is among the most cheerful and lighthearted of Hayao Miyazaki's Ghibli features. A tween-age witch leaves home for a journey on her own as part of her training, settling in a small fictional town that is somewhat Germanic in look. The storyline is not as intricate as, say, that of
, but the characters are no less charming or memorable.
In this Disney-produced English translation (you can watch it subtitled in Japanese at once),
's earnest performance reminds me of Pamelyn Ferdin, the go-to young actress of late 60s/early 70s TV and animation.
has a small role as a kindly old woman, partnered with Edie McClurg as her housekeeper.
as Jiji, the cat who accompanies Kiki on her journey, making acerbic comments along the way. It only serves to underscore the great loss of a gifted performer and the potential never realized.
is the way the general populace reacts to her magical gifts. She belongs to a group of individuals that are not feared, hidden or scorned, but instead treated matter-of-factly. A prime example is a scene in which Kiki's takes off on her broom and a village lady looks on with a "well, what do you know, how interesting" reaction. She doesn't go all "Gladys Kravitz."
This Special Edition issue of the movie is accompanied with a series of short bonus documentaries and an interactive "world of Ghibli" feature.
TOTE HOME TOTORO
Blog, Movies
Posted on Mar 28 2010 by Greg
As writer/director
Hayao Miyazaki explains on the the new subtitled documentary material on this new
Special Edition DVD, he was growing dissatisfied with the creative limits of working in television animation, he wanted to create a gentle, enchanting family feature regardless of the potential for commercial success.
My Neighbor Totoro apparently did not smash box office records on the big screen in 1988, but subsequent TV airings made it one of the most popular and beloved films in Japan (not unlike what happened with the original
Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory).
Totoro is on the Studio Ghibli movies, an icon status comparable to
Mickey Mouse with Disney and
Luxo, Jr. with Pixar. But it all started in this film, which in a its second DVD release in the revised Disney English version, which was preceded by an earlier English version released by Fox.
Each Miyazaki feature boasts a voice cast of marquee names as well as top Hollywood voice artists. The "name" talent is seen in brief "behind the microphone" bonus features -- in which you can sometimes also glimpse the strong supporting casts.
Dakota and Elle Fanning turn in superb performances as the young sisters in Totoro, a very crucial element in making the English version work. Also in the cast are
Tim Daly as the dad,
Lea Salonga as the mom and the wondrous
Pat Carroll as the warmhearted Nanny, a sharp constrast to her Ursula character in Disney's
The Little Mermaid.
The extraordinary
Frank Welker growls as the Totoro himself. Welker, a gifted impressionist who entered voice work as the one and only Fred on Scooby Doo, is perhaps the most heard voice in film and TV today.
The film itself is, to borrow from the
Sherman Brothers, lovely and lyrical, filled with breaktaking landscapes and rich characters in a simple, pleasant tale that is a welcome break from the frenetic pace of most current entertainment.
"PONYO, PONYO, FISHIE IN THE SEA!"
Blog, Movies
Posted on Mar 12 2010 by Greg
Be warned, the theme song of this fanciful epic by the renowned
Hayao Miyazaki, who won an Best Animated Film Oscar for
Spirited Away (reportedly, even the directors of
Lilo and Stitch voted for that film even though their film was in the same competition.
Ponyo, a.k.a. Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea, is perhaps the most innocent and wondrous of Miyazaki's films. It's said to be loosely based on
The Little Mermaid (even the DVD package suggest this) but it really only bears a passing resemblance to either the Andersen or Disney versions. Like other Miyazaki films, it tells its own story by its own rules and requires that you allow yourself "into" an almost alternate universe that coexists with a realistic world. Sorry to be so pithy, but it's hard to describe these films adequately. They need to be experienced.
Big name stars perform the dubbed English version and most of them agreed because of their love for the director's previous work.
Among these is
Liam Neeson, who appears on camera on one of the bonus features on the two disc set.
Tina Fey says she was channeling the movie moms she grew up with. We see the cherished
Betty White in recording sessions (she plays one of three ladies in a nursing facility, the other two voiced by
Lily Tomlin and
Cloris Leachman). Especially remarkable are the performances of young
Noah Cyrus (Miley's sister) and
Frankie Jonas (the Jonas Brothers' little brother) as the two leads. It's difficult enough to match the voices in an overdubbed foreign language film, it's quite another to add emotion and depth.
My children loved this film. It was their first introduction to Miyazaki, which can be an acquired taste for some. If you enjoy and admire the work of Pixar, you can't deny the extreme (and eagerly credited) influence of Miyazaki on Pixar character development and storytelling in particular.
The two DVD discs also include a storyboarded version of the film and lots of short features about the music, voices, characters and setting of Ponyo.
My only question -- where was the U.S released soundtrack album, including the Cyrus/Jonas version of the song?
EVERYBODY'S FINE...except me, I'm a little verklempt
Blog, Movies
Posted on Feb 16 2010 by Greg
Everybody's Fine is a "people" movie, a study of characters -- both central and peripheral. It's a drama with some comedic elements, heavy on emotion but low on over-the-top histrionics. And depending on where it might hit you in your own life, it can be a real tearjerker, in that good way that makes you think about the important things and discuss them with the important people in your life.
Robert DeNiro gives an understated performance as a father who would not or could not realize he was expressing lifelong disappointment with his children if they were less than "the best." They had spent years hiding any flaws from him and sharing their struggles only with their mother, who had passed several months earlier.
Their stories come together as he travels the country to reconnect. Along the way, British director
Kirk Wise (
Waking Ned, Nanny McPhee) presents snapshots of interesting characters and fascinating faces, both genial and malevolent.
The part that touched my wife and me most was the technique using children to speak for their grownup counterparts in key sections of the film. DeNiro's character still sees them as school age kids and, through his reveries, so do we. It's not a new technique but it seems to work effectively here and often hits hard in ways that standard confrontational scenes could not. Since our kids are school age and we have parents we want to please too, it made my wife and I think about our own parent/child relationships.
One of the messages of the movie seems to be that it's not too late to pick up the pieces, but you can suffer great losses if you get too distracted and wait too long -- and we all need to take a breath and be more accepting of one another's choices. It's not so much that we should "settle" but rather that there are better ways to measure true success.
My only criticism of the DVD is that there is NO AUDIO COMMENTARY. There are a few extended scenes and a short look at
Paul McCartney's involvement in creating a song for the film. A commentary was sorely missed.
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