Category: Medias

A straightforward ranking.

• Top tier
Whisper of the Heart
Pom Poko
My Neighbors the Yamadas

• Almost top tier
Spirited Away
Only Yesterday

• Really good
My Neighbor Totoro
Kiki’s Delivery Service
Grave of the Fireflies (should be near the top by its heavy)

• Quite good
Porco Rosso

• Good
Princess Mononoke
Howl’s Moving Castle

• Maybe good?
Castle in the Sky
Arrietty
Naussica

• Decent but too long
Ponyo
Tale of Princess Kaguya

• Doubtful quality
The Wind Rises
The Cat Returns

• Definitely not good
When Marnie was Here
From up on Poppy Hill

• Bad
Tales of Earthsea

I just watched After the Rain, a film written by Kurosawa but directed after his death by one of his proteges. It is really quite good, even if it is not a “classic”.

My favorite aspect of this film is the domesticity of the story. This is not an epic, it’s a simple drama that happens to have a swordsman in it. Everyone is dwarfed by the forest the story is set in. Beyond that, I think this review most likely sums up my thoughts the best, the key quote being:

In playing Ihei [the main character], Terao avoids the inevitable comparisons to [Toshiro] Mifune by approaching the role from the opposite direction. Whereas Mifune’s samurai were often traditional tachiyaku (“manly warrior” types) for whom affairs of the heart were out of the question, Ihei is a New Age ideal: dedicated to his profession, while being sincerely devoted to his long-suffering wife. Terao, a pop-musician-turned-actor who appeared in Kurosawa’s “Ran,” “Yume” and “Madadayo,” is not as comfortable with a sword as Kurosawa’s previous generation of samurai (he had reportedly never handled one before taking the part) but he brings a deadpan panache to his fight scenes.

Also, he is not embarrassed about or contemptuous of the idea of heroism. Instead, in his own low-key way, he embraces it. While not dominating the screen like Mifune, he brings a quiet authority and likeability to his role. Given an impossible assignment — reviving a vanished heroic type — he does a better job than expected.

“Cinematic storm ends with light rain”, by MARK SCHILLING

Petronas, a Malaysian energy company, has been banging out a tearjerker for Chinese New Years video ad every year for the past two decades.

At this point, my mental clock knows to look up their youtube channel around this time every year.

I just burnt half an hour rewatching their catalog. Not every one is excellent, but they got a damn good hit rate.

Perfection is impossible but trying hard to meet your promise is always achievable.

People respect consistent effort. Showing up is its own virtue.

I have a fondness for listening to EDM while doing chores. If I come across a song I like, I’ll play it on youtube since it’s difficult to repeat songs on the free streaming services.

That means I’ve come across a wide selection of music videos, and I’ve noticed a genre of videos where it is merely a recording just beautiful young people being beautiful. Instagram in music video format.

How incredibly dull. Eye candy may be pleasant, but without any story or any hook, it can nearly ruin a song.

If you’ve been handed a decent song and given creative reins to for the video, please do something with the opportunity. It doesn’t have to be earth-shattering, you can even use pretty people, but at least try something.

If you’re not going to try to avoid boring, then at least do us the courtesy of just shooting a video of yourself making the music and let it speak for itself.

After having milked the Studio Ghibli library dry (my favorites remain Whisper of the Heart, Pom Poko, My Neighbors Yamada, and Spirited Away), we’ve come back to exploring domestic fare.

Of those that we’ve seen recently, Coco and Wreck it Ralph have stood out because because they are more than their premises. It’s more than just “a boy’s hijinks in the world of the undead,” or “what if arcade characters had their own lives off-hours”.

Like any popular film, these movies have both contain rollicking wild stories, but they also go deeper, genuinely touching on kernels of family and belonging.

We’ve already watched both of these movies a couple times, and I’ll be curious if they hold up in a few years when the boy grows up and we get to watch them anew.

After the kids went to sleep, we watched the movie with Tom Hanks and Emma Thompson where Walt Disney cajols the P. L. Travers into selling the rights of Mary Poppins for the big screen.

It’s a nicely done movie, with great A-list actors.  But mainly it was nice to watch a movie with weightier themes and a little bit more ambiguity than what one gets with children’s fare as Mrs. Travers wrestles with her difficult childhood.

Then again some children’s movies aren’t as light as they may seem to children. After all, we just watched Mary Poppin a couple weeks ago.  Behind all the song and dance numbers, the film’s primary theme is the shortness of time we have with our children.  The threat barely veiled in that movie, at least for adults.

One of my favorite video series on the web is Cliff Stoll on Numberphile.

Part of it is the subject matter, topology is totally mind twisting and I’ve always had a fondness for old technology, especially after my days in San Jose.

However, I think it’s mainly about him.  He is just so joyful; he is enthusiastic, curious, and a bit impulsive.  This force of personality is also rooted in a deep interest in science and reality.  It’s this balance that makes it one hell of a joyride on the screen.

The fun question for me is how to channel this dynamic as a client.  Exuberance doesn’t matter much if the client doesn’t have the basics down (firm decision making and holding the team accountable to high standards, setting up the conditions of success)  But beyond the basics, I suspect being a client who is excited about the project does get that extra 1% out of the team.  And if it’s gonna take ust as much effort to be dour, then why not, right?

I woke up thinking about the animated movie Mary and the Witch’s Flower, which was done by a group of Studio Ghibli alumni.

The drawing style of the movie was classic Ghibli in its look and feel, as was the story with a strong girl as the lead in a fantastical world.  In fact, it was based off of a story by Mary Stewart, who had also written the story behind Howl’s Moving Castle, which is a very good movie by Ghibli.

Unfortunately however, there was something missing in this effort.  Or rather, I should say maybe there was too much thrown into this effort.  It hit all the classic Ghibli beats, but it just didn’t hold together tightly as an experience.

I wonder what was the missing piece of the puzzle.  I wonder if it because they didn’t have big headliners on their team, like directors Miyazaki or Takahata, or if it was someone outside of the limelight who held a quiet influence over the studio process.

What is the magic ingredient that takes excellent craftsmanship and shapes it into greatness?

We watched Monsters University a couple days ago and I have to say I was quite surprised.  I had very low expectations at first after realizing it was a prequel during the first scene.  In fact I almost walked away to do some chores. However, by the end of the movie I was impressed. It showed me the story telling potential of a prequel, which I had previously written off as an impossible task after the weak Star Wars movies as well as the horrific Assimov infill Foundation infill novels.

The movie did the basic job of a prequel, illuminating the characters and the relationships of the main protagonists.  Unlike other prequels that seem to repeat the genre structure and tropes of the original, Monster’s U also does a good job of telling a different and amusing story. It’s not a groundbreaking story, but as a sequel to another children’s film it doesn’t need to.

Ultimately it made my wife and I want to rewatch Monster’s Inc, to see how knowing that original story would be different now that we know the backstory of these guys. I’m not sure if there’s a higher recommendation that I can give than that.