randy_byers: (2010-08-15)

Drawing by Moebius from the magazine Libération, 1991


Well, I'm afraid that I went a bit crazy with my credit card on the internet. One of the things that grabbed my attention when I was reading about Moebius the other day was the claim that he and Miyazaki are fans of each others' work. I started thinking about that, and it occurred to me that Moebius was an influence on Miyazaki's Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind. So I was googling around today and found a conversation between Moebius and Miyazaki in which Miyazaki says, "I directed Nausicaä under Moebius' influence." That seemed pretty straightforward, and further googling led me to order the first volume of the Nausicaä manga, where the connection is pretty danged obvious.



A page from Miyazaki's Nausicaä


From there it was damn the torpedos, and I ordered copies of Moebius' Arzach and the complete Airtight Garage. It turns out, by the way, that there was a joint exhibition of Miyazaki and Moebius' artwork in Paris in 2004. There's a drawing of Nausicaä by Moebius that may come from that exhibition. That latter image is from a website called Quenched Consciousness that has lots and lots of artwork by Moebius, including full stories.
randy_byers: (2009-05-10)
On Sunday I watched Porco Rosso for a third time, after watching The Sky Crawlers for a second time. (A good pairing in that they both center on aerial dogfights in an alternate history.) This time I watched Porco Rosso with the English dub, which features Michael Keaton as Porco. Previously I had watched it with the French dub, which features Jean Reno as Porco. The film felt less mysterious this time, although just as visually beautiful, and I wondered how much of it had to do with being able to understand what the voices were saying (and thus not straining after the meaning) and how much was a difference between the translation that the dub uses and the translation the English subtitles use.

I lean toward the latter, but on slim evidence. The one place where I know the translations were significantly different comes during the phone conversation Porco has with Gina when he tells her he's taking his plane to Milan for repairs despite the fact that the Italians have an arrest warrant out for him. Gina orders him not to go. In the dub he says, "Sorry, I've got to fly." In the subtitles he says, "A pig's gotta fly." To me the latter is infinitely wittier and more ironic, playing off of "When pigs fly." Now, I have no idea which is the more accurate translation of the Japanese script, but my sense was that the dub is far less resonant and eloquent than the subtitles. Another example, now that I think of it, is when the mechanic, Piccolo, basically tells Porco to stop lecturing him. In the dub, he says something like, "I'm a god of engineering!" In the subtitles he says, "You're preaching Buddhism to Buddha." The subtitles have an aphoristic quality that the dub is completely lacking.

Over and over again I got the feeling that the dub was spelling things out that are left ambiguous or figurative in the subtitles. I suppose I should watch it again with both the English dub and the English subtitles playing at the same time, because it's possible I'm letting my anti-Disney bias sway my perception. The dub was done for Disney's release of the movie. I'm not sure who did the subtitles.
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Kiki's Delivery Service (Majo no takkyûbin, 1989)

"We fly with our spirit."
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My Neighbor Totoro (Tonari no Totoro, 1988)

randy_byers: (bumble bee man)
So yesterday I had the afternoon off due to computer difficulties at work, and I watched a couple of Miyazakis. Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (Kaze no tani no Naushika, 1984) I had never seen before, while Porco Rosso I watched for the second time.

ExpandDetails buried for the truly curious )

Ebbtide

Mar. 8th, 2010 08:56 am
randy_byers: (2009-05-10)
I ended up feeling pretty wiped out this weekend. I don't know why. Might just be part of the emotional cycle I'm going through. I ended up bailing on the Rat City Rollergirls on Saturday, because I just didn't have the energy.

I did spend a few hours at Potlatch both Friday and Saturday nights. It was good to chew the fat with various folks such as [livejournal.com profile] calimac, [livejournal.com profile] voidampersand, [livejournal.com profile] spikeiowa (who sort of complained that all I write about here is movies), [livejournal.com profile] k6rfm, and [livejournal.com profile] n6tqs (sporting a lovely new tattoo, and very close, apparently, to qualifying as an able-bodied seaman), along with local friends such as [livejournal.com profile] juliebata, [livejournal.com profile] nisi_la, [livejournal.com profile] jackwilliambell (who stroked my hair, the pervert), [livejournal.com profile] mcjulie, [livejournal.com profile] janeehawkins, [livejournal.com profile] kate_schaefer (who brought glad tidings of Full Sail's Imperial Porter Aged in Bourbon Barrels being on tap at the hotel bar, mach schnell), and even one or two non-LJ friends such as my co-editors, Scott K, Victor G, Craig S, and Bryan Barrett, who is recovering from losing his foot recently to complications from diabetes. As zoned as I was feeling, it still seemed to me that the convention was going very well and that people were really enjoying themselves. The auction raised a fair amount of money for Clarion West, and when I left around midnight on Saturday I saw Ellen Klages being shorn of her hair, which she had auctioned off. Congrats to the concom for a successful convention.

Other than that, I worked on proofing the British fanthology that will be distributed at Corflu Cobalt. It's a corker, if I do say so myself. And last night I watched Miyazaki's Porco Rosso. I'm slowly getting caught up on Miyazaki, and this is one I'd never seen before. It's brilliant, just like everything of his I've seen so far. The setting is Italy after WWI, but it's a fantasy Italy of sky pirates and bounty hunters. Our hero is a bounty hunter who was once a handsome young military pilot but who is now a pig due to a spell cast on him. One of the things I love about Miyazaki is the deep sense of mystery in all his films. He doesn't explain everything about the background. It enhances the magical feel. And nobody does flying like Miyazaki. I'm not sure how he does it. Maybe it's the way he gets right down on the landscape, and gives us the sense of rushing across it. Oh, and to enhance the strangeness of it all, I listened to the French dub, which I've read somewhere that Miyazaki prefers to the Japanese dub. Italians speaking French in a Japanese anime? Magic!

(Sorry, Spike! But at least I didn't watch the Oscars. But hooray for Kathryn Bigelow!)
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Porco Rosso (Kurenai no buta, 1992)

God was telling you 'not yet'.
randy_byers: (Default)


Laputa: Castle in the Sky (Tenkû no shiro Rapyuta, 1986)


More escapism today. More beautiful design work. More pirates, for that matter.

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