Forum - View topicINTEREST: Paprika Director Satoshi Kon Listed 100 Notable Films
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Fallen Wings
 Posts: 160 Location: Australia |
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I just read the description on Wikipedia. All I know is that at least one of the MPAA board probably had a heart attack. I'm not sure if I'm insane enough to even consider watching that 
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Charred Knight
 Posts: 3085 |
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excuse me What's wrong with A New Hope's narrative? Sure it was an obvious take on the Hero's tale but it was perfectly fine story with a lot of character development, and a great setup for the rest of the series. When most people talk about how to start a series they compare it to a New Hope. I mean it doesn't have to have some insanely complicated plot to be a good narrative, in fact I am a firm believer in K.I.S.S when coming up with a story. It's much easier to let an audience get into a story gently and slowly instead of throwing everything at them in the first thing, that was the problem with The Phantom Menace where he tried to outdo Return of the Jedi when he was crafting part 1 of a new trilogy. |
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gartholamundi
 Posts: 316 Location: Gainesville, FL |
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not a thing -- else the franchise would not have been born. plus, prior to this film, Campbell's outline of The Hero's Journey throughout world mythology was not nearly so well known or studied. really cool list here. so many interesting surprises (Birdy which has such an amazing soundtrack, Shawshank Redemption, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Nightmare on Elm Street, and that Brazil was the only Gilliam picture on the list). sure wish i could have been a fly on the wall listening to the conversations these films blossomed in the doorways of Madhouse creators. |
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Zin5ki
 Posts: 6680 Location: London, UK |
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I drew as much enjoyment from such a film as I did from any of the other listed titles with which I am familiar, save in the case of scenes involving Catwoman. It should, of course, be noted that I seldom watch items of live-action cinema — it is rare for me to even switch on a television set. |
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Rolando_jose
 Posts: 240 Location: Ahhhh it's vacation time again! |
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I'm glad Mr. Maruyama said they will finish the film.
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The World We Know
 Posts: 35 Location: Austin, TX |
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I love that It's a Wonderful Life made his list. Sentimental, beloved, corny, and a great, great film. I don't have to wait until Christmas to see this one.
But I'm a bit surprised to see it on the list...wonder if this had more to do with Kon or with the others that worked on the list. |
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Quark
 Posts: 710 Location: British Columbia, Canada |
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If you've got the stomach for it, I'd recommend watching Visitor Q. The subject matter is so disturbing and terrible, that after a while it starts to become really funny. If you have a really dark sense of humour, Visitor Q is great. Oh, and I also have to chime in with my recommendation for the movie Happiness. It's one of my favourites, and again, it's disturbing, the humour is incredibly dark, and it's absolutely hilarious. As to the article, there are some great movies up there, but for some reason, I'm really glad that It's A Wonderful Life made that list. It's a shame though that it got pegged as a Christmas movie, since it's just a really damn good movie, that just happens to have the present day set around Christmas. I'm a bitter old crank, but everytime I watch It's a Wonderful Life, I end up a weeping pile of goo. |
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GATSU
Posts: 15296 |
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On a related note, I don't get why this didn't ever make ANN, but Frodo mentioned his love for Paprika.
Fallen: It's a pretty lazy and tedious film, actually. Ichi the Killer and Gozu did it better. |
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Copyrighted Name
 Posts: 28 |
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I guess I'll be the uber-nerd who points out that Gojira is on there.
 That film doesn't nearly enough respect outside of Japan, in my humble opinion.
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lostinagoodbook
 Posts: 114 |
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If you think about Tokyo Godfathers it makes more sense. That movie always reminded me of something by Capra. |
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skchai1
Posts: 33 |
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@GATSU - small clarification. Ultra Seven was the immediate follow-up to Ultraman, not the predecessor. Ultra Q could be seen the predecessor by Tatsunoko, although its plot was quite different, and did not feature any superhero.
What strikes me about the Yume Miru Kikai team's list is how conventional it is for the most part - seems a bit incongruent for someone viewed as the most experimental of the major Japanese animation directors. There are few if any choices that would appear out of place on an aggregated critic's top 100 poll, though with a notable lack of French New Wave and little of what could be considered experimental film (even the two Tarkovsky films are such standard selections they could even be seen as token inclusions). On the other hand, there is more emphasis on Capra, Ford, Wilder and other skilled craftmen of high-quality audience-friendly films from the mid 20th century. All directors are American, European, or Japanese except for Chuan Lu, as far as I noticed. Are they not aware of recent cinema coming out of Asia (other than Japan) and Africa? On the Japanese list, the dominance of Kurosawa and Ozu again points to conventionality, although they also include films that would be ignored by Western critics, such as Kinoshita and Takamine Hideko's "Carmen" series and Yamanaka Sadao's "Paper Balloon", which were both popular and well-made but are not film festival-entry types (and in Yamanaka's case, made before Western critics were familiar with Japanese films). Yamanaka, who was killed during WWII, often gets ignored despite being hugely influential to the Kurosawa/Ozu generation that put Japanese film on the world map. I also like how Ozu's "Good Morning" was included, even though one of his early light comedies (farting is a recurring "theme"), and is often ignored because it doesn't fit the mold associated with his postwar films. Unfortunately, the only post 70's films are Morita's satire "Family Game" and Obayashi's "Transfer Student". Did they stop watching movies after 1983? Kon's post (see also Makiko Itoh's translation of the entire post cited after the ANN article) admits it's "Ossan Kusai" ("old man style"), but a little explanation why could have given us some insight into his mindset, since it doesn't seem to fit, at least superficially, with his own films. Obayashi is the most interesting choice. "Transfer Student" does feature an alien who decides the best way to invade Earth is to enroll in high school - long before this became a popular anime trope, but it is Obayashi's 1982 live-action version of the "The Girl who Leapt through Time" which some critics have seen as highly influencing Kon's own work, with its exploration of time, space, and consciousness, albeit keeping within the context of a high school love story/idol vehicle (see Mononoaware's excellent essay on the film) . The tone of the 1982 "Tokikake" is closer to Kon's work than it is even to the numerous successor versions of the work, including Hosoda's 2009 animated take on it (which had an entirely new plot). The lack of anime on the list, including Kon's mentor Otomo, has become a point of discussion. It's been argued that it's just the way the list was defined implicitly, but I can't find any statement that could be seen as implying this. Kon, in an earlier extended article on his own "Perfect Blue" (see this confused redaction of part of the article) mentions that he doesn't watch ordinary anime, but what about "non-ordinary" anime? It's not explicitly stated that anime are excluded from the list, but the absence of Miyazaki and Otomo in particular seems a bit hard to explain otherwise. So it would be nice to know about how the list came out in order to get insights into his mindset. What does he dislike so much about Japanese films of the last 30-some years? Does he not think that anime qualifies as high art or was it just left for a separate list that was never made? Does the near-absence of Asian and African films mean that he doesn't feel they are any good, or that he's not familiar with them? The most plausible explanation to me is that he simply did not watch very many movies after the early 1980s. This is plausible because he was known to throw himself completely into his work, which would leave little time for watching other people's live-action movies or anime, "ordinary" or otherwise. This could explain not only the age of most of the films on the list, but the absence of Asian and African directors, who only were "recognized" in the West, and thus in Japan, in the last few decades. Barring more words from the grave, we won't know for sure, which is frustrating to anyone who wishes to study a person who died too soon, but will be recognized over the next half-century not only as one of the greats of animation , but of film and visual media in general. |
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dtm42
Posts: 14084 Location: currently stalking my waifu |
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He didn't include The Matrix in that list? Aww, I would have thought that with its themes of reality and dreams (and which is which) it would have been right up his alley. Huh.
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GATSU
Posts: 15296 |
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sk: Yeah, I already got p0wned on that detail by re-reading Wikipedia, but thanks.
 And yeah, I was wondering if they were into Wong Kar Wai myself.
You mean Japanese films, right? dtm: Well, the Paprika novel and Vonnegut's work is pretty much Kon's Bible for his stream-of-consciousness approach; so the Matrix isn't that important to the list.
I brought up Otomo's contribution to PB once, and Kon told me it was negligible. Kon did once upload a few openings to 60s anime he watched when he was a kid, though. And he's supposed to have loved Astro Boy among them. Plus, he once blogged about watching an LD of the Jojo ep he worked on ages ago. My feeling is not that he didn't like anime, or he wouldn't be in the business. It's more like live-action film was how he "emoted", and anime was how he "communicated" his thoughts.
Actually, there was an interview ages ago where he trashed Miyazaki for relying on "happy endings". Damn, I'm really making look bad now, huh?  But I think he was just a guy who liked to do his own thing and not bother comparing notes.
The only Japanese film I heard him bitch about was that recent remake of Hidden Fortress. Though when I asked him if that salaryman group plunge in Paprika was inspired by Suicide Club, he said he never heard of it. So I don't think he necessarily hates contemporary Japanese films. It's more likely that he got to a point in his career where he went for the Hollywood stuff, because it gave him his quick fix. And he probably put a lot of the recent Japanese stuff on hold, too, hoping he could catch up with it later. Plus, yeah, he had lectures and tours to make, so I'm surprised he got anything done, even if he didn't have a disease. He really wasn't kidding about having a "full life". BTW, he was also into Monty Python. |
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Tenchi
 Posts: 4469 Location: Ottawa... now I'm an ex-Anglo Montrealer. |
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Batman Returns is easily my favourite Batman film and is one of my top 3 favourite comic-book-based superhero movies of all time. I understand that the Christopher Nolan Batman films work better as dramas, but I prefer the Tim Burton films as spectacle for all their stylistic excesses, and I especially like the gothic American Christmas atmosphere of the second Burton Batman film.
Plus, the 1989/92 Batmobile is still my favourite thing any big screen incarnation of Bruce Wayne has ever driven. |
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gartholamundi
Posts: 316 Location: Gainesville, FL |
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That is a totally rockin vehicle ... |
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