| 1. | (20 posts) | "Spirited Away" Wins a Golden Bear |
| 2. | (16 posts) | Miyazaki's Reaction to the Golden Bear |
| 3. | (1 posts) | Negative Reaction |
| 4. | (7 posts) | Bootlegged Books |
We looked at 131 posts by 45 different contributors.
Big week with the big news about "Spirited Away".
Michael Kerpan posted the first bit news, "Hot from the pages of the KineJapan Mailing List --
Miyazaki's "Sen" has won the Golden Bear Award at the Berlin Film Festival.
I checked the web pages of the two main Berlin newspapers and don't see any story yet on the results.
Hanno Muller replied, "There has not been the official announcement of the award, so consider this a rumour. The official press conference is held at 7:45 pm (in 25 minutes from now). I'll keep you posted ;-)"
After a brief wait, Hanno confirmed that the Golden Bear did indeed to go "Spirited Away", but was shared with "Bloody Sunday".
The interesting conversations started with Havel Ormaci writing, "The Golden Bear is akin to awards like Cannes or Venice. They carry great weight and it is considered a veritable honor to win one of them. However, it is often also not considered mainstream to win one of them because it has that "artsy reputation", i.e. because it won its less likely to be a mass success. There are few that break the rule, but its as Platthaus said "Since when did ambitious aspiration and (main stream) popularity go hand in hand in such a manner?""
Noel Vera wrote, "Compared to the Golden Bear, the Oscars are mere doorstops."
Hanno replied, "As Havel mentioned, the Bear has an "artsy reputation" and as such rarely helps a movie's success with the mainstream audience. (I sometimes can't help to think of it as a sure sign for "ah, an intellectual chick flick" when I see the Bear or the Palm award winners of the past...)
But it _does_ make "Sen" more attractive to market it to an adult audience, the Bear will tell them that this is more than just a kids' movie. [By the way, there is a special award - not a Golden Bear, but connected with the Berlinale - for kids movies, too, and so it's even more significant that "Sen" competed for and even got the main award.]
Also, the big controversy right now will raise the interest of the public - it already does. . . The people who are interested in this, of course, are a different public than those who go watching "Pearl Harbor" etc.
We'll see. Right now, I see the Golden Bear as a chance to market "Sen" successfully as an arthouse special movie for both adults and kids. I highly doubt that it will reach the multiplex cinema's main screenings. But hey, we've been surprised quite often in the past year, I guess...
David Mankins added, "Don't forget that the function of a doorstop is to hold a door open.
Winning awards in Berlin, Venice, or Cannes will get a film easy access to maybe 100-150 screens in the US.
However, this is a *good* thing for a Japanese animated film. Without that Golden Bear or Palm d'Or, it would probably show on only a dozen screens in the US.
Noel replied to Hanno, "the Golden Bear has a much higher reputation--the very fact that films all over the world compete in Berlin, and some of them are extremely good, much better than the standard Hollywood fare, while it's mainly Hollywood films that compete in the Oscars (with the rest of the world often shoehorned into a single category) speaks poorly of the Oscar jurors' basis for judgement, as in, totally myopic.
As for commercial success, I couldn't care less--Sen has made more than its money back, this is all icing on Miyazaki's cake. And the uncomfortable feeling every German critic up and down that country is having right now is just too delicious to describe.
Hanno sent back, "Please cite references for this higher reputation... Cause if your statement was true, a Berlin Golden Bear would be a virtual guarantee for a movie's success, if not in mainstream cinemas at least in the arthouses. As far as I can tell, it isn't...
Well, I have to disagree, strongly. If I was content with Miyazaki's movies being available in some far-away country, only, in a language I don't understand, on a video medium I cannot watch, for a price I cannot afford... then I wouldn't be on this mailing list.
For Studio Ghibli movies, "all I only want is"...
- a decent dub or subtitles in my language
- a release in my country's cinemas (and a modest-successful run within its genre niche)
- a decent release on video in my native video format (e.g., my cheap PAL TV doesn't display NTSC quite as good...)
- being picked up for my country's TV movie repertoire and aired on the small screen from time to time
...and I guess I'm not alone here.
The Golden Bear is a first step, because it will give Miyazaki a second chance to enter the German market. The first attempt with "Mononoke" was a desaster and Miyazaki was branded "box office poison" afterwards here.
Without the Golden Bear, I can assure you that the subbed movie print of "Sen" made for the Berlinale would have remained the _only_ copy of the movie available to the German market - shown from time to time at a festival by faithful fans of the genre. But that would've been all of "Sen" in Germany. . .
And that this choice is a surprise - I can certainly confirm that. "8 Femmes" has been a Berlinale audiene favourite and it was praised by many critics; the audience reaction reported from the "Sen" screenings was fair, but not exactly enthusiastic.
Noel rattled off a list of filmmakers and other names, then continued, "Yes, it's my opinion...but it's shared. More like a consensus of the international film community. . . Arthouse cinemas will book a Golden Bear winner, and Golden Bear winners will make sure to put the fact on top of their posters. Check the next version of a Sen poster if it isn't mentioned.
I should clarify; I'm not IMMEDIATELY concerned with Germany's (or from wherever you come from) chances of a commercial showing; I'm in the Philippines, and the chance of such a showing is about as much as a snowball in...well, you know. So in a detached way, I do approved. But that doesn't mean I have no interest in Germany having a showing; if the chances
are improved by an Oscar nom or G. Bear win to have such a showing in Germany, by all means, more power to you, God Bless, etcetera. I approve on principle, but it's not a life and death matter for me.
The thread ended abruptly at this point. Hanno (and a few others) spent the rest of the week cranking out German => English translations of review and articles. They can be accessed from the "Spirited Away" Impressions page.
Ryoko Toyama posted "The news of Sen winning the Golden Bear is a big news Japan. Major newspapers have Sen's color image on their front pages.
Last night, Miyazaki-San had a press conference at his office "Butaya". He said, "First of all, I would like to thank the people of the Berlin Film Festival for treating an animated film as a film." (The situation is not so different in Japan as in Germany. Animated films are often treated as "second-class" in the movie industry. Even Miyazaki films lost many awards
just because they were animated and critics were hesitant to give awards to animated films. )
He continued that it's like Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year coming all together.
He said, "It's interesting that while my American friends could not understand Kaonashi, but European people did." Being asked if the award gives him more motivation for the future film making, he said "No. I don't think that Bear or Lion is on the extension of our work. What is important is to make a unique film that can attract audience.". . .
"Spirited Away" is currently in about 130 theaters. Toho has decided that it will keep showing "Spirited Away" in these theaters until the Spring break. (Good news for those who are coming to Japan by the beginning of April.)
The film has earned 29.336 billion yen, with 22.67 million tickets sold.
Mike Arnold replied, "To me this kind of generalization seems a bit... unpleasant coming from someone as respected as Miyazaki. I'm reminded of the weird judgements in the TV special that came out when the Princess Mononoke English dub was released here; Americans couldn't understand Mononoke Hime and it bombed in the States, but the European (in this case French) audiences loved it. I guess Europeans are just more sophisticated? At any rate I understood Kaonashi well enough, maybe even too well all things considered.
I've heard from a few different sources in Japan now (a new one a couple of nights ago) that a lot of Japanese people actually felt they understood the movie better once they saw the English dubbed version, with the somewhat abbreviated subtitled translation in Japanese.
Jee Hoon Lee commented, "A Japanese friend of mine told me she watched an interview with Miyazaki where he can't be confused for being "unintentionally" condescending to Americans. He was *unmistakably* disparaging about American's, to the point that she thought he was practically rude about it.
That kind of hurt to hear, since I would think he'd be more compassionate than that.
Andrew Osmond added, "To me, this _kind_ of generalisation is flip but not inherently offensive. I think one could make a plausible defence of a claim that, e.g. 'Americans would not understand a conflict-orientated film where neither side is plainly right or wrong' or 'Americans would not understand a cartoon without jokes and songs.' Yes, they're generalisations but with some grounding in national pop-culture trends. (Incidentally, I also think one could substitute 'British' for 'Americans' in both sentences.)"
Havel Ormaci wrote, "I agree that generalizations like that, unintended as they may seem, come accross as condescending, in this case of Americans, but who honestly knows how he feels about them, afterall, his tie-up with Disney may have brought about high hopes and hefty promises not delivered? We don't know, but I do agree, its unpleasant, perhaps and most likely unintended."
Havel continued his message with some "Europe vs. US" comparisons, which sparked a thread that spilled into next week. Key point from Mike, "I do agree that different experiences will give people different ways to interpret what they see, but as much as we love certain Japanese animated films it's a bit of a stretch to compare them with classical arts in Europe. Miyazaki's films are arguably among a few exceptions that do deserve serious examination, but to be blunt they are popular entertainment, not fine art."
Julio Gea-Banacloche differed, "There is no question, at least for the members of this list (as somebody else also just said), that Miyazaki's works do deserve the kind of critical attention and recognition generally accorded to other things traditionally considered as "fine arts." The question at hand would be, rather, whether Americans or Europeans are more likely to be discriminating enough to recognize a serious, important artist working in a popular medium."
Jee added, "I guess it boils down to that catch phrase: movie magic. it's gotta have it for ya. One person's magic is another person's smelly cheese. So, Miyazaki can't be put on a high horse. it's just arrogant to presume that Americans are too parochial to accept his movies. Maybe they just don't get his brand of magic. Life's not fair, sometimes."
Interesting experience from Warren Savage, "I loaned tapes of Totoro and Kiki's Delivery Service to a friend recently. I also included a tape of Ghost in the Shell. Previously he had seen and enjoyed Princess Mononoke. When he returned the tapes, he told me he and his wife thought they were dumb, childish and stupid. But they had laughed at Kiki's Delivery Service -- because it was so dumb.
I thought he was 'jerking my chain', but he said he was serious -- they hadn't liked either of the movies and only made a point of watching because I had so highly recommended the films, and they had liked other films I had recommended in the past. He said, though, that they had really enjoyed Ghost in the Shell.
Well, I was a bit shocked. I thanked him for his honesty (he could have lied, you know...)
Some time in the future, over a few glasses of wine, I plan on doing a little individual market research with him to find out in more detail why he felt that way.
But his opinions are his, and are valid for him. I can't MAKE him like the films.
I'll keep inviting friends to view Miyazaki's works. But, realistically, I'm going to expect only a small percentage of those that actually watch a film to like it enough to want to view other Miyazaki films.
Steve Underwood played the cautious consumer, "A whole set of books (at least 5) have appeared in the shops in Hong Kong entitled "Sen to Chihiro film comic" (or the mixed Chinese/English equivalent thereof). They are wrapped in plastic, so I can't look inside without buying. Does anyone know if these are real studio supported books, or some rip off?"
Felix Wong replied, "According to local information, this version is authorized by Intercontinental, the local distributor for Tokuma/Disney in terms of Sen. So, it should be authentic and not a rip off. BTW, having glanced a couple of pages from one of them and found the quality up to par with the Tokuma Japanese film comic."
Felix later posted, "I do spot some book shop in town selling the whole set for HKD 160.(that is around USD 20) Do you need help in buying? Please e-mail me in private so that we can arrange."
Felix Wong: Your Man in Hong Kong.
A lack of quickies this week. Ralf Herzel noted that a German DVD of "Grave of the Fireflies" is due in April.
Fin.