashdot population has had exposure to Hayao Miyazaki.
To be fair though, the industry was in an enormous glut that he pretty much single-handedly ended with Mononoke no Hime.
English is easier said than done.
It's also important to remember that the Ghibli approach to animation requires massive effort by a huge team of creative people. Again, these people are mostly ignored in the west, where we have to bad habit of giving the director all the credit for creating a movie, and ignore all the writers, designers, and other talented, original people.
"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."
and clicked through. Pretty disappointing to find out that the actual article is an interview with somebody who interviewed Miyazaki, and includes no actual excerpts of interviews with him.
To sum it up, most of the article seems to be Margaret Talbot explaining her own opinions on and experiences with Miyazaki films to the New Yorkers Dan Cappello. She paraphrases something Miyazaki said in their actual interview maybe thrice throughout the story. Most of it is simply her personal opinion on his work or statistical/biographical info that is available to anyone-- which is fine if you've never heard of him, but rather boring if you have seen his works, already know that he is incredible, and would just like to hear what he has to say.
Disappointing to say the least! So where's the actual New Yorker article that the Slashdot story spent most of its time describing??
I've seen a lot of his other stuff, but Visitor Q is actually banned in New Zealand. We have a wonderful lobby called something like The Society For The Protection of Community Standards who make it their business to fuck up every film festival they can by getting the brochure, figuring out which movies might be controvercial in any way and then lobbying the censors to get them banned.
One year they pretty much got their way and Visitor Q got taken out in the process. Screenings had to be cancelled... the movie was in the country, but it was never shown.
What a bunch of pricks, eh?
On the other hand, we did get to see The Happiness of the Katakuris and Dead or Alive, both of which are excellent value. I could live without the drowning-woman-in-pool-of-feces image in my head for the rest of my life though, along with the foot scene in Audition.
I'd say if you think anime is a "crudely-drawn slide show" then you probably have never seen anything more then a Dragonball Z episode flashing on a tv somewhere, and used that to form your well rounded opinion. Hayao Miyazaki's works are certanly art, and when viewed objectively are as far from being crudely-drawn as most anything can be.
BTW if you hold your view so strongly, then why post as anonymous? The parent deserves to be modded troll. And not for the views on anime, but for the insults oh so cleverly hidden inside the lines.
I'm VERY interested in what happens sociopolitically in Japan, when the millions of kids who grew up watching his movies (and consuming the themes of "dark, apocalyptic environmentalism" contained therein at very impressionable ages) are the ones running the country (what, 20-30 years from now?).
Do people think about the effect of "the Disney ethos" or people who were raised by hippies on American politics? Not really; I think America's too culturally heterogeneous to make that sort of extrapolation possible. (For the most part; check local politics in rural northern California if you want a comparison.) However, Japan is comparatively culturally homogenous, and has this history of undergoing radical culture change in a very short period of time. Meiji Restoration, anyone?
I personally look forward to celebrating the Ghibli Restoration from atop NTV Island.
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!
"In a few short centuries, industrial civilization had spread from the western fringes of Eurasia to sprawl across the face of the planet. Plundering the soil of its riches, fouling the air, and remolding lifeforms at will, this gargantuan society had already peaked a thousand years after its foundation: ahead lay abrupt and violent decline. The cities burned, welling up as clouds of poison in the war remembered as the Seven Days of Fire. The complex and sophisticated technological superstructure was lost, almost all the surface of the earth was transformed into a sterile wasteland. Industrial civilization was never rebuilt as mankind lived on through the long twilight years..."
The story opens with a tenuous balance of power existing between the kingdom of Torumekia and the Dorok theocracy; which exist precariously on the edge of the Sea of Corruption, a vast forest of poisonous fungus and giant insects. Their technology consists largely of old machines dug up from the ruins of the Ceramic Age and remolded into flying destroyers and giant aircraft. The balance of power is altered when a small independent state digs up a God Warrior, one of the creatures responsible for the Seven Days of Fire, setting off an all-out war. It's got some sugary moments but its probably the darkest, most complex, most violent, and most incredible thing he's ever done.
For that matter, Miyazaki does a better job of creating a sense of place and an illusion of reality than most live-action filmmakers.
Banned, eh? Well luckily there's broadband. I've only seen about 4 or 5 of his movies and neither was Katakuris or Dead or Alive.
Any film festivals in Feb or March? I'll be in New Zealand then.
How does the lobby feel about Peter Jackson's early stuff?
riding round the world on an old motorcycle
Katakuris is extremely funny, DOA is extremely... different. Starts by making about the most aggressive opening it possibly could, settles down into a Yakuza movie and then... well... that would kind of spoil the ending! Catch it, it's certainly an experience.
And as for the broadband thing, only just! We're emerging from the land of 128kbps over here very, very slowly. I got an email on Friday from my provider INTRODUCING a 10gb data-cap on my previously unrestricted plan, with no reduction in price. I think they will be finding themselves short a customer soon.
When it comes to festivals you're probably out of luck. There used to be two major ones, the Incredible Film Festival (which would show the likes of DOA, or indeed anything cheap, tacky and worth throwing popcorn at) and the NZFF, which is a bit more upscale and has a much bigger budget.
The Incredible film festival died last year, with the guy who ran it merging the festival into a more upscale segment of the NZFF - basically it means he's harder to fuck with for David Lane and his Christian cronies, and has a bigger budget. However it has had the effect of removing all the cheap-and-cheerful B-movies from our festival rotation, and resulting in a lot less of the fun of sitting around tiny cinemas that look like they're going to go broke, watching old 60s exploitation movies... NZFF is typically around July, so you're going to miss that by a mile - but if you're overseas, you can probably catch 90% of the movies before they make it here in the first place, so you'll not miss much aside from a few small NZ films.
Other than that, there's a few Auckland cinemas that run occasional Asian or European film festivals, with the asian stuff being mostly Korean or Taiwanese or similar (NZ has a big Chinese population, who tend to watch movies from around there).
Speaking of Korean movies, if you haven't seen "Old Boy" I would highly recommend you get hold of it - nasty, but extremely good.
Nope, I haven't even heard of Old Boy. I'll take a look for it when I'm in Melbourne. I'll be there for 2 weeks while my bike is being shipped to Christchurch.
I was planning on looking for other Akashi Miike movies while I was there.
riding round the world on an old motorcycle
Old Boy shouldn't be too hard to find, it did quite well at Cannes last year IIRC. I imagine you'll do better for movies in Melbourne than anywhere here, Auckland only has a population of a little over a million and nothing else even comes close. Enjoy the South Island, it's nice down there - can't speak quite so highly of Auckland though, it's a traffic nightmare and largely boring. Wellington has a bit more of a city atmosphere, but it's too small to hit critical mass. I'd live down there if it wasn't for the fact that there's so few days that aren't horrendously windy!
In New Yorker magazine (a paper publication), of course. The submitter of this piece did the best he could do (other than telling the under-rock-dwellers who Miyazaki is): alerted us to the existence of this interview, so we can go out and find the magazine if we want to, and linked to an interview with the author of the interview, which might even allow us to form an opinion about whether we want to bother to locate a copy of the New Yorker.
However, recognizing all this requires that you read and think, not react, click, and complain.
If they'd actually release them on the big screen, people would realize that even older Ghiblis (like "Porco Rosso" and "Laputa" are not only better-made (wrt. story, art, soundtrack) than the disney fare of their time, but also (still) better the "new-era disneys" (The Lying King, Pocahontas, Hercules, etc.) The only good animation features released by disney in the last decade were made by pixar or, in the case of "Lilo and Stitch" by a team of dissidents that never had a chance against the dogmatic upper echelons of the mouse empire.
Face it: disney dead (if you discount the regurgitated-to-video sequel buiseness and the periodic reanimation by re-re-re-re-extending copyrights)
I just saw Howl's Moving Castle, Miyazaki's latest work, and I just have this to say: It's excellent!
To each their own, I suppose. I saw it on opening day (here in Japan), and to be frank I was disappointed. Not that it was a bad movie, by any means--it's just less than I expected for a Miyazaki work, and it didn't have quite the same touch his better films have had. If you haven't already been indoctrinated with Nausicaa and the like, then you'll probably find it very enjoyable.
... United states?
I mean, we have Marvel, DK, etc.
...it's really a sad day for America when we require a goddamn ACT OF CONGRESS to make our DVD players work properly. ~
The thing about anime is that there's a lot of it. As with any form of literature where one can basically read or watch indefinitely, there's a shift in what the audience looks for as it becomes more experienced in the literary form:
Stage 1: Novelty-- Audience is interested in the big, flashy things: storyline, effects, character templates.
Stage 2: Basic familiarity-- Audience is familiar with all the general character types, storylines, and effects. They start looking for the real purpose of the work. Message and meaning become important, or at least interesting. A stage 2 scifi watcher might enjoy "Godzilla: King of the Monsters", because it wasn't all that bad a movie despite poor effects.
stage 3: True interest-- Audience actually devotes time to the study of the literary form. They watch slightly obscure things which they can enjoy because they are now familiar enough with the subtleties to "get it". They do things like watching awful dueling movies in search of the perfect swordplay scene.
Stage 4: Boredom-- Viewer knows the entire storyline of a piece within 30 seconds of the first line. He can spin dialogue off the top of his head that's roughly 1000 times better than what actually comes out of the piece. As a result, he disregards all of that and watches or reads things just for something new, anything at all just so long as it's something he doesn't see coming. Alternately, he turns watching into a game, such as laying bets on how many explosions blade 3 will contain.
It appears that you have had the misfortune of accepting the reccommendations of a stage 3 or 4 while you yourself were a stage 1 or 2. You have my condolences.
...it's really a sad day for America when we require a goddamn ACT OF CONGRESS to make our DVD players work properly. ~
... like the UK are free.
Even in Vietnam I had to pay to enter to the national museum in Hanoi.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Yes, but a lot of us (including me) come close to worshipping it as a god... that has to be worth something, no?
I'll be on both islands. First the south since my bike is getting shipped to Christchurch. I've "met" a few kiwis from a punk rock board and from myspace who've offered me places to stay in Wellington and Tambaurani (sp?). I've heard from everyone who's been there that it's a great place to be.
riding round the world on an old motorcycle
I think the others point was that this isnt jsut some "anime producer" like say someone from CLAMP or GINAX. This is someone who has become respected in the field of animation to the point many referances to him are "The Japanese equivilant of Walt Disney".
Everyone at PIXAR seems to talk about how his works influenced them.
Now if you or others have never bothered with anything related to Animation or Comics in the art world, then I can certainaly understand why the name might not be recognizable.
I think Spirited Away alone has had about a billion times more effect on the world at large then tne GNAA but if the GNAA is all that makes your world livable, good for you.
Well I've wrestled with reality for thirty five years doctor, and I'm happy to say I finally won out over it.
I don't know why the hell you bring up socialism. I just would like museums to be cheaper. I don't really give a shit whether the additional funding comes from. No need to wave the flag of capitalism around. Save it for someone who cares.
Wow did someone waste there moderator points on this thread. comeone waste some points on me as you don't deserve them and i have karma to burn.
Saying Apple is better than MS is like saying Botulism is better than rabies.