Slashdot Mirror
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.
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 ..."?
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.
Is it just me, or is an interview with the guy that interviewed Miyazaki just a bit... much?
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.