From the maker of Princess Mononoke. It looks really good. If you haven’t checked out the trailer, do:
Thanks for the heads up, that does look pretty good.
Thankfully, it looks a bit more like something from the maker of Totorro than something from the maker of Mononoke…
-Tom“Totorro” and “Kiki’s Delivery Service” are two of the finest animated movies I have ever seen. “Mononoke” was just too harsh and my daughter could not take it. “Spirited Away” looks like a combination of the two. I too hope it is more “Totorro” than “Mononoke”.
The only thing close that I’ve seen from the USA in recent years was “The Iron Giant”. I know thay movie has been loved/hated and loved again since it was 1999, but I saw it on a preview weekend 1 week before it was released (a few months after “Episode 1” soiled “Star Wars” forever), and it was like a revelation. The kind of emotion it provoked was what I wanted from “Episode 1”. I’ve been waiting for something animated to make me “feel” something for a long time since. (and by “something” I don’t mean the odd feelings 'Jane" from Disney’s Tarzan stirred up when I realized Minnie Driver did the voice) Hopefully “Spirited Away” will be the one that does it.
Strange but true, Vin “XXX” Diesel was the voice of the Iron Giant.
John Lasseter at Pixar is the lead on bringing Spirited Away to the States, so it’ll probably get a better treatment than Mononoke.
Another bit of trivia: Spirited Away is required viewing for all Pixar employees, whether you’re an animator or an accountant.
>John Lasseter at Pixar is the lead on bringing Spirited Away to the States, so it’ll probably get a better treatment than Mononoke
They’re showing Spirited Away in Toronto. The original, Japanese version with subtitles is outselling the “commercial” English version that’ll be widely released in North America by an 8:1 ratio. Oops.
Not surprised. Anyone who regularly follows anime can yammer on and on about the whole “sub vs. dub” debate. I almost always get subs, but there are a few exceptions where the dub is actually pretty good (Cowboy Bebop is famous in that regard).
Though, Lasseter is such a Miyazaki freak, combined with his general know-how, that I’m just hoping he’ll make the dub comparable, rather than execrable, to the sub.
I’m anything but an anime connoisseur, so I guess it’s not surprising that I really appreciate a good overdub. The best example I can think of is the Ranma series. They do a tremendous job translating and reinterpreting those from what I’ve seen. I would much rather have the show conscientiously adapted to its audience than perfectly accurately translated straight from Japanese. I thought having Neil Gaiman write adapt the Mononoke script was a good idea, although I admit I don’t really have the ability to compare the English version to a straight translation. I hope they keep dong the same thing in Spirited Away.
I assume you’re talking about the theater release?
Hopefully both versions will be on the DVD like it was with Mononoke Hime.
>I assume you’re talking about the theater release?
They’re showing both the crappy, dubbed, theatrical release (which will shortly be widely available), and the hard to catch original language version. No idea what the DVD plans are.
So… What’s so crappy about the dubbed release, Desslock?
from the “a little info a little late” pile:
the Wall Street Journal had a very positive review of both theatrical versions in yesterday’s (Sept 20th) Weekend edition. i was impressed to see such a mainstream newspaper putting this review on it’s front page weekend section. anime goes mainstream.
Overdubbing is an artform. From translating the language to one that makes perfect sense to us, to putting it in time with the motions and the lip-movements of the characters, to choosing which words and what sentence-structures to use, etc.
One mistake and all your perfect planning and timing goes down the drain. Gotta love a good dub.
(And at first, I thought someone said sub vs dom, and wondered how the hell bondage got brought into all this)
I agree about Bebop’s dub. Does anyone know what the deal is the the US release of the DVD? Columbia/TriStar has the rights to that but they didn’t do the TV series. Did they keep the same voice cast?
I’ve heard the voiceover work in Spirited Away is exceptional, but again, that’s just from the reviewers. Who, by the way, unanimously love it. It’s the exact antithesis of Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever. It’s holding steady at 100%, while Ballistic is steady at 0%. =)
http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/SpiritedAway-1116064/
Which, by the way, puts it in good company. 28 other movies on RT have 100% scores, but only two with over 50 reviews.
Gotta love anime on DVD, though. You get your choice of dub or not, subtitles or not. It’s kind of a fun experiment to watch an anime movie you’ve never seen in Japanese with the subtitles off and see how well you can make out what’s going on. :) (which of course doesn’t count if you speak Japanese)
Too bad Spirited Away isn’t opening here, and probably won’t. :(
i didnt see mononoke, but i saw totorro and spirited away. i would say that they are not alike. the fun and happy theme is not in the later.
algahar
My gf and I have seen all of Miyazaki’s previous work and were looking forward to Spirited Away more than any other movie this fall. It did not disappoint. It’s really a beautiful work of art. More Totoro than Mononoke, with lots of humor and whimsical stuff, but some creepy and fascinating metaphorical aspects. Really a wonderful piece of filmmaking. Exra bonus for me was being pleased to see CGI employed with great subtlety.
For those of you that don’t know, Miyazake was a cartoonist before he became the “Walt Disney with a soul” of Japan, and his multi-volume masterwork, Nausicaa: The Valley of the Wind is an absolute must-read. The film that he made of it is only a tiny fragment of the whole story, which is sort of like the closest thing comics has to a fantasy epic like Lord of the Rings. Can’t recommend it highly enough!
As a Miyazaki fan I loved this movie (saaw it subbed, going to see it dubbed soon). All of the Studio Ghibli films from Nausicaa - Laputa (of Miyazaki) to Whispers of the Heart - Pom Poko (of Takahata) are wonderful and all VERY different!!
Although the themes in Spirited Away involve the world of the dead, I would take a small child to see the movie. Throughout the movie Chihiro proves to out weigh difficult situations in order to better her chances of saving her friends and her parents. It’s not a “violent” movie like Mononoke, but I agree it doesn’t have that “sleepy/smiley feel” of Totoro. There is a lot of action in the movie involving decisions for a 10 year old to make, which I think sets a good example of young child to watch. It’s far more stimulating than some of the US animated movies that have been released.
Studio Ghibli has a huge library of movies and tv series that were produce that would be a great collection for a child to watch. Most of the DVD’s that were released in Japan have english subtitles and english dubbed options. If you are lucky to live near a thriving Chinatown, some video stores carry the WHOLE library and for a mere $150 you can have 10 movies! The quality of the set a friend purchased, you can clearly tell it’s not an “original” but it’s pretty decent.
So is it me, or is Disney once again bending a fantastic Miyazaki film over and fucking it right up the ass? They wondered why Mononoke didn’t do better; perhaps it’s because they didn’t advertise it at all, and then released it on only a handful of screens. And now they are doing the same with Spirited Away, which is doing about as well as any movie could hope to do, given that it is currently only playing in 97 theaters (none of them, annoyingly, near me). Contrast that to Red Dragon, which is showing in 3300 theaters across the country. Of course Spirited Away’s per-screen average is nearly as high as Red Dragon’s, and it managed to make #15 on last week’s box office list, in spite of the fact that almost all the other movies on that list are playing in 20 to 30 times more theaters.
If they did an actual wide release and ran a few TV spots, I’ll bet this movie would be a blockbuster. So why don’t they? Are they idiots?
Maybe they should rename it “My Big Fat Japanese Allegory”.