THESE FORUMS NOW CLOSED (read only)
Fun Stuff => ENJOY => Topic started by: Blue Kitty on 23 Jun 2009, 23:14
-
Alright folks, Miyazaki's next film comes out in 2 months, why aren't there any threads about it?
Here's the trailer (http://www.traileraddict.com/trailer/ponyo-cliff-by-the-sea/trailer) in case you haven't seen it.
-
That looks pretty amazing/beautiful/awesome.
-
Okay, WTF!
Why have I not heard about this?
I can't wait to see it.
-
I was hoping for another more adult themed movie like mononoke, but Miyazaki really enjoys doing story lines about children and growing up. Anything from him is beautifully stunning.
-
WANT.
-
Japanese film was old news. Disney release, however...
I'm not a big fan of Disney but this is Ghibli property anyway, so I am very excitedmobile.
(ALSO IT HAS LIAM FUCKING NEESON VOICING FGJ)
-
I do not need to see the trailer to know I very much want to watch this. Miyazaki is beyond words, incredible. Unfortunately, because this film will not have tits and 'splosions, or a chance to sell many cheaply made kids' meal toys, it will not play in the theater in my town.
C'est la vie...
-
oh man this looks sweeeeet
-
I've been looking forward to this for a while, it was released in Japan last year I think.
I wouldn't mind hearing the original actors with subtitles though. If this is in theaters anywhere near here I'll definitely go see it.
My favourite Studio Ghibli movie is probably Whisper of The Heart, with Princess Mononoke as a close second. Kiki's Delivery Service was really awesome but too short I felt. All of the other ones aren't bad either.
Edit: this pisses me off
"Miley Ray Cyrus's younger sister, Noah Cyrus, will voice Ponyo, while The Jonas Brothers little brother, Frankie Jonas will voice Sōsuke."
I definitely want to see it in the original version now.
-
That does look pretty awesome. Can't wait.
-
"Miley Ray Cyrus's younger sister, Noah Cyrus, will voice Ponyo, while The Jonas Brothers little brother, Frankie Jonas will voice Sōsuke."
I definitely want to see it in the original version now.
If the voice fits the character, I don't give a crap.
On a separate note, Noah is a girls name now?
-
Yes, it is, though usually without the 'h'.
Noa (Hebrew: נועה, Noa; or נעה, Nōʿā), is a feminine Hebrew name, derived from a root that means "movement". The name is used in the Hebrew Bible for one of the daughters of Zelophehad. Noa is commonly confused with Noah (Hebrew: נח), an unrelated masculine name known from the biblical story about Noah's ark.
-
I don't understand how anyone could get excited over that trailer. There was basically nothing shown in it other than a bunch of cliched "the world is in trouble and only you can save it, lead character who is a small child" shit.
Also, the main character looks a lot like Wigu. What the hell?
-
I've been saying that for days in Meebo.
I cannot get past it at all.
-
Sea creatures are pretty ace but, yeah, there's nothing about this that intrigues me other than the words "Studio Ghibli" and "Miyazaki".
-
It's basically The Little Mermaid without all the awful, awful Disney shit.
-
Yeah, I've gotta agreew ith all the "mehs" thus far. I have enough faith in the studio and Miyazaki, but I really see nothing at all in that trailer to be excited about.
Also, I do not see what this has to do with The Little Mermaid at all. Romance and he world is dying compare how?
-
According to plot summaries I've read there isn't a romance in Ponyo. A baby goldfish with magical powers is brought to the surface of the ocean and bottled, then freed by a young boy who gets cut when he smashes the glass that holds her. She heals the cut, but tastes his blood and is magically transformed into a human and she goes to live with the boy as a sister. This upsets the balance of nature and her father, the King of the Sea, ventures to return her to the Ocean.
So yeah, like I said, it is in its essential plot the Little Mermaid without the Disney shit (ie villain, song-and-dance routines, fairy tale romance, etc.) the central conflict of both stories is the same - will the transformed character go back to who she was or stay in her new life?
It seems boring because it is boring. But Miyazaki shows more heart in his films than any other filmmaker of "kid flicks" ever has, short of maybe the Pixar guys (even if they are similar in their ability to evoke, I would argue that Miyazaki is more elegant in execution) I would say thou shalt not judge a film by its trailer.
-
Hmm, I dunno. I mean, Miyazaki's films are totally cool, but isn't it like he's doing the same shtick over and over?
-
Because in anime 80% of it amazingly original. Hell. In most media, we still have the same tired ol' ideas ebbing to and fro.
And this isn't calling YOU out Jepser, not in the slightest because I in fact AGREE with you. I just think if people are tired of old ideas being rehashed, maybe we're the people to start making new intellectual properties?
-
Critics seem to like it (http://www.metacritic.com/film/titles/ponyo), deem it "children's movie with universal appeal" or the like.
-
This is playing all next week in a local independent theatre here. FUCK YES!!!
Playing in anyone else's cities?
-
Playing a few miles away from me, hope to catch it real soon.
-
Character asks Ponyo about her father:
"He hates humans and he keeps me in a bubble!"
It was sooo cuuuute. The story didn't hardly make sense though. That's okay really, because I didn't go with a really winning plot in mind, but it was some nonsense about the balance of nature and all of a sudden the world is going to end because Ponyo isn't in the sea? It follows some mysterious logic, but whatever. I really liked the backgrounds in the movie; the fact that it's a 2-d animated movie is really laid bare, the layers of animation are really apparent and you can even see the coloring lines of the immobile "sets".
-
I really didn't like it. I think the animation really rubbed me the wrong way. I think it's great to have a simple, clean, smooth art style but Ponyo just crossed the line and was simply boring. My eyes kept wandering because there was absolutely nothing to look at it any way. And when you're a filmmaker who's previous efforts have had such beautiful and detailed art (Mononoke, Spirited Away, Howl's) to move to such a minimalistic art style isn't the right choice. I think that if the colours were perhaps a bit brighter or more colourful that would have helped things.
It's a kids film, but unlike his other films this one isn't nearly as adult-friendly. There's nothing in here that will keep you entranced the whole way through.
I'm not a huge Miyazaki fan, I think he's a great filmmaker but when people refer to him as "like the god of anime" I tend to roll my eyes. I didn't watch it hoping for something like Mononoke or Spirited Away, I watched it hoping for a great film. But I didn't really enjoy it all that much, maybe you guys will.
-
I think that if the colours were perhaps a bit brighter or more colourful that would have helped things.
I get everything you're saying except this. All the other Miyazaki films you mentioned have a much darker palette than Ponyo. I thought the colors were too vivid at times.
I guess I should stress for anyone who hasn't seen it yet that Ponyo is a kids film that happens to be very nice to look at, which is different from saying that it's a kids film that has adult appeal. It's not Spirited Away, exactly. This is a movie for young children, in fact it's pretty much tailored for them. In other Miyazaki films, the rules of the world are set up fairly artfully and expressed through the plot and the many sumptuous visual setpieces. Ponyo in many instances tells and doesn't show - How magic works in the world is largely explained through expository dialogue, spoken to no one in particular or to someone who obviously already knows what's being said - a setup not unlike much of the pop anime that Miyazaki usually sets his work apart from. It can get sort of jarring for older viewers, but children probably won't mind. The cleaner, simpler animation suggests a cleaner, simpler sort of movie.
There is a certain dreamy, childlike quality to the whole film. Mostly you get the sense that very little, if anything, is happening outside the confines of the screen. There are scenes featuring a severe storm yet there is no destruction or any apparent risk of injury. When the main character and his mother elect to drive directly into the storm, the storm seems to be specifically following them as in a nightmare. Largely because it is actually following them, at least in part.
One detail in Ponyo that identifies it as Miyazaki is that unlike in most western fiction, magic and imagination are not things that are exclusively under the purview of childhood. The heros and heroines of Miyazaki films tend to be children, but there exist no skeptics in these worlds - It was not a little baffling to watch My Neighbor Totoro for the first time expecting the father to scoff when his children tell him of their encounter with forest spirits and see him not even humoring them, but immediately accepting their tale as fact. Similarly, when Ponyo arrives at the main character's house as a human girl and they tell his mother that she used to be a goldfish, her reaction is essentially "Well, stuff like that happens sometimes, let's eat dinner." Also worth noting is that, as in most all Miyazaki films, there's no "villain" to speak of.
Overall the pace of the film is quite easygoing, there's very little in the way of action throughout, and one's sense of wonder is not constantly being fed like it would be watching other, richer Miyazaki films like Spirited Away or Mononoke (though scenes like the one in which a deep-voiced wave monster gets tickled by hundreds of goldfish-girls belong in the canpon), but there's still a lot to recommend it.
It's also sort of funny that they got Matt Damon to VA and yet he's got maybe 10 lines in the entire movie.
-
Even with terrible dub (well only fucking cyrus virus) Ponyo was fantastic. Miyazaki went back to Totorro mode. The look of the the animation is probably my favorite in god knows how long. Absolutely cute and....just watch it please.
Also...that song will never leave my mind.
-
Yeah, the song just comes out of nowhere, like a sucker punch. Hilarious.
-
Oh my goodness the song... ahhhh it's so terrible. Like... the entire time I put up with the voice-overs because they weren't terrible. The mom was especially good. And so here I am so gratified that my fears that Disney would turn it into Jonas/Cyrus crap are seeming unjustified. And then that terrible song...
-
To be fair it isn't worse(until that damned remix hits) then the original song.
-
I googled the song outta curiosity. What the hell disney.
-
What? It's very much like songs in other Miyazaki films (e.g. Totoro), it's just in English. The music itself, from what I've heard of Japanese music, isn't too far from the norm. It's not the best, and it hits hard because the score of the rest of the movie is completely different (Joe Hisaishi does another spectacular job with this movie, by the way). This is a situation common to a lot of Japanese culture that gets exported. I bet that (some of) what makes dubs so hard for some anime fans to swallow is that the dialogue, when you hear it spoken, really is that ridiculous. It's a stylistic/cultural thing. Take Ponyo, for example. The English script is just painful sometimes; it lacks all subtlety. Mostly Liam Neeson's lines, actually - I think he was either a poor choice or they just did an exceptionally bad job translating that character. But I'm sure the meaning - the literal meaning, at least - hasn't changed that much from the Japanese. The story probably is as erratic as it seems - actually, I think where Disney (John Lasseter of Pixar seems to have had a large hand in the American production?) probably did the most harm was in over-explicating elements of the plot which were implied (or connected at a level that is easily reached sub-linguistically) just fine.