A blog formerly known as Bookishness / By Charles Matthews

"Dazzled by so many and such marvelous inventions, the people of Macondo ... became indignant over the living images that the prosperous merchant Bruno Crespi projected in the theater with the lion-head ticket windows, for a character who had died and was buried in one film and for whose misfortune tears had been shed would reappear alive and transformed into an Arab in the next one. The audience, who had paid two cents apiece to share the difficulties of the actors, would not tolerate that outlandish fraud and they broke up the seats. The mayor, at the urging of Bruno Crespi, explained in a proclamation that the cinema was a machine of illusions that did not merit the emotional outbursts of the audience. With that discouraging explanation many ... decided not to return to the movies, considering that they already had too many troubles of their own to weep over the acted-out misfortunes of imaginary beings."
--Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

Saturday, September 12, 2009

What I'm Watching

Kiki's Delivery Service
A charmer, more linear, less crowded with mysterious detail than other Miyazaki films such as Howl's Moving Castle, Spirited Away and Princess Mononoke. And hence, I guess, more suited for children -- although I certainly wouldn't want to deprive a kid of the wonders of the other films. I wonder, though, at the mittel-Europäisch detail of the streets and architecture of the city in the film (also found in Howl's Moving Castle for that matter), and the absence of Asian people in the crowds on the street. Why are Miyazaki's cities not identifiably Japanese? Is it the Disney influence, the feeling that a "storybook" film has to look like it was written by the Brothers Grimm?
Posted by at
Links: ,

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)