FunBlog

Clannad is the third in a series of shows from Kyoto Animation adapted from visual novels from Key/Visual Art’s. (The other two were Air and Kanon (2006).)

Kanon is my favorite of the three. It has the most likable hero and the bravest heroine. I admire Air but it’s a bit too grim for my taste.

Clannad is a bit different. It is split into two seasons, the first of which can stand by itself as a gentle, upbeat and very funny harem comedy, though with a rather sad backstory. I’m going to focus on the first season in this review since it can be enjoyed by itself.

As with most KyoAni shows, the character designs are cute and the animation quality is outstanding.
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Brian Ashcraft of Wired was having terrible luck with cell phones: he ran through four of them in less than a year. So he took his next one to the Kanda Shrine near Akihabara, which specializes in spiritually purifying electronic equipment. Result: one shiny new purified and blessed cell phone.

He describes the process in a photo essay: Gadget Blessings: Shinto Priest Protects Electronics From Bad Mojo.

(Presumably it won’t let him browse for porn, but he doesn’t seem to mind.)

O’ Horten is a quirky little Norwegian art-house film. The aptly-named Odd Horten is a shy, taciturn railway engineer who retires and then wanders around for the rest of the movie having a series of comic adventures. Eventually he is inspired to do something that may or may not transform his life.

Maybe I would like this more if I were Norwegian. It isn’t as funny as I hoped. Most of the material is mildly amusing. The ending is mildly inspiring and mildly heartwarming. The hero is so withdrawn that we never really get into his head or identify with him.

The movie isn’t awful, but you may or may not find it worth your time to watch.

A horrible shock awaits K-ON! fans as Atarashii Prelude reveals the awful truth:

How To Deal With A Jealous Ritsu

The Fall Of Hirasawa Yui

This may not be Hayao Miyazaki’s most profitable film, but it is probably the most beloved. Totoro toys and memorabilia are perennial favorites, and his image appears on the Studio Ghibli logo. The film is a family classic, appealing to even the youngest children, but still interesting to adults.

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Up is probably the best movie Pixar has made since Toy Story. It isn’t the sort of game-changing breakthrough that Toy Story was in its day, but it is a solid, workman-like piece of storytelling that hits all the marks it aims at. It is funny, heart-warming and technically excellent, one of the best American animated films of the last ten years. If it doesn’t win this year’s animation Oscar I will be very surprised.

Carl Fredricksen (Edward Asner) is an old man who has spent his life dreaming of adventure. In particular he wanted to go off to the mysterious land of Paradise Falls in South America to search for the legendary explorer Charles Muntz (Christopher Plummer). However life got in the way and he never got around to it. Now his home is about to be razed for an urban renewal project and the authorities are about to bundle him off to a nursing home.

So he ties thousands of balloons to his house, rigs up a primitive steering system and takes off for South America. Too late he discovers that a little boy named Russell (Jordan Nagai), who has been trying to earn a merit badge in Helping the Elderly, has stowed away under his porch. Neither of them imagines the surprises that await when they finally reach Paradise Falls.

Some of the younger members of the audience seemed restless. This is probably best suited for ages 10 and up; probably a 5 year old would find much of it difficult to follow. It is not particularly scary by the standards of recent animated films. Certainly there’s nothing nearly as nightmare-inducing as the climax of Toy Story. Many people have remarked on how sad the opening sequence is, but I think it is the sort of thing that seems sad to adults and tends to go over the heads of children.

The tourists are even allowed to consult the Oracle at Delphi. That scene reminded of when Chaz and I visited an ancient temple at Ise in Japan. Outside the gates, monks sat on platforms inscribing scrolls. “You may ask anything you want,” our guide told us. “Will there be peace in our time?” asked Chaz. The monk gave a look at our guide. Our guide said, “Ah, I think maybe a better question may be more like, ‘How many monks live in temple?’ ”

Roger Ebert: My Life in Ruins

Apparently they are working on a third SnS series. (Probably for 2010. Unless they have been working on it for quite a while in secret, they can’t possibly have it ready for Fall 2009.)

I’m looking forward to this with more trepidation that anticipation. Consider what J.C. Staff has done so far with the franchise:

• The first TV series was quite good in my opinion. (Some disagree).
• Then there was a very lame OVA, which added a pointless onsen episode to the story.
• Which was followed by a movie which was almost as lame. It just rehashed the beginning of the TV series, adding nothing of importance, but playing a nasty trick on anyone who might be intrigued enough by the movie to go watch the TV series. The movie was told in a way that would spoil the ending of the TV series for anyone who hadn’t already seen it.
• Then there was the second TV series which was a mixed bag. The beginning was very weak and rather annoying, but in my opinion the series redeemed itself at the end.

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I’ve argued in previous posts that you as a non-Japanese-speaker can pick up a lot of information by listening to the Japanese sound track while watching anime with subtitles–nuances that are not available in the translation. One of the most useful and interesting things to listen for is whether the characters are using polite or plain speech.

English has different levels of formality. Consider the difference between “Is this Joe’s place?” and “Is this the residence of Mr. Blow?” [1]. They may mean the same thing, but they suggest very different situations. However Japanese goes far beyond English in it’s levels of formality. Polite speech (keigo) amounts to a completely different dialect with its own verb conjugations and specialized vocabulary [2]. Because there is no real English equivalent the subtitles rarely attempt to show that it is being used, but sometimes you need to know when it is being used (or not used) in order to fully understand the characters’ reactions.
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Management is a small, low-budget screwball comedy. It’s lightweight, but parts of it are very funny.

Mike (Steve Zahn) is stuck in a small town in Arizona, working as the night manager for his parents’ motel. He is clearly unhappy and wants a different kind of life, but he doesn’t seem to know exactly what. When a pretty, 30-something traveling saleswoman (Jennifer Aniston) checks in he makes a clumsy attempt to seduce her. She is bored and frustrated with her life and his lost-puppy charm is sufficient for them to end up having clumsy sex in the laundry room. Then she leaves with no intention of ever seeing him again.

Mike decides to go after her, and follows her to Maryland and then to Washington, hoping to win her love and lure her away from her maniacal ex-punk boyfriend (played by Woody Harrelson, whose performance is in itself worth the price of admission.)

Doesn’t this constitute stalking? Well yeah, but it has always been an article of faith in Hollywood that it is OK to stalk someone as long as you look like a movie star and there are pratfalls involved. Just remember, it’s not OK for ordinary peons to do it. The result in this case is predictable but amusing.

TRAFFIC COP: Citizen, what is your name?

BLOND PUNK KID: My name is James Tiberius Kirk!

If you were a fan of the original Star Trek TV series, you pretty much have to go see the new Star Trek movie. This is a witty but respectful tribute to the original series, with the same spirit but better special effects.

Director J.J. Abrams reimagines the beginning of the story, showing us younger versions of Kirk, Spock, Bones, Uhura, Scotty, Sulu and Chekov as they enter Star Fleet Academy, meet each other and gradually bond as a team while confronting a threat to The Universe as They Know It.

This probably wouldn’t look as good to someone who was unfamiliar with the original TV show. To someone who didn’t know the original characters and the Star Trek universe much of the humor would fall flat, and many of the actions might seem puzzling. Such a hypothetical naive viewer might judge this to be routine sci-fi, perhaps even somewhat incoherent.

Still, anyone from a hard-core Trekkie to a casual fan will almost certainly enjoy this.

Kemono no Souja Erin (Erin the Beast-Player) premiered last January, and initially I wasn’t too impressed. Recently I revisited it and it’s really starting to grow on me.

It’s an odd series with an unusual drawing style. The artwork isn’t bad (in fact it’s quite good) but it’s rather unique, not quite what we are used to in contemporary anime.

The story involves a young girl growing up in a land where warriors ride giant hairy poisonous lizards. It’s a long series with 50 episodes scheduled, so it won’t wrap up until the end of the year. (I trust they plan to finish in one year–it’s based on two novels, so there shouldn’t be enough material for a second season.)

The story takes a while to get going and the early episodes told me far more than I really need to know about the care and feeding of giant hairy poisonous lizards. However now things seem to be falling into place, and it has become fascinating. It sort of reminds me of the movies of Hayao Miyazaki. The artwork is quite different, but it has a similar sensibility and the same loving attention to detail.

Initially the only available translation was so bad as to be almost unwatchable. However Static-Subs has picked it up, with much more readable results.

The early episodes feel like a children’s story and it might be good for older children–say age 10 and up. It wouldn’t be a good choice for younger children. (There are worse things in this world than giant hairy poisonous lizards, and some of them walk on two legs.)

I’m not optimistic about this being licensed in Region 1. It’s too long for a DVD-only release and it’s probably too unusual for one of the television networks to pick up. Cartoon Network started to broadcast Moribito–Guardian of the Spirit by the same author, then dropped it after a few episodes.

Crunchyroll would probably run it, but they tend to get the cheaper, low-end shows. Though it may be a bit outside of mainstream tastes, this show is a class act, which may mean that the owners will hold out for more money than in Internet distributor would be able to pay.

A timely warning, which may hopefully spare someone considering the JET program a grave disappointment.

In case anyone doesn’t get the joke, if they tell you your Japanese is “jouzu” (skilled) that generally means that it’s pretty bad. It’s sort of like exclaiming over the skilled dancing of a trained monkey. You’ll know that you’re really starting to get good if someone corrects your mistakes.

Personally I’ve been told that my Japanese is “kirei”, because it is exceptionally awful.

I don’t rent software. Never have and never will. I buy DVDs, and I’ve bought a hell of a lot of them. But I do this. This is like those computer games which won’t run unless they have an internet connection and can phone home every time you invoke them. Your game only works as long as the company that “sold” it to you feels like maintaining the validation server.

And this Crunchyroll deal only works as long as Crunchyroll exists. Not acceptable.

What I wrote back, perhaps more angrily than I should have, was: “I ***BUY*** anime, I don’t rent it. I’ll steal it before I’ll rent it.”

Steven Den Beste

Here I have to disagree. I DO rent anime. If I didn’t there are a lot of things I would never see.

Fushigi Yuugi for example. It was fun to watch, but I’ll probably never want to watch it again. The DVDs are quite expensive. If I had to buy them there’s no way that I could justify the purchase. On the other hand, renting them from Netflix was quite reasonable.

Steven is specifically talking about video streaming sites like Crunchyroll, but I think the same logic applies. If it’s not worth rewatching (and face it, most shows aren’t) then why not watch it as streaming video?

Of course there are some shows that I do want to watch more than once. Some shows seem intended to be watched multiple times, with jokes and hidden meanings that no one would be likely to pick up on a single viewing. (Many series by CLAMP for example.)

And after a series has been out for a few years, you may be able to pick up a thinpak on sale for about the same price that you would pay to rent it. At that point, if it’s any good, why not?

Noir sets the standard for anime thrillers. It is often imitated but rarely equaled. There are many shows that are darker or bloodier, but few that are as exhilarating to watch.

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The latest trend in anime is to offer English-speaking fans legal access to subtitled versions streamed on the Internet starting at approximately the same time that the episode is first shown in Japan. (Example: Crunchyroll.)

Now VIZ Media is doing something similar with Rumiko Takahashi’s new manga Rin-Ne, posting English translations of each chapter every Tuesday, more or less simultaneously with their release in Japan. Fans of Inuyasha will probably want to check it out.

Given that some people were predicting that the season would be a total loss, I think things are looking better than expected.

Likely Winners

Cross Game This seems not so much a conventional sports anime but more of a poignant romantic comedy. Very well done so far.

Eden of the East A summary doesn’t really do it justice. An ordinary girl (naive, idealistic, somewhat spacey, vulnerable, braver than she thinks she is, and generally adorable) meets a handsome, engaging super-spy who has lost his memory. So far this is awesome.

Overlooked Gem?

Mom’s Life (Mainichi Kaa-san) Bloggers have been ignoring this one, maybe because of the deliberately horrifying character designs, or perhaps because any summary makes it sound like a 1960s American sit-com. (Specifically it sounds like Please Don’t Eat the Daisies, though with a manga artist instead of a newspaper columnist.) Nevertheless, it’s hilarious.
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State of Play is a solid, professional thriller, sharply written with some fine performances.

The Washington Globe is a major metropolitan newspaper with a newsroom full of the usual assortment of colorful characters. Cal McAffrey (Russell Crowe) is a crusty, disheveled investigative reporter who has been in the business a long time and knows where the bodies are buried (or failing that, knows someone who does know.)

Della Frye (Rachel McAdams) is an enthusiastic young reporter who writes a blog for the paper’s online edition, covering the Capitol.

Stephen Collins (Ben Affleck) is an ambitious young Congressman conducting hearings on the activities of a shadowy security firm called Blackwater PointCorp, employed by the Pentagon to perform support operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. All hell breaks loose when one of the Congressman’s staffers dies in a subway accident, a suspected suicide.

Della pounces on the story, assuming that the Congressman and the staffer must have been having an affair.

Cal also gets involved. He sees connections with a murder investigation that he has been working on, and suspects that the aide must also have been murdered. But he has personal connections to the story that threaten his objectivity: not only is he an old friend of Congressman Collins, but he once had an affair with Collins’ wife.

Helen Mirren is typically delightful in a secondary role as Cal’s editor.

Technically this wasn’t made by Studio Ghibli but most people think of it as a Studio Ghibli film, since this was the movie that got the studio started.

Hayao Miyazaki had worked on the 1978 anime TV show Future Boy Conan (director, character designs and storyboards.) This was a lightweight series with a rather simple-minded plot, set in a post-apocalyptic world.

In the early 1980s Miyazaki tried to get funding for an animated feature film that would also have a post-apocalyptic setting but with a more sophisticated story. Unfortunately, no one seemed interested in financing an animated film that was not based on a successful manga or light novel series.

Toshio Suzuki, the editor of Animage magazine, encouraged him to develop the story as a manga, which was serialized in Animage. The manga was a big hit, and suddenly financing for an animated movie became available. The success of the film exceeded all expectations, paving the way for Suzuki, Miyazaki and fellow director Isao Takahata to start Studio Ghibli.

This is one of Miyazaki’s earliest films. I wouldn’t say that it’s his greatest work, but it’s still well worth seeing. Many of the standard trademark elements of a Miyazaki film are visible, including ecological and anti-war themes, dramatic flying sequences, fantastic flying machines and a dynamic young heroine.
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This is interesting. Shibawanko no Wa no Kokoro (Shibawanko’s Japanese Spirit) is a children’s anime in very short segments, only a couple of minutes each. Shibawanko, a serious-minded hard-working talking dog, teaches children about Japanese traditions and proper behavior, assisted by a mischievous talking cat named Mikenyanko.

For someone interested in Japanese culture this is great stuff. Unfortunately I see zero chance that this will ever be licensed.

You know you’re showing your origins as a video game when…

…the hero jumps on the back of a giant wild boar, stabs it through the heart with his sword, jumps to the ground as it falls…and drops his sword back into the scabbard without taking the time to clean it.

Actually the best part is the end of the episode:

• EVIL HIGH PRIEST: Demon King Arawn, I was the one who summoned you. I summoned you in order to accelerate the end that you desire! Now, Demon King: thank me by making a bargain with me, since I have followed the ancient contract! I want to become the king of the world, so crown me king of the empire that you are going to create! I give you this girl, the descendant of the Elf King, as a sacrifice! Drink her fresh blood, eat her organs, and devour her soul, O Demon King!
• DEMON KING: (Takes the form of a darkly handsome young man, and looks at Riannon as if he has a somewhat different notion of what to do with her.)

via Steven.

Adventureland is being marketed as a a typical teen coming-of-age comedy, and it sort of is that, but it may not be quite what the fans expect. It’s a bit more serious and low-key than the raucous comedies popular today, more like the teen movies that were popular in the 1980s. If this turns into a trend I won’t be disappointed.

The story takes place in the summer of 1987. James Brennan (Jesse Eisenberg), a young college graduate who had planned to take a European vacation before graduate school, is forced by his family’s financial reverses to take a summer job in a run-down amusement park. Lots of predictable hijinks ensue with his young coworkers, but there is an edgy undertone, a sense that these kids are taking risks that they don’t really understand.

Bill Hader gives a hilarious performance as the sleazy owner of the park, and Kristen Stewart is charming as the main love interest.

The movie industry is thrilled with the first-weekend box office success of Monsters vs Aliens and is convinced that 3-D movies of this sort are the wave of the future. Well, I never claimed that my reviews reflect popular tastes. Nevertheless I remain convinced, based on my own experience, that this sort of stereoscopic imagery is a gimmick that actually detracts from the movie-watching experience, and I don’t think it will succeed in the long run.

I think I have figured out what the problem is, though this is just speculation and I don’t have any solid scientific evidence for it.

When you first look at a movie like Monsters vs Aliens it initially looks very “real”, like looking at a scene through a window. Most descriptions of the experience never go much beyond that initial impression.

However there is an important difference: when you look at a real scene, or for that matter at a hologram, and you move your head, the image will shift with nearer objects moving more than more distant objects. With a stereoscopic image you can move your head all you want, and the image will remain unchanged. The part of the brain that processes this kind of distance information finds this very unsettling.

When you look at a normal “flat” projected image, it also doesn’t change when you move your head, but that’s no problem. The low-level neurons that infer depth from parallax shifts know that it is a flat picture and shouldn’t change. The ability to infer depth in a flat image based on perspective cues is a higher-level brain function and is to some extent learned. (Dogs and cats have stereoscopic vision, but they generally ignore the TV screen because it’s just random patterns of light to them; they can’t see it as a three-dimensional image.)

I noticed that to avoid the disturbing behavior of the stereoscopic image I was unconsciously holding my head rigid. The strain of doing this was probably why I got a headache.

If this analysis is correct then Hollywood needs to forget about stereoscopic projection and concentrate on developing some sort of system for holographic projection. This of course will require numerous technological breakthroughs, so they had better get cracking.

UPDATE: Daniel Engber makes much the same point in greater detail. His explanation is a bit different from mine, but I think the bottom line is that there are multiple perceptual pathways that don’t work right with the current 3-D technology.

I went to see Monsters vs Aliens partly because I had a chance to see it in 3-D, and I wanted to see how good the latest version of the technology is. There have been waves of enthusiasm for 3-D (stereoscopic) movies going back to the early 1950s. In the past the enthusiasm has faded as it became clear that the technology of the time did not look very realistic and tended to induce mild headaches, and for the most part all that directors did with it was to use it to throw things in the audience’s faces.

The latest fad is to combine stereoscopic imaging with computer-generated animation, which eliminates the need to fiddle with temperamental stereoscopic cameras. Dreamworks in particular has committed to making all of their future animated films in 3-D.

Initially I was quite impressed by how it looks. The new technology has tremendous depth of field; it really is much like watching the action through a window. Gradually I became less impressed. The action looks somehow unnatural, so that I was constantly being reminded of the technique rather than being immersed in the story. After a while I started to get a mild headache. And the main artistic purpose still seems to be to throw things at our faces.

Oh well. As Jerry Pournelle likes to say, “I do the stupid things so you don’t have to.”
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This is probably the most acclaimed anime ever made. It won the 2002 Oscar for Best Animated Feature, the only foreign-language film ever to do so. It is one of the great classics of animation, and if you haven’t seen it you probably should.

This movie shows Hayao Miyazaki at the top of his form. It is a splendid example of the art of storytelling, with a main character who is both believable and captivating. The artwork is absolutely stunning. My screen captures don’t really do it justice; you just have to see it for yourself.
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Few things are sadder than a good idea badly executed. Knowing seems to have a good idea at its core. If it had a talented writer and a skilled director who knew how to make the impossible look plausible, it might have been a true classic. Instead, burdened with clunky dialog, indifferent acting and cheezy digital effects, it drifts into the territory of “unintentionally funny.”

Back in 1959 the administrators of an elementary school decided to bury a time capsule to be opened 50 years later. The kids were told to draw pictures of what they thought the future would be like, to be put in the capsule. Instead of drawing a picture, a spooky girl named Lucinda covered her paper with a long sequence of numbers.

Now in 2009 the capsule is dug up. The paper ends up in the hands of John Koestler (Nicolas Cage), an astrophysicist from M.I.T. whose lectures sound like they were prepared for an audience of fifth graders. He figures out that the numbers encode the dates and locations of all the major disasters that have occurred in the intervening 50 years, plus a few that haven’t occurred yet. So of course he has to prevent the remaining disasters from happening, assuming that is possible.

Few actors are better than Nicolas Cage at conveying internal torment and suffering, although in this case I can’t help wondering if he is tormented by the lines he has to deliver. The other actors are less expressive. In some cases the word “wooden” comes to mind. The flashy special effects are so obviously computer-generated that I was left with no feeling of emotional involvement, even while watching disasters. All in all, a disappointment.

Fail.

I guess this just illustrates the difficulty of converting a visual novel into the linear format of an anime. Kyoto Animation did a fine job of this with Kanon 2006, but here it just didn’t work.

I can see why this may have been a great ending in the original game, and why viewers who are familiar with the game may love it. But speaking as someone unfamiliar with the game, trying to evaluate the anime on its own, the ending is pure deus ex machina and feels unsatisfactory.

Which is too bad because the series is beautifully drawn and has some wonderful moments.

I had fairly low expectations for Confessions of a Shopaholic and they were mostly fulfilled. There are some funny moments, but on the whole the script is hokey, predictable, uninspired and full of obvious plot holes.

The best thing about it is Isla Fisher who is cute and engaging enough to make us like a character who through most of the movie is thoughtless, irresponsible and dishonest. She has some talent for physical comedy and might be really good in a real screwball comedy, but this movie is not nearly clever and witty enough to succeed at that level.
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While reading Paul Varley’s Japanese Culture I was struck by his account of the tale of the “Forty-Seven Ronin.” It shed new light on something that had been bothering me, the question of why the heroine of Fushigi Yugi keeps doing things that are so freaking stupid.
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This is an interesting series. I don’t think I would call it a great classic, but it certainly has some dedicated fans. At first glance, from the way it is drawn and presented, it looks like a cheerful comic series with lots of slapstick humor. Actually the story is pretty dark and intense.

It’s a story of adventure and romance, of jealousy and revenge, of passion and treachery and loyalty and courage–all of which was enough to keep me watching for all 52 episodes. However there are a couple of things about it that irritate me.
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I’m not much of a comic book reader. Occasionally I am intrigued enough by an anime to check out the original manga, but that’s about it. As a result, I never read the seminal graphic novel by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons on which Watchmen is based. It seems that some people who are familiar with the graphic novel are unhappy with the movie. I can only judge how it stands by itself, as a movie, for someone unfamiliar with the source material.

For me it’s thrilling. It will not be to everyone’s taste. It is very violent, and dark (and darkly funny.) It is full of splendid imagery, great lines, and wonderfully drawn, over-the-top, larger-than-life characters.

The story is set in 1985; an alternate 1985 in which Richard Nixon is beginning his fifth term in office. His popularity is much greater in this timeline, apparently due to his decision to use superheroes to bring the Vietnam War to a quick and bloody end. However the public has become disenchanted with these masked vigilantes, and superheroics have been outlawed.
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I thought everyone followed Jonathan, but apparently the way he mixes up anime with the hollywoodism repulses people. It’s understandable…

–Author, アニ・ノート, Those Pesky Pronouns

Well, of course I write to please myself, and I take it for granted that my tastes may not be the same as yours. Still, it’s a bit unnerving to hear that this site “repulses” people.

So if you feel that the combination of anime and movies is too much like steak slathered in strawberry sherbet, let me remind you that you can bookmark or subscribe to a subset, e.g.

Category: Anime
Category: Movies
Feed: Anime
Feed: Movies

At the moment it seems that the two most popular posts on this blog are the ones about how to pick up subtle points that don’t survive the translation to anime subtitles–even if you don’t understand Japanese (Japanese Honorifics in Anime and Japanese Family Titles in Anime.) So here are my notes on Japanese pronouns [1], which also can convey a lot of information about the characters in ways that are not easy to include in the subtitles. Once again, this will probably seem very elementary to long-term anime fans, or to anyone who actually speaks Japanese.
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In 1999 Studio Ghibli was approached by the owners of a theme park who wanted a 20 minute animated short subject featuring cats. Hayao Miyazaki thought it should feature the cat characters from the movie Whisper of the Heart, so he went to Aoi Hiiragi, the author of the original manga, and asked her to write the story. She did, and it was eventually published as a manga called BARON: Neko no Danshaku (Baron: The Cat Baron).

However the deal with the amusement park fell through, so plans to make the anime were put on hold. Miyazaki, who was trying to nurture a new generation of anime directors, started to assign aspiring directors the task of drawing storyboards for the defunct “Cat Project”. A young artist named Hiroyuki Morita produced a massive set of storyboards that was so impressive that he was given the go-ahead to create a full-length movie.

The resulting movie is bound to interest any fan of Whisper of the Heart, even though it is not a sequel to that movie and the style is quite different. WOTH was a fairly realistic coming-of-age story, while this is a classic fairy tale. Aoi Hiiragi thinks of this as a story written by Shizuku, the heroine of the earlier movie, and that’s probably the best way to view it.
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Waltz with Bashir (Vals Im Bashir) is an interesting experiment: an animated documentary. It has received numerous awards and been nominated for the Foreign Language Oscar. While it is a fascinating effort, I found it ultimately unsatisfactory.

Writer/director Ari Folman hears an old friend tell of a recurring nightmare in which he is pursued by 26 vicious dogs. They decide that it must have something to do with his experiences during the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon, which they both experienced as infantrymen in the Israeli army.

Folman realizes that he himself remembers almost nothing about the war, so he sets out to interview the other men who served with him to try to recreate what happened. As he interviews them their memories are shown in flashback sequences. The use of animation avoids one common issue with documentaries: there is no confusion about whether we are seeing actual footage of the events or staged re-enactments.
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Frost/Nixon is a semi-fictional account of an event of little historical importance: the 1977 televised interviews of Richard Nixon conducted by David Frost, a British talk-show host. As far as I know, the interviews didn’t reveal any facts that were not already known. Nixon did make a sort of half-hearted apology for his part in the Watergate scandal, but I doubt anyone today really cares whether he apologized or not.

The movie succeeds however as a compelling psychological drama, a sort of duel between two driven, flawed men.

Frank Langella dominates the film with his portrayal of Richard Nixon as a smart, wily and ruthless man whose confident demeanor barely conceals a boiling cauldron of resentment and feelings of inferiority. This is an introverted, socially awkward man who has struggled all his life to fit in and be liked, but whose efforts at cordiality and humor still tend to make people wince. The fact that a man with such handicaps could ever have become President is evidence of his talent and determination. Now disgraced and exiled to his villa in San Clemente, he is still surrounded by a small group of loyal followers who assure him that he was unfairly treated.

David Frost (Michael Sheen) is a young, handsome, glib and charming man with an eye for the ladies. A successful talk show host in England and Australia, he has made a career of pitching softball questions to celebrities. Yet he also feels himself to be in exile. His American talk show was canceled and he longs to return to American show business, which he regards as the big time.

So Frost pays Nixon $600,000 (a huge sum for that time) to appear in series of television interviews. Because no network will touch the project, Frost ends up putting up most of the money himself, taking the responsibility to line up sponsors and sell it to television stations.

Aside from the money, Nixon is looking for a chance to present his side of the story and rebuild his reputation. He assumes that with a lightweight interviewer like Frost he will be able to dominate the interviews and make his case both to the American people and future historians.

But Frost knows that no one will want to watch a Nixon puff-piece. If he is to salvage his career and avoid financial ruin he will have to remake himself into a tough, prosecutorial interviewer who can hold Nixon’s feet to the fire, and symbolically hold him accountable for what he has done. Yet Nixon is an old hand at this sort of thing and Frost finds himself severely outmatched. As the interviews proceed, his upbeat facade becomes increasingly shaky.

Studio Ghibli is the most prestigious of all anime studios. A small studio founded by acclaimed director Hayao Miyazaki, it primarily does theatrical movies with clever, original screenplays and top-quality animation. Disney has an exclusive deal to import these movies and usually gives them a limited theatrical run.

I can’t say for sure that every Studio Ghibli movie is worth watching, since I haven’t seen all of them, but I’ve been pleased with all the ones that I have watched (and someday I’ll get around to reviewing all of them.)

Whisper of the Heart is one of the less known Studio Ghibli films. It’s a small, simple story, but just about perfectly executed. It could hardly be simpler: a teenaged girl finds her ideal boyfriend, then learns that he is about to move out of the country, and she has to decide how she is going to deal with that. And that’s it; no battles, no explosions, no monsters, not even any magic.

Or maybe there is some magic. (That cat sure looks like he knows more than he’s saying.) Let’s just say that everything has a possible rational explanation. Perhaps the real point is that the heroine has the ability to see the magic underlying ordinary life.

I can’t help comparing this to Revolutionary Road, the last movie I reviewed, not because they are similar but because they are opposites. Revolutionary Road explores the dangers of not having a dream (while thinking that you do.) Whisper of the Heart is about what it really means to have a dream.
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I’m giving this movie a cautious recommendation because it is well-written, well-acted and thought-provoking. The reason for caution is that it requires spending 119 minutes with some very unlikeable characters.

Revolutionary Road is the story of an unhappy couple living in a Connecticut suburb in the 1950s. At first it looks like a standard Hollywood condemnation of suburban life, but it quickly becomes clear that in this case the suburbs did not make these people unhappy; they brought their unhappiness with them.

I remember reading about a sixth-grade class whose members all said they wanted to be “celebrities” when they grew up, but none of them were able to explain what they planned to do to become famous. Frank Wheeler (Leonardo DiCaprio) is the grown-up version of one of these kids. He has always talked a good line about wanting to live an unconventional, exciting life, but at age 30 he finds himself living in a boring suburb and working at an office job that he hates. He has no idea what else he might want to do with his life, but he has a vague disgruntled feeling that he is better than his vapid neighbors and annoying coworkers.

His wife April (Kate Winslet) had a more specific dream: she wanted to be an actress. However she has been forced to confront the fact that she has no talent and no future in acting. She and Frank deal with their disillusionment by tearing each other apart and making each other miserable.

(Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio, eh? Is this how they would have ended up if the Titanic hadn’t sunk?)
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For an arthouse film that isn’t in many mainstream theaters, Slumdog Millionaire has been getting a lot of buzz and picking up a lot of awards. It’s pretty well done, but if you go in expecting an upbeat feel-good picture you may be in for a bit of a shock, since most of it is surprisingly dark and gritty.

Jamal Malik (Dev Patel) is a contestant on the Indian version of Who Wants to be a Millionaire. He is one question away from winning the big 20M rupee prize when he is arrested on suspicion of cheating. The police try to beat a confession out of him, replaying each question in turn and challenging him to explain how he could possibly have known the answer. For each question there is a flashback to his experiences growing up in the slums of Mumbai. At some point in each story is a incident that caused him to know the answer.

It becomes clear that his real motivation for going on the show is not the money. He want to be reunited with his childhood sweetheart Latika (Freida Pinto).

There is a fair amount of humor in the flashbacks, but mostly they are very grim, depicting a world of extreme poverty, violence and cruelty. Some Indians have protested this depiction of their country. (It doesn’t help that this is a British production, though filmed in India with Indian actors.) Still it’s probably fair to say that most of the things depicted in the movie really do happen.