TIFF '23: "The Boy and the Heron" goes into the unknown

by Cláudio Alves

Miyazaki's "The Boy and the Heron"

Hayao Miyazaki's last last picture before his latest last picture – already being discredited as such by Studio Ghibli VP Junichi Nishioka – saw him take on the model of a relatively conventional biopic. Despite its wavering between reality and dream, the now and the before, The Wind Rises represented one of the director's most straightforward efforts, doing away with the fantasy elements that defined most of his career. Had it stayed his swan song, it would have made for a career's closing chapter shaped like an intersection of culminating obsessions and stylistic disruption. The Boy and the Heron, previously known as How Do You Live?, posits a inversion of those paradigms. Oft-repeated ideas are invoked only to be collapsed, while tone and style return to the land of fantasy and dream logic.

Before reading ahead, A WARNING. This film will probably be best enjoyed by those who go into it blind, similarly to how Japanese audiences received it. If you want that experience, be satiated in the knowledge this is another masterpiece by Miyazaki. If you yearn for more, come with me down to a place that's no place within a time without time…

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How Had I Never Seen... "The Wind Rises"?

by Cláudio Alves

Hayao Miyazaki has been announcing his retirement for over a quarter century, each new project since Princess Mononoke received like a potential swan song. Such is the case of his latest flick, the enigmatic How Do You Live?, retitled The Boy and the Heron for the Anglophone market. After a lead-up to release that saw no promo beyond the poster, the film was finally seen by the Japanese public, enjoying its big opening last week. And yet, few folks are keen on sharing details about the animated project, including the narrative's basic premise. While the rest of the world waits for an opportunity to glimpse Miyazaki's latest "last" picture, it's an excellent time to watch the not-so-final career-capper that came before, which, to my great shame, I had never seen. 

This July, The Wind Rises celebrates its 10th anniversary, something worth celebrating as we prepare to see another auteur's exploration of an inventor whose efforts resulted in mass death during WWII. Not that Miyazaki's biopic of engineer Jiro Horikoshi, whose fighter designs defined Japanese air force in the 30s and 40s, is attempting the same IMAX-sized scale as Nolan's Oppenheimer…

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linknil

• Esquire John David Washington profile before Tenet arrives
• Instagram Nikki Blonksy (Hairspray) came out for Gay Pride 😍
• Cartoon Brew new trailer for animated feature Over the Moon 
• Variety RIP Bollywood's famous choreographer Saroj Khan
• /Film The Ghibli Museum is offering a rare online peak inside
• Film School Rejects Ray Harryhausen's monstrous centennial
• /Film Lesley Manville to take over the Princess Margaret role in The Crown
• Variety San Sebastian takes on the Cannes selections
• Cartoon Brew Sony Animation pres thinks adult toons are coming
• Instagram in lieu of clubbing Kate Beckinsale and cat 😂
• Esquire Chris Pine exuding internet boyfriend energy

The Linkhouse

• Film Doctor ten notes on the beginning of Psycho (1960)
• The Guardian we love hero Abigail Disney who continues to fight the good fight against the company that makes her one of the 1% - she's now criticizing Disney for laying off workers while protecting executive bonuses of more than 1 billion dollars:

That’d pay for three months’ salary to frontline workers,. And it’s going to people who have already been collecting egregious bonuses for years. Dividends aren’t all bad, given the number of fixed-income folks who rely on them. But still 80% of shares are owned by the wealthiest 10%. Pay the people who make the magic happen with respect and dignity they have more than earned from you. This company must do better.”

"Curated" tv binges, Ghibli backgrounds for your zoom sessions, a sad cut from The Lighthouse, and a new ageist threat for film and tv production after the jump...

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TIFF Animated Wonders: The Red Turtle & My Life as a Courgette

Nathaniel R reporting from the Toronto International Film Festival

In the American landscape of animated features, barring extremely rare indies like Anomalisa, it's always safe to refer to animated films as "a genre" even though it technically isn't one. But you always know the type of film you're going to get. Some of them are magnificent, but even those play safely in-line with expectations: family friendly, cute and colorful, noisy/busy for short attention spans, funny. So long as you meet those four expectations you're allowed to color outside the lines of the actual governing genre (adventure/comedy) used by animation studios and draw from other genres like musicals, fantasy pictures, and horror so long as the horror is cute-grotesque (think Tim Burton's forays into the genre or all of Laika pictures).

For the forseeable future, though, we'll have to keep looking abroad for an understanding of animation as a film medium (what it actually is), capable of telling any type of story that might spring from any kind of genre. Festivals that program animated films are wise. They're often beautiful counterprogramming to more typical art fare. On the first day of the festival I caught two of them, both of which are aiming for Oscar love...

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