| 1. | (17 posts) | Boatload of Castle of Cagliostro threads |
| 2. | (4 posts) | Sharing Miyazaki |
| 3. | (7 posts) | hypthetical questions |
| 4. | (7 posts) | Laputa and Miramax |
| 5. | (6 posts) | Princess Mononoke DVD delayed - again |
| 6. | (7 posts) | Studio Ghibli sheet music |
| 7. | (17 posts) | Film nuances |
| 8. | (9 posts) | Snap decisions |
We looked at 177 posts by 66 different contributors.
Busy week on the MML, not much else to say, so without further ado. . .
Castle of Cagliostro came out this week in VHS and DVD flavors. Chris Meadows noticed what seemed to be a homage to Cagliostro in the 1997 remake of "The Love Bug", "When they're racing against the villains, there's a scene where the villains drop grenades out the back of their car from ahead of them. They bounce, twice, then explode, the first to the left of the Bug, then the other to the right and nearly on it. The scene looks almost _exactly_ like that grenade-dropping bit of the chase scene from Cagliostro. Coincidence? Or homage? I wonder..." Chris also posted his hefty review of the film. Mike McCollum posted his impressions of the DVD, including a section about the quality of the dub, "The dub is also a pleasant surprise. The english voice actors sound great and the script captures the action/comedy mix of the film really well."
Rebecca Ballard shared a great way to introduce people to Miyazaki and anime in general, "A couple of weeks ago, I hosted a "Miyazaki night" for some of my friends who had not seen any of Miyazaki's works besides Mononoke. Everyone loved the films, to no surprise." Hosting a showing rather then tossing out some tapes lets you answer the questions that will undoubtedly popup. The similarities between characters in Miyazaki's films came up, "We had just finished watching Totoro, and when Ursula, the artist, came on the screen, one of my friends exclaimed, "It's Mei! All grown up!". I had to agree, she sure looks like a grown-up Mei." Dave III (as he's known to close, personal friends - like everyone on the MML ^_^) concurred, "I always figured Miyazaki employed "actors" like Osamu Tezuka did..." For more concrete evidence visit this interview with the Ghibli Girls.
Marc Hairston tossed out a few thoughts:
I'm just now home from listening to the students' oral presentations of their papers on Nausicaa.(Ed: Check out the class website for more info) God, these kids are good. Even the clunkiest was good and the best blew me away. I'll be posting their abstracts after finals are over in a couple of weeks.I found instances of books, "see pg 79 in the first PC volume or the movie at the 41 minute mark." as did Fukumoto Atsushi, "The Matriarch of The Valley of Wind mentions about "The Chronicles" (Vol. 2, p.86 of Viz Graphic Novel version)." Mike Rieper commented on the second question, "I think this depends on one's beliefs about destiny and the messiah figure. If Nausicaa truly is the "Blue Clad One" who is to come forth than you have to believe she would still fulfill this destiny. On the other hand it is pointed out that the tapestry depicts a middle aged man with a beard, which could have been one of Nausicaa's brothers, but she took their place as the Blue Clad one in the tapestry...."Meanwhile a couple of hypotheticals came up tonight and I thought I'd throw them out here for folks to mull over. Since they *are* hypothetical questions, there won't be a definitive answer to either, but maybe someone else will remember something from the manga that I missed and come up with at least a plausible answer.
1) One of the students mentioned that there were no books in the Valley and that Nausicaa had to learn everything from her own studies. I started to protest that was wrong, but realized that I can't think of a single instance in the whole manga where books are present. Even in the garden outside of Shuwa they had saved only written music, there is no specific indication of any written books (although there *are* lots of shelves there in that great hall). So how did cultural knowledge get passed along in the Valley? Were there books or was it a completely oral culture with the knowledge and culture being saved and passed along by the grandmothers?
2) We have had endless discussions about why Miyazaki chose to make Nausicaa female instead of male. And we know that part of why Nausicaa took on a traditionally male role was because none of her siblings survived early childhood. But what if...Nausicaa had survived *and* so had one her brothers? Without the pressure to take on the male role, would she still have become a leader/messiah figure, or would she have ended up just being a traditional Valley woman, having children and harvesting chico nuts?
David Mankins also chipped in on question two, "Maybe a Nausicaa cursed with a brother would have been more like all those late-Disney heroines (Belle, Ariel, Mulan...) chafing at the restrictions that try to keep them in their place. She could even have a song about yearning to ride the wind, investigating the fukai, listening to the Ohmu... hmm, maybe that song from Pochahontas about listening to the spirit of the wind?"
Not much news about the English version of Castle in the Sky has surfaced since its premiere, Ryoko Toyama passed along this news, ". . . in the magazine, there is an interview of Mr. Suzuki, the producer, and he said that Harvey Weinstein, the president of Miramax, faxed Ghibli in the beginning of this year, and "wanted Laputa". According to Mr. Suzuki, Ghibli agreed to it."
Conventional wisdom had pegged Buenta Vista Home Video as handling Castle in the US, Chris Wallace gave his thoughts on the matter, "it might be that Disney has decided to have Miramax handle distribution of the remaining Ghibli films to a) possibly distinguish them from Disney animated features released by WDP; b) because Mononoke has already been released by Miramax, it might be easier to release the rest under the label (a foundation has already been laid); c) Miramax may be more inclined to release DVDs with more advanced feature sets (like anamorphic and such) than BVHV is; d) the working relationship Miramax built with Ghibli/Tokuma while working on Mononoke may be stronger than the one between Ghibli/BVHV." Also to be noted is the fact that BVHV doesn't deal with theatrical releases. Is Castle in the Sky being prepped for the theatre rather then straight-to-video? We'll have to wait and see.
Turning into something of a regular occurrence, the release date of the Princess Mononoke DVD was again pushed back. Reaction was fairly muted, a combination of the release of Castle of Cagliostro and apathy. Ryoko Toyama shed a little light on the behind the scene workings, "Basically, it was not "delay". The MH DVD wasn't simply ready for the June release. There are just a lot of things to decide, and before everything was hammered down, somehow, it was publicized that it will be released in June." No mention about the VHS release, but some news will be forthcoming in the next week.
David Athay inquried, "I have to say that I really enjoy the musical scores for Miyazaki films. Does anyone know if there is a compilation of the sheet music available?" After some miscommunication, I directed him to the Music Books page and some sample scans from "Animation Songs / Studio Ghibli Songs Collection". Eron Rauch pointed out that Animenation is selling the Totoro and Nausicaa musicbooks. Those living near a Kinokuniya can special-order the musicbooks. The Laputa: Castle in the Sky musicbook is out-of-print however.
Evan Talbott noted, "One of the things (among many) that make me watch Miyazaki's films over and over again is finding something new each time. There's always some little detail that I never noticed before for me to discover." This started a flood of various comments/explanations from Totoro to rotoscoping. Most of the messages centered around the details in Kiki's Delivery Service. Recommendation: pick up the sub or dub and discover on your own!
An offshoot from another thread, it centered around characters making on-the-spot decisions. David Athay said, "I find this to be a common thread in Miyazaki's work. Many of hisprotagonist exhibit this type of behaviour i.e.: Mei in Totoro makes several snap decisions as does her older sister. In Majo no Takyubin, Kikiis also extremely sure of her choices and make very gut level, spur of the moment decisions." After some discussion about whether or not Miyazaki shared this characteristic (general consensus: no) the thread turned to of all things, golf.
David Mankins compiled a list of Miyazaki films currently in the top 100 at Amazon.com. Derek Webster notes that the Nausicaa manga is #6 in sales among Graphic Novels on Amazon.co.uk. Kiki's Delivery Service will be showing on the Disney Channel May 7th. Steve Alpert (President of Tokuma International) has a diary about bringing Mononoke to the US - highly recommended reading. Jason Brinkerhoff is working on a Studio Ghibli postcard site for nausicaa.net, and needs fan art submissions. Miyazaki's current film, Sen to Chihiro, is experiencing story bloat.
Hope you've enjoyed this issue of MML Traffic. Comments and questions welcomed