Well, dear readers, the rains of Monday seem to have given way to the sunshine of Tuesday and just in the nick of time, too, for tonight I shall be seeing dear readers Laura and Kerry and were it raining we should all be wet and that would be a fine how do you do, oh, yes, that would be a fine how do you do. We shall be supping at a restaurant of Kerry’s choosing, the faboo Dan Tana’s, where we shall eat until the cows come home. Then, tomorrow and Thursday do prepare to don your pointy party hats and colored tights and pantaloons because we’ve got some birthdays goin’ on and hence we’ve got some partyin’ to do. Not to mention we’ve got a Jewish holiday, Passover, to celebrate by eating such things as Bitter Herbs, Matzoh Balls, and Gefilte Fishes. What fun we shall all have over the next few days for if we don’t that would be a fine how do you do.
Last night I watched a motion picture entertainment entitled Kiki’s Delivery Service and I must tell you, dear readers, that after watching it, it instantly entered my pantheon of great animated features. There are several reasons for this which I shall now enumerate, oh, yes, which I shall now enumerate which is a fancy-shmancy way of saying here are the reasons I loved it. It’s from the brilliant director of Spirited Away, Hayao Miyazaki – I said the other day after watching Castle in the Sky that this guy is the real deal, but that was a mere trifle compared to Kiki’s. It isn’t that Kiki’s Delivery Service has better action, more spectacular animation or better villains. It’s that Kiki’s basically dares to have none of those things (save for the brilliant animation) – it’s a simple, straightforward, charming and moving tale of a thirteen year old witch’s coming of age. Every time she’d go on a new delivery or meet a new person I’d think, “Oh, boy, here’s the villain, now they’re going to kidnap her, or her cat, or she’ll get in trouble or get locked away and have to escape – some phony-baloney plot “device” which would hold our attention in that standard issue Disney sort of way that I am so weary of. But, guess what? They all turn out to be nice, caring people and there are no villains anywhere in sight for the entire film. We just watch and fall in love with Kiki as she learns to live in a new town. There’s no grandstanding, just honest emotion and charm. And, it works. The Japanese don’t do the kind of intricate facial detail on their characters that the Americans do, yet somehow there are so many emotions that cross the faces of these characters that it’s simply astonishing. Miyazaki’s backgrounds, however, are another matter entirely – they are beyond beautiful – they are magical and impossibly beautiful and one wants to go and live in the world he’s created so lovingly and well. I just can’t say enough about this movie – I don’t want to oversell it, but it’s just the best thing I’ve seen in ages. Now for the caveat – you must watch it in Japanese with English subtitles. Yes, Virginia, of course there’s the Disney dubbed version on the DVD, too, but you must not watch it first. You must go nowhere near it, you must avoid it like the plague. When I finished watching the movie, I went online and read some reader reviews at amazon (based on the VHS tape) and some reviews at the imdb. And everyone who’d reviewed the dubbed version said the same sort of thing – “Cute movie” “I loved the wise-cracking cat” etc. Well, what wise-cracking cat, if you get my drift? The cat in Miyazaki’s version is not a wise-cracking cat although it is thoroughly lovable. So, I scanned through the dubbed version and it’s appalling what Disney did to “Americanize” the film. They’ve made it crass and typically Disney – Phil Hartman is the voice of the cat and they’ve written him all manner of unfunny quips which have no correlation to the original at all. The actors are all fine – it’s the adaptation and how they’re directed that’s at fault. When Disney suddenly went the celebrity route in casting their animated features I felt the features became more about the voice talent than the movies themselves. It happened with Robin Williams and Aladdin – prior to that, with The Little Mermaid and Beauty and the Beast and certainly all their classics, they just had good actors doing the voices, no stars – I mean no huge movie stars. Other studios may have had stars, but never, at least as far as I can remember, did Disney resort to that. In any cast, the voices are all colorless and flat. On top of that, Disney felt that the audience wouldn’t sit still for the beautiful occasional silences that Miyazaki had in this film. There are many scenes of Kiki walking or thinking and the only accompaniment to them are the sounds of the city or utter silence and they work so beautifully because the film isn’t overscored like every other animated film from the US. Instead of learning from this what does Disney do – they hire another composer, Paul Chihara (who should know better) and they have him “adapt” composer Joe Hisaishi’s music (as well as write some of his own) and he scores literally every one of those silent scenes. It hurts the film and makes it trivial. Hisaishi’s score is brilliant just the way it is. In fact, watching the American version directly afterwards (leave some time so you don’t lose the magic immediately) is a lesson in how to take a masterpiece and make it fairly ordinary. It still works in its way, but it is “cute” rather than the original, which is much, much more than “cute”. What the DVD box doesn’t tell you is that the American version is shorter, too – as far as I can tell, one whole little sequence is gone from the film – no, it’s not that important, it just adds to the characters and texture. Also, every time it goes to a scene where they’ve Americanized the onscreen text (window signs, etc.) the picture suddenly looks like a tenth generation dupe. Also, they’ve inserted the obligatory pop song in the middle of the film, and repeat it over the end credits (there are a couple of songs in the film, but they’re very much of a piece with the score). Thank goodness Disney included the Japanese track – it’s the only way to watch the film. Go get this thing, that’s all I can say.
Well, that was a long treatise, wasn’t it? I think we’d all better just click on the Unseemly Button below otherwise I won’t have anything whatsoever to write about in the next section.
Well, damn it all, I don’t have anything else to write about in this section. Isn’t that a fine how do you do? Oh, I could say I watched the first DVD in The Beatles Anthology, which I’m enjoying very much, although the mastering of the sound is the loudest I’ve ever heard on a DVD. I usually keep my sound at one level which seems to work for most DVDs, and it’s fairly loud. This thing started and I had to turn it down a lot, and I mean a lot, to get it to the level that the other DVDs play at.
Well, dear readers, I must take the day, I must do the things I do, I must go hither and thither and yon and I must prepare for my early supper with Laura and Kerry. Today’s topic of discussion: What are your favorite favorite animated features? I’ll start – Peter Pan, Snow White, Beauty and the Beast, Lady and the Tramp, Spirited Away and now Kiki’s Delivery Service. Your turn.