Hayao Miyazaki

amazing filmmaker...just saw spirited away....both spirited away and princess mononoke absolutely amazing films....japanese folk legends are really amazing....

I love Princess Mononoke, but have yet to see Spirited Away. It is in my Netflix Queue, though....

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Yea i own Princess Mononoke, Castle in the Sky and have seen Spirited away all great animated films. have to see his others

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"A good film is when the price of the dinner, the theater admission and the babysitter were worth it."
- Alfred Hitchcock

I prefer Princess to Spirited Away, though they are both beautiful films. Glad he came back and did SA, looking forward to Howl's Moving Castle as well, which has taken an age to get released over here.

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I used to think very highly of Miyazaki, but I think my liking him so much was a function of my inflated fanboyish opinion of all anime at that point. I think he's an interestingly anachronistic animator/illustrator, but a sentimental and very uneven storyteller, certainly not the genius auteur he's often painted as. His best work by far was on the Nausicaa manga. The rest is charming but nothing life-altering.

I like Miyazaki alot....I can't say I'm among those who worship him, simply because I'm still pretty ignorant of the directors in the anime. Maybe it's just me and my ignorance...but I think he's the one that's open the door to anime being shown in the theatres that isn't solely directed towards kids (like the Pokemon craze). I wonder if a film like Steamboy would have even been given a chance if it wasn't for Miyazaki's Spirited Away being so popular. I give him kudos for that.

And, charming is a great way to say it linespalsy. His stories are very chaming and in this day and age of the type of crap coming from hollywood,...I look forward to charming.

Oh...linesplasy...I respect our opinion alot. I'd really like to know which films you thought were uneven. I still haven't looked at the Nausicaa manga, but I'll look for it.


Still haven't seen Howl's Moving Castle. Does anyone know when it's coming out on DVD?

same here

Sure. I think inconsistent applies to pretty much all of his work, and comparatively isn't always a bad thing. A lot of his "more consistent" stuff, like the Monkeypunch adaptations and other early slapstick cartoons are just consistent in that they're missing the highpoints of his later work in the late 80s and early 90s. The Nausicaa manga, on the other hand, is "inconsistent" insofar as it follows a number of boorish political and narrative tropes of the genre in some of it's early threads (particularly the goofy stuff about the prophesy, dead weight that dragged down the movie version but which he wisely disgarded later in the manga).

I'm also always disappointed when he just wantonly cuts away layers of ambiguity in his "and they all lived happily ever after" endings. This was most visible in Mononoke and Howl's Moving Castle ("Oh by the way, I'm a Prince, lets stop this stupid war!") I don't mind that it's impossible to make sense of much of that movie (in fact I regularly rejoice when movies don't make sense!), but the ending still struck me as really half-assed.

I also find his design and cinematic vision to be somewhat inconsistent. I loved the castle in Howl and the insects from Nausicaa, for example, but the wormy animals and purplish blob of Mononoke were uninspired.

But yeah, you should definitely check out the Nausicaa manga pronto (it's even where I got my avatar), it's got a much darker and more intelligent vision than any of his movies to date.

Great !

I've only seen Spirited Away and Princess Mononoke.. i'm diying for the italian release of his movies' dvds.

you italian? and you speak english? how strange.....( sorry, i've been to a festival in bologna recently and had much trouble comunicating because not one soul spoke english, which is very surprising, especially that young people don't speak it, i would have thought they teach it in schools )

They teach it in school, but (i don't know why), most of us find hard to learn it.

Btw.. 31 December is the release date for Porco Rosso and Nausicaa here.. i have to wait .__.

I've finally seen Howl's Moving Castle and it was great, Miyazaki rules.

I've read very luke warm reviews for Moving Castle

yeah, me too, someone said that it's a shame that miyazaki was introduced to the western public only after princess mononoke, implying that his earlier works were superior and that the quality of his films is decreasing as he gets older.....i wouldn't know myself, i haven't had the privelage of seeing his earlier films and i don't think i ever will

Not a big fan, but really, beyond Akira, Neo Genesis Evangelion and Cowboy Bebop, I don't really see anime as a creatively significant field.

I have Spirited Away - good film, and the only one of his I've seen, really nice animation, but I thought it was a bit grotesque in parts. Has anyone seen Takahata's Grave of the Fireflies? That looks like it might be my kind of film.

I didn't think Princess Mononoke was all that, so I avoided Spirited Away for ages, but saw it recently and thought it was fantastic. I also recently rented Howl's Moving Castle, which does seem a little as if some of the plot got lost in translation, but is generally also good.

Spirited Away was a bit more bodily fluid than I was up for... there was just way too much puke and crap.

I loved Kiki's Delivery Service, however.

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Review: Cabin in the Woods 8/10

I'm really not a fan of Anime but theres just something about Miyazaki that I love. I own all his movies now and love each of them the same but Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind is my definitative favorite.

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James Sparrow's Rented Reviews!

The Reaping 7/10
Transformers 8.5/10
Flight of the Living Dead 6/10
The Invisible 6/10
Return to House on Haunted Hill 1/10
Planet Terror 8/10
A Mighty Heart 7/10

Well, I loved Kiki's Delivery Service but I have also found solice in Castle in the Sky and Howl's Moving Castle..

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Success is the only earthly judge of right and wrong...

Hey Elephant Man, yave you read the Nausicaa manga? If not go do that now. It's way, way better than the movie - I don't mean that in a "comics are better than movies" way, but just that the story in that comic is so much more satisfying than in the movie. Movie covers about one-quarter of the comic, and it's by far the least interersting quarter.

I will give the movie this: it has perhaps my favorite opening credits ever.