Thursday, September 12, 2002
More from Telluride - Spirited Away - Japan Anime - Hayao Miyazaki
Spirited Away is another anime by Hayao Miyazaki, who directed Princess Monokoke. It begins much like his My Neighbor, Totoro: a family (Mom, Dad, and young daughter) is moving to a new neighborhood. It's right before the beginning of school. As they drive towards their new home, the daughter is clearly not happy about starting over. She misses her old friends, school, etc; and her parent's efforts to point out the new exciting possibilities are not getting through. The dad takes a wrong turn up a long forested hill, coming to an abrubt stop at a mysterious gate guarded by a stone sentinel. Despite the daughter's pleas, the parents are drawn to investigate. They find themselves in what might be an abandoned amusement park. But it dosen't appear to have been abandoned for long, and it's not exactly an amusement park. Uh oh!
The first 10 or fifteen minutes of Spirited Away are spooky and fun. The plot is much like Neil Gaiman's new book Coraline in that a young girl has to find the courage and wisdom to rescue her parents, and an important step in doing so is recognizing them. The premise of Spirited Away is the same as Totoro: ancient Japanese mythological spirits coexist with modern Japanese society, but are most likely only perceived by children. Not a sweeping epic like Princess Mononoke, but magical just the same.
Tuesday, September 10, 2002
More about Telluride
Here's a link to a terrific report from the Telluride Film Festival by Diane Holtzberg of Indie Wire. She saw many of the same films I did and our opinions were pretty much in synch.
Spider-Man
I guess it was inevitable. The best way to fully appreciate the Telluride Film Festival experience is going back to the movies in the real reel world. We went to Northpark in Jackson to see Spider-Man on its final (eight) legs before its video release. As the movie started everybody looked about three feet tall, and since I knew The Two Towers hadn’t been released yet, I trudged out to the lobby to complain that they were using the wrong lens. They fixed that, but the sound was flat and distant for the whole film; a woman behind us murmured incessantly and she even received a phone call. Even the funkiest temporary theater in Telluride has exquisite sound and crystalline projection. And interested polite filmgoers. No, really.
Spider-Man, despite all the technical snafus, was pretty good. I’m one of those nerdy teenagers who read the original from the beginning. Peter Parker was a guy we could relate to. Angst-ridden, misunderstood, picked on nerdy teenager: a role model. This story from the sixties seemed to work perfectly well set in modern times. I guess Teen Hell doesn’t change that much.
The film seemed to get most of the essentials right. Toby McGuire was good, Willem Dafoe was perfect; Kirstin Dunst not quite as shapely as the original M.J., but the look in her eyes sold the role. In the comics Peter seemed to suffer so much for so long, the movie seemed to have him feeling better about himself sooner, but I guess dramatically they needed to.
I liked Norman Osborne’s nicely staged conversations with the Goblin. They reminded me a little of another Norman’s conversations with his mom in Psycho.
Maybe I should watch X-Men.
