Spirited Away

[rowyn]

Finally saw “Spirited Away” on Sunday evening. I won’t give any spoilers (I can write at great length on a movie without telling you anything about the plot, characters, or anything that happen in it, in fact).

I will say that I loved it. I haven’t enjoyed watching a movie this much in years. It was visually stunning. I love the way Haako looked. The story and the part the characters played out in it was very well-crafted. I am so glad it won an Oscar, not because I care a whit about the stupid awards, but because that prompted Disney to re-release it to a broader market, and it didn’t make it to Emerald City the first time ‘round. Definitely worth watching on the big screen.

The dubbing was exquisitely well done. Translation can make or break a foreign film, and in the vast majority of dub jobs, it breaks it. Some people don’t think this applies to animated films, but it does. Crappy dubbing is crappy dubbing; I usually avoid it at all costs. One of the nice things about DVDs is that they’ve made subtitled and letter-boxed films easier to obtain, because the studio can package both on one disc.

Anyway, fortunately, “Spirited Away” was a big-budget dub job, and the voices blended seamlessly with the visuals, even capturing a lot of the Japanese style of voice acting. For example: one feature of girls in anime is, when excited and/or upset, to speak very quickly, high-pitched, and almost incoherent. The animation that goes with this is usually more stylized – the mouths of the characters get huge and the eyes go very wide and agitated. There’s not much of this in “Spirited Away”, but when it happens, the voice actress gets it exactly right. I was impressed.

I was thinking that this film premise could make a good RPG, but I won’t discuss that here, since it’d result in inadvertent spoilers. I’ll have to put a spoiler warning on it if I do that. :)

Comments

[minor-architect.livejournal.com]

Glad you enjoyed it - and got to see it on the BIG screen! Kage and I were quite taken with it, too, when we saw it in Florida. He's going to buy the DVD when it comes out on the 15th. :-)

[jordangreywolf.livejournal.com]

Yes, when I was talking with Gwendel about the Oscar, she immediately voiced a hope that this would mean Disney would do more with imports and Miyazaki in particular. At the very least, a little more exposure for "Spirited Away" is warranted.

[rowyn]

Miyazaki's done some wonderful work. There's a possibility floating about that he'll do a film version of Diana Wynne Jones' book Howl's Moving Castle (one of my favorites.) Now that will be something to see! Assuming it (a) gets made and (b) eventually released in the US, sigh ...

[rowyn]

Wow, the DVD will be out on the 15th? Of this month? Neato. I sure wouldn't mind seeing it again, if you want to wait until I show up to watch it. :)

DVD

[kagetsume.livejournal.com]

Actually, we'll have 'Spirited Away' and 'Castle in the Sky' by the time you visit. If you want to see both or either, you're welcome to.

-- Kagetsume

[krud42.livejournal.com]

>"I won’t give any spoilers (I can write at great length on a movie without telling you anything about the plot, characters, or anything that happen in it, in fact)."

That's a rare talent that I appreciate, though it annoys some people. (I've written reviews that leave people saying, "But what's the movie about?!")

It's funny, I was just e-mailing someone about this movie, less than 40 seconds ago. (Okay, 40 seconds plus however long it took me to read your entry and type my comment up to the words "less than") It's now playing at a theater near me, and I was asking a friend of mine if I should talk my wife into seeing it with me (the main contingency being whether or not it's of the ultra-graphic variety, which would get me in trouble if I talked her into seeing it.)

[rowyn]

"Spirited Away" features neither graphic violence, nor nudity/sexual content. (There's some violence, but nothing of the blood-and-guts explicit variety.)