Miyazaki Talks to the Guardian 234
BrainGeyser writes to tell us The Guardian is running an interesting summary of an interview with Hayao Miyazaki, proclaimed 'God' of anime. In the interview Miyazaki discusses a wide range of issues from his distribution deal with Disney to the future of anime. From the article: 'There is a rumor that when Harvey Weinstein was charged with handling the US release of Princess Mononoke, Miyazaki sent him a samurai sword in the post. Attached to the blade was a stark message: "No cuts."' While it was actually Miyazaki's producer, Miyazaki did 'go to New York to meet this man, this Harvey Weinstein, and [..] was bombarded with this aggressive attack, all these demands for cuts. He [Miyazaki] smiles. "I defeated him."'
Renting (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Miyazaki makes Pixar look like (Score:5, Interesting)
What makes you think he doesn't? Check this article [animationmagazine.net]:
Lasseter noted: "Miyazaki is one of the greatest filmmakers of our time and he has been a tremendous inspiration to generations of animators. At Pixar, when we have a problem and we can't seem to solve it, we often look at one of his films in our screening room. Toy Story owes a huge debt of gratitude to the films of Mr. Miyazaki.
Kiki's Delivery Service (Score:1, Interesting)
Kiki's Delivery Service is a nicely-made cartoon that, had I seen it first as a 9-year old girl, I'd probably love for the rest of my life.
However, I have to say, it doesn't have the same depth as Spirited Away (which I loved). In particular, some aspects of the plot will simply strike you as silly if you watch it for the first time as an adult (no spoilers, but I found myself thinking "Why have they sent a 13-year old (or whatever) girl off to find some job without having any plans as to what she's doing or where she's going? Isn't her mother more than a *little* concerned when she flies off and evidently can't control her broomstick?")
And so on throughout the film. It didn't grab me at all, but then I'm the better part of 20 years older than the target audience... so, not a bad animation, just one that's more suitable for kids than adults. Actually, I'm sure younger kids (6 or under) would enjoy it more than Spirited Away (or Mononoke for that matter).
No cuts? (Score:3, Interesting)
It just played on campus last Wednesday. The film quality was pretty bad and the sound was absolutely horrible (I blame the distributer). The drawing had to be the best I think I've ever seen in any anime or Disney flick.
There was one major plot hole that pretty much the whole audience fell through though. At a point late in the movie, after they've alluded to one character having had a curse put on him, the main girl kisses this character and with a *pop* he turns into a real person and exclaims: "I'm the prince from the kingdom next door!"
The audience roared with laughter at that. There was absolutely no mention in the beginning of the movie about this missing prince (that we could hear, maybe it was the shitty sound) and at the very end we realized that he was the whole reason for the war that was the major plot element of the story.
I really hope there was something cut from the Miyazaki version. Or at least that there was something said that we collectively managed to miss.
Re:Miyazaki makes Pixar look like (Score:4, Interesting)
Miyazaki has been using CGI since at least Mononoke Hime, if not before. He just doesn't go overboard with it, and he uses it in a way such that it's not noticeable unless you're specifically looking for it.
Again, something I think Hollywood could learn from. Even in live-action films, CGI effects have taken on a life of their own. It used to be that special effects were used to make something look real that otherwise couldn't be done. Nowadays, CGI effects are used for the sake of the effect - there's not even any intent to make something look real, the intent is instead to draw attention to the effect.
In animation, the idea has always been to make something beautiful but to use the animation to tell a story. The visuals are subservient; the better they look, the better for the film, but the whole reason the visuals exist is to help tell a story. Once the visuals start distracting from that story, and people start paying attention more to the look of a film than the story it's telling, then the film is a failure. Miyazaki is one of the few remaining animation directors that seem to understand that animation is no different than live action in this regard - that film, including animation, is a medium for telling stories. It is not a CGI showcase. (Hollywood seems to have forgotten this fact in live-action films lately too.)
This is the way I feel about at least some of Pixar's films. I saw Toy Story and I just didn't get it. The comedy was way over-broad in that bad TV sitcom sort of way, and it seemed to me that the only real unique thing about the film was its all-CGI visuals. Most of the reviews I saw at the time spent a lot of time talking about the visuals and very little talking about the story, except for the comedy, which I just didn't even think was very funny.
(There are Pixar films I think are pretty good - I liked Finding Nemo, for example - but in general they just spend way too much time worrying about the technical aspects of their films and not nearly enough on telling a good story.)
But there have been CGI scenes in at least the last several of Miyazaki's films, when he's wanted to do something that couldn't be done by traditional hand-drawn techniques. He just doesn't believe in doing things for the sake of doing it, he believes in doing what needs to be done to tell the story he wants to tell. Miyazaki's films are great because he first of treats them as films and not simply as "anime" (or "animation", which is all that word means in Japan), and second of all because he understands what filmmaking is really all about.
Re:Miyazaki makes Pixar look like (Score:2, Interesting)
Any criticism of Lasseter in this sense is totally wrong headed imo.
He RUINED Howl's Moving Castle! (Score:3, Interesting)
SOB director = director with artistic control (Score:2, Interesting)
Some of the most brilliant directors have been the ones who are the biggest control freaks. Kubrick, for example, demanded extremely exacting control over every facet of his movies' creation. That's how he managed to keep his art intact and coherent.
Ridley Scott's work on Blade Runner shows a similar link between hard-nosed directorial oversight and strong art.
Miyazaki is, I think, one of the few Japanese directors who really gets to make the whole production his. If he needs a spare half-million for some complicated animation or a long sequence, he gets it, and then he gets it right.
He may seem like an asshole, but that's necessary to get lasting art. I just wouldn't want to be an in-betweener or designed on one of his productions. (Well, maybe...)
Mononoke's dubbing sucks as well (Score:4, Interesting)
There are heaps of differences between the correctly translated subtitles and the dubbed version in Princess Mononoke as well. For example when Moro is speaking of the attack of the boars, in the dubbed version Moro says something like:
"It's a trap. And a stupid one. But Okkoto won't listen. None of them will."
Whereas the correct translation is:
"It's a foolish trap. But Okkoto is no fool. He knows its a trap. But he will attack anyway."
Furthermore, the Japanese version has many silent scenes which are blabbered over in the dubbed version.
These and many other seemingly subtle differences give quite a different feel to the movie.
I acknowledge that dubbing is not an easy task. A direct translation would give very unnatural sounding dialogue. But my suspicion is that Disney's dumbing down on Miyazaki's movies is driven by the arrogant assumption that the audience is stupid and the story needs to be Americanised to make it accessible (and profitable.) They don't imagine that people may enjoy the story in its unaltered form, or that we may be interested in the perspectives on another culture. Yet its Miyazaki's Studio Ghibli, which puts creative integrity first (before profit) that is successful, while Disney is in a downward spiral.