Kihachiro Kawamoto Films on DVD

If there were awards for truth in advertising, then Kino International would have to win something for the use of one adjective. The Exquisite Short Films of Kihachiro Kawamoto contains the bulk of the animation master's work, seven short films made between 1968 and 1979.

Kawamoto is considered a stop-motion animator, and his recent feature-length masterpiece, The Book of the Dead, features gorgeous sets to accompany his beautiful puppets. However, this DVD serves as a reminder that his shorts were rarely quite so straightforward. All of the films on the DVD involve the manipulation of physical objects—if not puppets, then cutouts—but Kawamoto freely mixes them with drawn animation and flat paper cutouts with varying degrees of abstraction.

In earlier films like 1972's The Demon, Kawamoto plays with this stylization by having characters move in sync with the background music's rhythm, almost as if they were performing the story as a dance. By the time of the final film, 1979's House of Flames, he's also using stark lighting and elegant compositions to suggest, at times, a stage play. The three middle films in the collection, An Anthropo-Cynical Farce, The Trip and A Poet's Life (from 1970, 1973 and 1974) all break from the use of puppets and the use of ancient Japan as a setting, but are no less compelling. They are perhaps a bit more obtuse in that unique way that independent animation from the 1970s could be.

Kino has also released the feature-length The Book of the Dead, which features some of Kawamoto's most exquisite—there's that word again—stop-motion work to date. Like his best-known short-form films, the movie features Buddhism in ancient Japan. However, this time Buddhist teachings are central to the film, as it takes place in the eighth century, around the time that Buddhism was being introduced to Japan from China. Unlike his shorts, Kawamoto has chosen here to fill out his sets with physical objects and far more characters, all realized with considerable detail. It's hard to watch a sequence with a room full of elegantly dressed puppets with their clothes blowing in the wind and not be awestruck by both the scene's verisimilitude and its poetry.

As lovely as these releases are, there are a few things I'd have liked to have seen. The Book of the Dead uses the English narration with no option to hear the original Japanese (though all the dialogue is still in Japanese, with optional subtitles) and neither disc includes any kind of extras. While Kawamoto's work speaks for itself, the level of craftsmanship on display on both DVDs leaves you wanting to see and hear more. Finally, completists are likely to wag their fingers: The Exquisite Short Films of Kihachiro Kawamoto lacks four shorts that were included on the Region 2 Kihachiro Kawamoto Work Collection DVD.

Where to Get It
Buy The Exquisite Short Films of Kihachiro Kawamoto from Amazon.com
Buy The Book of the Dead from Amazon.com
Buy Kihachiro Kawamoto Work Collection from YesAsia.com

[Cross-posted from Frames per Second.]

Speed Racer Learns from Manga, Can Teach Feature Animation a Few Things

I'm generally not a fan of live-action adaptations of animated TV shows, because they almost always disappoint. The problems usually start with the choices the filmmakers make in order to get animated (or animated-looking) characters into a live action universe. The Flintstones had fake-looking rock sets; Alvin and the Chipmunks and Scooby Doo had CGI critters in an otherwise realistic universe; Fat Albert had the TV characters coming to life in the real world.

In Speed Racer, the Wachowskis do what none of the creators of these other films had the will to do: they created a cohesive universe in which all of the elements in any given frame look like they belong together. In the process, they also highlight something that's been missing from mainstream animation for quite some time.

As I was sitting in the cinema watching Speed Racer, it occurred to me that I already knew how most journalists were going to describe the movie's look. Some would say that it looks like a video game, or that it's anime come to life. They're dead wrong. Outside of some race scenes the movie looks nothing like any video game you've actually played, and outside of a few Akira-like shots and a nod to the original series opener, it looks nothing like any anime you've ever seen. Really, these are just phrases that reviewers use when they want to say that there are lots of things moving around very fast, or that have bright-coloured, futuristic-looking elements.

In a strange way, however, they're also right. Speed Racer, like many video games, demands that its viewers process a lot of visual information at once. Like anime, it stylizes motion in a way that isn't entirely realistic but is believable within its own reality.

If anything, Speed Racer's filmic cues come from green-screen/digital-set movies like the most recent Star Wars trilogy and Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, along with shorts that feature heavily processed and manipulated live action, like Gaëlle Denis' City Paradise. But the Wachowskis' real inspiration here is manga. This doesn't just apply to the racing scenes, but to just about anything set outside of the Racer family home. Take a look at these images, and pay special attention to how they put the focus on certain foreground objects or characters and use the backgrounds to denote movement, atmosphere and mood, These compositions are pure manga:







Better still are the transitions, in which the camera moves around a foreground character's head and the backgrounds change to show scenes either as a transition or as a flashback to the past. Some of these scenes are multi-layered, including audio from both the current time and place and the location or time being referenced. There's even one scene where one character tells Speed about about something that will happen in the future; as the camera whirls around Speed, the background shifts to show scenes that highlight what the other character is saying—and eventually we discover this isn't speculation, but what actually happens in the future. The whole sequence interleaves between the present moment and flash-forwards, kind of like an episode of Lost on, well, speed. (Lazy journalists will look at all this and make references to audience members with short attention spans or ADD; the truth is, you really have to pay attention if you want to follow it all.)

I'm just scratching the surface here. All in all, Speed Racer is a visual effects spectacle that doesn't reserve its inventiveness for eye-candy money shots; rather, it's a carefully constructed, dynamic reality that is unlike anything seen on the big screen. All of which brings me to the question I kept asking myself when I left the cinema: why haven't I seen anything like this in feature animation for so long?

It's a cliché these days to say that effects-heavy summer movies are cartoon-like, and there's some truth to that. But it's also true that live-action movies have, through the heavy use of CGI, taken animation's "anything can happen here" mentality and run with it. Meanwhile, feature animation has largely concerned itself with looking more realistic, obsessing over things like realistic fur and hair. Even those productions that aren't so fixated are, relatively speaking, conservative. I've very much enjoyed Pixar's films, but when you get right down to it they mostly fit into a niche best described as "Talking ____s," with the blank filled in by toys, bugs, fish, rats or what have you. The Incredibles was an exciting departure, but so far the new direction that it signalled appears to be a dead end.

Where's the wow? Where's that moment when you jump up in your seat, excited because you've been shown something you've never seen before? Speed Racer provides that in spades, but in feature animation it's been sorely lacking. I remember seeing Tron in 1983, Akira in 1988 and Mind Game in 2005 and each time feeling like someone had redefined what was possible in animated cinema because I was being shown things I hadn't seen before. I've had that same feeling many times over since then, but when it comes to animation it's generally been in OAVs, shorts and—much to my surprise—television.

I'm all for the blurring of boundaries, but to me movies like Speed Racer indicate that feature animation is ceding ground to live action. Something is very wrong with this picture.

[Cross-posted from Frames Per Second.]

Returning to the Source of "Otaku"

When an anime fan proudly describes themselves as an otaku I usually wince a little. I realize that language evolves, especially around loan words—the term anime is a classic example—but I've always found it odd that a word with such negative connotations in Japanese is worn as a badge of honour in the English-speaking world. I usually point to the case of Tsutomu Miyazaki (no relation to director Hayao Miyazaki), who molested, killed and mutilated four girls in the late 1980s. Among his massive video collection were pornographic anime and slasher films, and he was something of an outsider; the Japanese public linked the term otaku with dangerously antisocial behaviour.

However, the term existed before then; less sensationally, but still negative. Over on Néojaponisme, Matt Alt has translated the first two parts of a series of articles in which the term "otaku" was first applied to extremely obsessed fans with few social skills. The articles, written by Akio Nakamori, first appeared in 1983, and you can read them in "What Kind of Otaku Are You?" and "Can Otaku Love Like Normal People?".

[Cross-posted from Frames Per Second.]

The "Censored Eleven" Problem

For years (and years, and years) I've been reading the same tired arguments about racist cartoons, particularly those that use black stereotypes. It's a problem that's as old as cartoons themselves; John Stuart Blackton's Humorous Phases of Funny Faces, considered the first cartoon short, made fun of blacks and Jews (Blackton's lightning sketches include two images labelled "Coon" and "Cohen") in 1906, and the image of big-lipped, Stepin Fetchit-inspired characters didn't lose steam in popular American cartoons for another half a century.

The problem began when networks stopped airing these cartoons in their regular lineups, and larger companies were slow to include them in videocassette (and now DVD) compilations unedited. Not that they were never released—I still have my Tex Avery laserdiscs with Uncle Tom's Cabana and a handful of shorts that use blackface gags, for example—but some Warner Bros. cartoons have been considered so over the line that they haven't been aired on TV for decades, and never released by Warner Bros. on any kind of home video. These shorts have acquired a mythical status, and a name: The Censored Eleven.

Talk of these shorts (and similar ones not so blessed as to be tagged with such a dramatic moniker) invariably brings up discussions of the shorts' historical significance, the fact that they were made in a different era, and, at some point, an exhortation to the rightsholders that the shorts should be released unedited. My longstanding complaint about these arguments is that, for the most part, it's a bunch of white guys standing around arguing about what black people should and shouldn't find offensive. (Books like That's Enough, Folks: Black Images in Animated Cartoons, 1900-1960 are a step toward rectifying that problem, as well as the more recent The Colored Cartoon: Black Representation in American Animated Short Films, 1907-1954, which I'll be reviewing soon; I've also done my bit with essays on the subject and, most recently, a 2006 guest blogging stint on ReFrederator.)

In light of a recent re-emergence of the discussion, Thad Komorowski has nailed the other complaint that I've never fully given voice to: that many cartoon fans, in their desire to own these films, have bent over backwards to claim that these films are not racist. Because, let's face it, they most emphatically are. If a joke is being made with the understanding that something is funny because a character is black, then it's racist. It's a pretty simple equation. (And please spare me the "I have a black friend who loves these cartoons" argument; I think Coal Black and de Sebben Dwarfs is one of the funniest, snappiest, and most brilliant cartoons Bob Clampett ever directed, but denying that it's entirely built around racist imagery is like denying gravity.)

I am more than pleased that someone has come out and called it like it is, and urge you to read Thad's frank commentary. And hey, if you've been itching to see the Censored Eleven for yourself, he's also posted them there for your edification.

[Cross-posted from Frames Per Second.]

Top 5 Animated Earth Day Shows

Say "environmentally themed animation" to most people and they'll think of FernGully: The Last Rainforest or Captain Planet—both well-intentioned, but as subtle and as thrilling to experience as a boot to the head. Presented in alphabetical order, here are five titles that get it right; essential viewing not just on Earth Day, but every day.

The Lorax
When we talk about Warner alumna who worked with Dr. Seuss, we tend to mention Chuck Jones and, er, that's it. But it was Hawley Pratt who directed The Lorax, the 1972 adaptation of the good doctor's book from the year earlier. In it, the Lorax—a typically Seussian odd-looking, oddly coloured creature who says he "speaks for the trees," tries to convince an industrialist not to chop down the Truffula trees, which he uses to make a unique form of clothing called Thneeds.

The industrialist doesn't listen, and the Thneeds take off. His small shop becomes larger, which leads to the construction of larger factories and more roadwork, which leads to increasing destruction of the forest and the air—and eventually, the growth of a whole city, which just makes the problem worse. Futile though it is, the Lorax protests the whole time. Near the end of the story, the industrialist chops down the last tree and realizes he's not only ended his business, but destroyed the very reason he came to the forest in the first place—and the Lorax sadly picks himself up (literally) and flies away.

The Lorax is pads the original story with reasonably entertaining songs, gags and bits of business to bring it up to a half-hour special, and it captures the Seuss look pretty well. While it's comparatively strident—"greedy industrialist" is all you need to know about the antagonist—it's still a striking look at how we can carelessly consume and destroy resources when we're not careful.

The Man Who Planted Trees
Frédéric Back believes passionately in the need to protect and co-exist with the environment, and his most moving testament to that belief is his 1987 masterpiece The Man Who Planted Trees, an adaptation of a 1953 French short story. In the story, a man visits an abandoned valley in France three times. The first time is before World War I, when the valley is dry and desolate, and he meets a young shepherd who is planting acorns; the second time is between both world wars, when the young trees are starting to dot the landscape; and the third time is after World War II, when the valley is a green, lush paradise, and a small village has sprung up around it.

The story itself, in which one man selflessly and patiently turns emptiness into a thriving, living community, is inspiring, but what makes it work as a film is Back's method. Using coloured pencils and frosted cels (like traditional acetate cells, but with a tooth to them so that traditional but inkless drawing tools can be used on them), he made each frame a gorgeous illustration, with each one cross-dissolving into the next. When we return to the valley-as-Eden, that technique serves to make every leaf on every tree burst with life. When we hear that our actions have far-reaching implications, it's usually when we're being warned not to do something. When you see the forest in The Man Who Planted Trees flowing across the screen, you realize that there's a positive aspect to that as well.

See a clip and storyboard images from The Man Who Planted Trees

My Neighbor Totoro
In 1950s Japan, Mei and Satsuki move to the countryside with their father, as they wait for their hospitalized mother to recover from her illness. From the moment they set foot in the house, the girls discover (magic?) forest creatures large and small, who seem to be presided over by the largest of three creatures, that seem like a jovial cross between a cat and a bear; Mei calls them Totoro.

Not much more needs to be said, because if you haven't seen Totoro, you've probably heard of it (and, really, should make the time to go see it.) It's the 1988 film that made Hayao Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli icons in Japan (literally, as Totoro now graces the Ghibli logo on every movie opener), and, after some time, abroad as well. The three Totoro are probably the Ghibli characters you're most likely to see pop up in the background of comics and animation, as artists the world over pay homage.

The reason for all the love is simple: Totoro is a gentle film that is as much about the joys of childhood as it is about the beauty of nature. Linking expertly realized scenes—of napping in a forest, of skipping over a creek, or of savouring the night breeze through the trees—to our own memories makes a better case for preserving forests than any amount of brow-beating. The Japanese public apparently agreed, and Totoro has become a symbol, both official and unofficial, of its environmental movement.

Princess Mononoke
Nine years after Totoro, Ghibli released its flip side: Miyazaki's look a fifteenth-century Japan where the powerful forest spirits still walk the Earth with both majesty and terror. The young prince Ashitaka is banished from his village when his arm is scarred in an encounter with a deranged boar god, and during his travels he encounters San—the demon princess of the title—and Lady Eboshi, who has founded and runs Iron Town on the edge of the forest. San has literally been raised by wolves (or, more accurately, wolf gods), and is constantly sabotaging Iron Town's operations, as their manufacturing facilities are encroaching further on the forest.

Ashitaka, and the audience, quickly learns that things aren't as black and white as they may seem. Lady Eboshi has taken in lepers, prostitutes, and other people cast off from society and given them a home; by mining and refining the iron she's been able to keep Iron Town self-sufficient. San and many of the forest creatures see humanity as a threat, an ever-reproducing virus that needs to be destroyed for their safety. The result is the beginning of a bloody war, with interested outside parties looking for opportunities and Ashitaka risking life and limb to keep things from escalating past the point of no return.

Princess Mononoke carries two messages within it, both rarely said in environmentally themed films. First is that if you push nature too hard, nature will push back harder. The second echoes a sentiment spoken by John Muir, godfather to the American environmental movement: "When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything in the universe." The fatal error that is often made in the movie, and in real life, is that humanity is somehow separated from nature.

Respire
French group Mickey 3D's 2003 CD Tu vas pas mourir de rire (You Won't Die Laughing) is full of politically conscious songs set to toe-tapping music. Its second track, Respire (Breathe) is the basis for a CGI music video that features, for the most part, nothing but a young girl running barefoot through an open field, skipping through creeks and climbing trees, all under a gorgeous blue sky. The laconically delivered lyrics speak of what man has done to his world, and how action needs to be taken by everyone, right now.

It's the end of the video that brings everything together as, with a Twilight-Zoneish twist, we discover that things aren't what they first seemed. Frankly, I find this scenario all too plausible. Consider Respire a warning you can dance to. Watch the video and decide for yourself.

Where to Get It
Buy The Lorax DVDs and more from Amazon.com
Buy The Man Who Planted Trees DVDs and more from Amazon.com
Buy My Neighbor Totoro DVDs and more from Amazon.com
Buy Princess Mononoke DVDs and more from Amazon.com
Buy Respire (part of the Imagina Trips Vol. 2 compilation; PAL, Region 2) on DVD from Amazon.fr
Buy Tu vas pas mourir de rire on CD from Amazon.com

Previously on Frames Per Second
Imagina Trips Vol. 2 review

[Cross-posted from Frames Per Second.]

Masaaki Yuasa's Kaiba

A few weeks ago I watched Mind Game again, and not for the first time I wondered what director Masaaki Yuasa was up to post-Genius Party. And what do you know, shortly after I found out: he's directing the series Kaiba, which just started airing on the Japanese satellite channel WOWOW. Makoto Fukuda reviewed the first episode in today's Yomiuri Shimbun. As she describes it, the show is "set in a world when memories can be filed as data, and humans no longer regard the death of their physical bodies as the end of their lives."

I just finished watching the first episode, and I have to say that I agree with Fukuda's review, but she only hints at what I think makes it interesting. At its core, Kaiba offers up a lot of things we've seen before: the titular protagonist wakes up with amnesia, and is almost immediately attacked; strange machinelike creatures are attacking people while a ragtag resistance fights back; even the character designs, which Fukuda describes as echoing "those found in manga for children popular several decades ago" capture that 1960s and 1970s retro feel.

What Yuasa does is he mixes it up and makes it fresh. I like how little is explained as Kaiba makes his way through this new world. When the camera pans up or across in a scene, you're following his viewpoint. Nothing is explained to either of you, so you have to pay attention to everything you see. (Some things are conveniently spelled out, but as the title sequence hints that there's considerably more to Kaiba, you get the sense that there's information that should be filed away for later.) The world is just familiar enough that you know you're in a shady bar, but just weird-looking enough that you're trying to figure out what those lumpy wall protrusions are for. The character designs are retro, but they don't quietly elide the oddball wacky-looking characters I was fond of in older anime in favour of the graceful designs of the protagonists. I got a nice fix of people walking around with potato heads, wobbly jowls, bright red noses and the craziest hips you've ever seen. The cartooniness infects some of the action as well, but not in an at all jarring way. In some ways it's a better interpretation of what Tezuka did in his manga than the beautiful but perhaps too crisp Metropolis.

What I'm particularly fond of is Yuasa's interpretation of movement. As we saw in Mind Game, little of what he does falls into stock anime poses, staging or motion, and that feeling of always seeing something new is invigorating. Between the animation and the storyline—I particularly want to know what's going on with that bird-creature that's saved Kaiba three times now—Kaiba has my attention. I'm hoping someone picks it up domestically so I can watch it with subtitles, but, in another throwback to the old days, I'm perfectly willing to watch it entirely in Japanese just for the sake of seeing it.

Images and a Youtube trailer below.















[Cross-posted from Frames Per Second.]

DreamWorks Brings You Ghost in the Shell Again

Just 15 months after Kodansha and Production I.G. kissed and made up over optioning Ghost in the Shell, they've found a taker: DreamWorks, who released Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence in North American cinemas under their GoFish banner in 2005, has acquired the rights to make a live-action, 3D version of the property.

While I think Ghost in the Shell is a great selection for a 3D film, I can't say I'm particularly enthusiastic about the news. I'm generally not a fan of live-action remakes of animated shows or comics; overall, there have been more misses than hits. More to the point, the recent spate of rights acquisitions for anime (or anime-like)-to-Hollywood live-action adaptations (Robotech, Akira, Avatar: The Last Airbender—have I missed anything?) reminds me of the old maxim that in Hollywood no one wants to be first, but everyone wants to be second. Speed Racer is due to hit cinemas in just a few weeks, and I've long had the sense that these acquisitions are a means of lining things up to ride an anticipated wave of anime-inspired movies, in the same way Spider-Man and X-Men helped launch a wave of comic-inspired movies.

One thing I won't do, however, is claim that Spielberg (or any of the other directors/producers working on adapted anime works) will somehow "ruin" the original. Gimme a break—that's like saying a bad date will ruin your memory of your first kiss.

[Cross-posted from Frames Per Second.]

Ollie Johnston, 1912-2008

Ollie Johnston (pictured above at right, with longtime colleague, co-author and pal Frank Thomas), the last of Disney's fabled Nine Old Men, passed away yesterday, marking a symbolic end of an era.

I owe Frank and Ollie a lot. About 25 years ago, a few years after my first attempts at animating, I decided that just studying movement frame by frame wasn't going to cut it, and started reading about the process. The duo's Disney Animation: The Illusion of Life wasn't the first book on creating animation I borrowed from the library, but it had an impact that was, quite simply, life-changing.

Prior to reading the book I knew little about the actual history of animation in general, and next to nothing about the history of the Disney studio. I liked Disney movies—Kino Kid and I made a point of catching every new and re-released Disney film—but unlike the constantly rerun Warner Bros. productions, I couldn't tell you who directed what, or offer any analyses of the movies. The gorgeously produced Illusion of Life was a gift from the gods, offering the ultimate insiders' view of the studio's best decades, artistically and technologically, liberally sprinkled with concept, pre-production and final artwork. The final pages contained actual animation instruction, but in truth the whole book was a masterclass for anyone who cared to open their eyes.

I devoured The Illusion of Life. Twice. The first time was during an extended road trip that took us to Toronto and Saint Catharines in Ontario, then Ann Arbor, Michigan. The second time was just a few years later, after I'd started seriously immersing myself in animation publications and bought my own copy. Both times, I couldn't put it down.

I have to admit to more than a twinge of disappointment when I later learned about the 1941 Disney strike, and discovered that the divisions caused by the strike ran so deep that The Illusion of Life effectively elided the contributions of those who participated in it. But in the end, Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston were my first animation history teachers, and one of my earliest and most thorough animation teachers. Without them, and that book, my life would be very different—there would certainly be no Frames Per Second—and for that I offer my thanks to Ollie and belated thanks to Frank.

[Cross-posted from Frames Per Second.]

Two Animated Indies Hit Tribeca Fest

Signe Baumane dropped me a line to let me know that two of her fellow New York-based independent animators are screening the American premieres of their recent features at the upcoming Tribeca Film Festival. Nina Paley's longtime endeavour Sita Sings the Blues—which we featured in our November 2005 issue—will be showing from April 25 to May 2, while Bill Plympton's Idiots and Angels runs from April 26 to May 3. Screening times and ticket info below.

Tickets: Visit the Tribeca Film Festival site, or call 646-502-5296.

Sita Sings the Blues

Friday, April 25, 8:15 pm
AMC Village VII (AV7)
66 Third Avenue (at 11th Street)
New York, NY 10003

Sunday, April 27, 3:45 pm
AMC 19th Street East (A19)
890 Broadway (at 19th Street)
New York, NY 10003

Monday, April 28, 10:45 pm
AMC Village VII (AV7)
66 Third Avenue (at 11th Street)
New York, NY 10003

Thursday, May 1, 1:45 pm
Village East Cinemas (VEC)
181 Second Avenue (at 12th Street)
New York, NY 10003

Friday, May 2, 3:00 pm
AMC 19th Street East (A19)
890 Broadway (at 19th Street)
New York, NY 10003

Idiots and Angels

Saturday, April 26, 5:30 pm
AMC 19th Street East (A19)
890 Broadway (at 19th Street)
New York, NY 10003

Sunday, April 27, 9:30 pm
Village East Cinemas (VEC)
181 Second Avenue (at 12th Street)
New York, NY 10003

Wednesday, April 30, 11:00 pm
AMC Village VII (AV7)
66 Third Avenue (at 11th Street)
New York, NY 10003

Saturday, May 3, 8:00 pm
Village East Cinemas (VEC)
181 Second Avenue (at 12th Street)
New York, NY 10003

[Cross-posted from Frames Per Second.]