Animation Hall of Fame

I meant to respond to this earlier - I've really been enjoying reading your reviews in the HOFs, Clazor. I don't think you have anything to worry about in terms of the quality of your writing. You just need to find that balance that allows you to still immerse yourself in the film while being able to articulate what you like or didn't like about it.

I was not aware of that, but I definitely understand it.

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Secret of Nimh- Potential Spoilers

I believe that I hadn't seen this film since sixth grade, so there was a lot of things that I couldn't quite remember about the film while rewatching. I think I appreciated the film more now than I did as a child. I remember really liking the book back in the day too, you know, back when books were a fun thing.

The colors of the film obviously stood out to me in the animation. I also really liked how the characters were drawn up. I thought the music fit with the film really well. The settings that were shown in the film were often hit or miss, but I really liked the darkness of the great owls habitat.

This is an animation film with a really big heart. I really felt for Mrs. Brisby and wanted her to have a very successful journey for here family. She was the ultimate hero and I enjoyed watching her display of courage. I also really liked the character of Nicodemus, and I was quite saddened by his eventual death. Characters like Jeremy, Justin, and the aunt weren't bad but the top two are what stood out to me the most. Brutus and Jenner were as evil as I had remembered them to be.

I really liked the dark tone of some of the scenes. It was a nice counter balance to what we normally see in animated movies. I must say that I think this is probably my most enjoyable Bluth film.

I wish I could remember the differences between the film and the book other than her name as i feel there were a few more. Overall, it was a real positive experience this time and I believe it should have earned a spot on the top 100 animated list. It could potentially come close to cracking my 25 at this time.

Glad you liked it. You're right, it did deserve a place on the list, but it seems it's either too obscure for people to know it, or people around here doesn't appreciate the darker side of animation. Or, you know, maybe people just don't like it. It happens to the best of them.

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Why not just kill them? I'll do it! I'll run up to Paris - bam, bam, bam, bam. I'm back before week's end. We spend the treasure. How is this a bad plan?

Well NIMH was only three points shy of making the countdown. It had a lot of support, but not quite enough.

I think I'll have to put together a top 50 animation list of my own one of these days. Hopefully someone will see it and get inspired to watch somthing they previously haven't.

Ok, so people have heard of it then. That's something, I guess. Still, it rankles that all dogs and surf's up got on the list and NIMH didn't.

I love Surf's Up. It's one of my go to movies when I'm stressed or bored. I had it pretty high on my ballot.


ETA Just checked the countdown thread and I had it at number 6, which accounted for 20 of its 57 points.

Not saying it's bad, actually found it kinda heartwarming, but I liked NIMH better. Actually only mentioned those two because as far as I remembered, those were the ones in place 100 and 99.

Also, I might just be a little bitter about missing the animation countdown. It would've been alot of fun to partake on that one. Sorry I missed it, is all. Anyway, time for me to hit the sack. Night.

I respect NIMH a lot, but I like Surf's Up a lot more.

I do agree that NIMH is more deserving of a place than All Dogs, though. I was very disappointed with the way things turned out for Bluth films in general. Of the five Bluth films I've seen, the two that I felt were among his weakest were the ones to make the cut. I would've much rather seen The Secret of NIMH and The Land Before Time make the countdown than All Dogs Go to Heaven and Anastasia.

ETA: Sorry you missed the countdown too. It was a lot of fun. And it had the best countdown host ever.

Tokyo Godfathers (Tokyo Goddofazazu) (Satoshi Kon and Shôgo Furuya, 2003)
Imdb

Date Watched: 11/9/16
Cinema or Home: Home
Reason For Watching: My Nomination for the MoFo Animation Hall of Fame
Rewatch: Yes.

I first became aware of Satoshi Kon's work when I hosted the Animation Countdown in 2014. My very first introduction to Kon was when I searched for a gif to represent Paprika. I was stunned by what I saw. The images were unsettling and incredibly beautiful. My experience was repeated when I later searched for images from Millennium Actress and Perfect Blue. Still later, I challenged myself to watch every unseen film that had made the countdown. When I got to Kon's work, I was rewarded with films that were rich with surrealism, mystery, and characters haunted by their pasts.

And so I expected the same when I decided to explore further and watch Tokyo Godfathers - the one Satoshi Kon feature that failed to make the countdown. What I got was very different, but no less rewarding. The artwork looks great. There is some mystery and some surreal aspects, and certainly its characters are hiding from their pasts, but none of that is what the movie is really about.

It's a Christmas film about the importance of love and family, but it doesn't seek to define either of those terms in conventional ways. Here we are presented with a group of people with rough exteriors. They're homeless. They're ragged. They constantly bicker and sling insults (and sometimes objects) at each other. Each comes from a very different background - one a drunkard with a gambling problem, one an outspoken transgender woman, and the other a teenaged runaway - but above all their fighting rises a dedication and solidarity that makes them no less a family than any group of people related by blood. And this unity (and sometimes division) is amplified when they find an abandoned baby girl hidden among the trash and seek to find the child's mother.

Along the way, they encounter a series of outrageous events and coincidences that might have been a little harder to swallow in a non-holiday film or in one with characters who are not as fully realized as these. The things that happen in the film admittedly feel contrived, but I buy it anyway because there is so much heart and emotional authenticity to these characters. And the warm fuzzy feelings I get from watching this don't come covered in corn but rather a deliciously thick layer of salty humor.

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You saved the best for last (well, one of the best, there was some good noms this time.)

Somehow I doubt that. I'll try to keep an open mind, but I haven't had the best experiences with Miyazaki in the past.

Hope tat and Jal are still in since i'm planning on watching their noms next.

Just my thought but I feel this one has a much different experience than the others.

Thats odd,i remember a watch as well..a big golden one?
I cant be much of help though,as i havent seen it myself since i was a kid. I hope ive nominated the right movie

there is a sequel as cosmic said,and also the christmas addition-which is on youtube.i think both of them are (as was this one-but it got removed inbetween the time i nominated it and the HOF started)

I have alot of time tomorrow,which will give me the time to catch up a bit as im a bit behind on this and the 11th I think secret of Nimh will be my next one as im really excited for it.

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Am waiting with baited breath to hear what you think

Night on the Galactic Railroad (1985)


Spoilers below. Don't read if you haven't seen it.


*Fifteen minutes from the end*

What is this? I don't understand, what is this about? What is the train? Why are the boys on it? Who are these other people?

*Five minutes later*

OH MY GOD THIS MOVIE IS AWESOME!!!


To be a bit more serious though, this movie was a bit wierd for most of it's running time. Its structure was unfamiliar; short, episodic pieces revolving around a meeting, a station or an otherwise mundane action. But the way it's presented gives it a surreal, sometimes almost threatening feel to it. The conductor asking for the ticket is, at the same time, a totally unrealisticly threatening scene, and an completley realistic one, if you're in the shoes of the guy without a ticket. It's this mix of the surreal and the completley normal that makes the movie great.

"Based on one of Japan's most beloved children's novels" I red on a poster. I can't fully grasp what this is about, and you're telling me that parents read this to their six year olds?

Well, that might be hyperbole, I get the basics.

It brought to mind Alice in Wonderland or, maybe more fittingly, The Wizard of Oz. Giovanni falls asleep in a field and wakes up with the sound of a train ringing in his ear. Throughout his travels on the train he meets people both strange and familiar, encounters strange places and far off realities, all leading to a destination unknown. With him is his friend Campanella, who suddenly appeared on the train, clutching his ticket. I loved the little setup there, the splashes of water Giovanni mistakes for dust. It turns up again with the children, but by then I'd forgotten it. Which leads into the last thing I thought of. It's a campfire story or an urban legend. Giovanni dreams of a journey to the ends of the universe, a journey shared by Campanella who, unlike Giovanni, has a ticket with a fixed destination. Giovanni isn't supposed to be there but for some cosmic coincident, it seems. When they both reache Campanella's destination, he disappears, leaving Giovanni alone, unable to follow. Giovanni wakes up, only to find that Campanella fell into a river and drowned, hence the moisture on his coat.

It's a classic ghost story finale. The character wakes up, believing what he experienced was just a dream until...duh duh DUUUUHHh!!! He sees something that gives lie to that assumption. "He had an faint X on the back of his hand that he could never wash off" etc etc.

I still don't really grasp what the train is, though. Is it simply a transporter of souls to heaven? A multi-dimensional network connecting different times and realities? A figment of Giovanni's mind? All of the above? This and more, I guess, but as I said, I might only be grasping the very basics of this story.

I liked this movie, but only after seeing it through to its finale. It confused me most of the time, had me exasperated half-way through and kept me waiting for an actual plot until the very end. I did like it, though. It might be as surreal a movie as I can stand to watch without getting annoyed/bored enough to turn it off.

PS
Still straching my head over this heaven/TRUE heaven bit. Is heaven not the ultimate heaven? Is TRUE heaven even the end? Is there a even better heaven after that one? *Sigh* This will keep me up at night.
DS

I had some trouble grasping what exactly was going on in Galactic Railroad as well and felt a bit frustrated with it for most of its runtime, but it was definitely a beautiful and surreal film and I liked it by the time it finished.

Daily reminder that Japan considers Grave of the fireflies a film for kids. Don't ask. Nobody knows. It's Japan.

Actually I think it makes SOME sense to read this as a tale to help the children accept and understand heavy concepts, take into account that in Japan the

culture is not the same as it is in the West. But still, for six year olds...

I admit that I didn't have a problem grasping it because I was already spoiled of the main event, so I went into the movie interpreting things according to this and saying "oh, this, it makes sense with the spoiler" all the time. Either way, I think the main appeal it has is not in getting its metaphors (which, I think, are not that intricate, at least in their core meaning, taking into account that this is a story for kids anyway, so they don't have to get either if the train is a dream or if it exists, just the main concept it represents) and understanding the overall structure of the film but in feeling through them as they appear and getting carried away by the mood.

I'm in. And so is:


Well, it wasn't a bad experience, unlike the other Bass & Rankin I watched immediately later (who would expect that I'd end up missing the Hobbit of Peter Jackson... damn). Whatever, it wasn't something good either in my opinion. Just some kind of middle road with flaws as big as its qualities. It is, above all, an unbalanced movie. Conceptually it is beautiful, a very good fairy tale and its imagery is very engaging, but the film seems to be specially interested on wasting its own potential with constant pacing issues and missteps, mainly due to an insane amount of some of the least appealing, more often than not excruciating songs I've seen in an animated movie. Seriously, I kind of liked some, but they sound incredibly monotonous to me, heard one heard them all, and they are everywhere, in every corner, every time a character starts singing I know there's 2 minutes of movie going to waste... Okay, done with the hyperbole, but you know the idea.

Another aspect that bugs me is how incredibly irregular the dialogues are. They are either literary, evocative, and all-around wonderful to hear, or they are flat, utterly stupid and uncalled for. In general the story suffers from this irregularity in all its aspects but it's very noticeable in this. Schmendick is specially guilty of this and at some moments I honestly don't know what point does the film want to make with this character because his reactions and lines feel so distanced from the events. Maybe it's also a matter of voice acting being off for some sequences, or the animation not being expressive enough but... overall, I didn't feel too attached to this character. On the other hand, on the positive side, there is for example the way the concluding events are worded, which kind of becomes an issue because the narrative conclusion is far more appealing than its visual representation.

I have enjoyed it and would like to say that it is a great film beause during a lot of moments it does give me the vibes of, but on the other hand I find too easy to get distracted and it feels quite irregular with some decisions I can't even start to understand. For like half of the cast, I am not even sure about their purpose on the story yet. But still, the main story and various of its ideas are quite appealing and have a lot of potential.

Overall, sounds fine for this one.