NAUSICA OF THE VALLEY OF THE WIND (1992) was the first film of Studio Ghibli (even before they were Studio Ghibili!). It’s got everything in it, from the first seeds of steampunk, robots, a great female youthful heroine, and an environmental message (plus another one of how aggression is often a cry for love…). We’ve watched it numerous times, have the figures, and our very own pet fox-squirrel.
Month: July 2008
Banksy maybe becoming a bit ubiquitous (okay say that ten-times-fast), but I definitely think he makes the world a better place. (See early post here).
WebUrbanist meanwhile keeps doing damn good curating on a daily basis. They are definitely on my list: One-Hundred-Blogs-You-Must-Subscribe-To-Before-You-Die-List. If I was president I would add two hours to each day just so I could surf through their site. Yesterday they started an eight part series dedicated to the unknown man. So if you were wondering, that’s why I was in such a smiley mood.
Today (07.22.08) WebUrbanist posted part two on the stencils of Banksy.
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New Miyazaki Film!
The new film from Hayao Miyazaki will open in Japan this month. So the countdown for it coming stateside has begun. It’s already being called a classic.
The official Studio Ghibli website for it is here now though (okay, so what if it is in Japanese, just click around it and explore!). Evidently it is geared for a younger audience than the last few and is closer in tone to MY NEIGHBOR TOTORO and KIKI’S DELIVERY SERVICE. The film is called PONYO ON THE CLIFF BY THE SEA.
The title character, Ponyo, is a girl fish with a human face who decides one day to leave her underwater home — and her school of smaller sisters — to see what lies on the surface. Riding on the back of a jellyfish, she is nearly trapped by a drift net, but escapes — with her head stuck in a glass jar. Sosuke , a boy who lives on a house on a seaside cliff, spots Ponyo in the shallows and rescues her. He is delighted with his new pet — and Ponyo is delighted to be in the human world at last. She says her first words, to Sosuke’s astonishment — and begins a transformation from half-fish to human.Meanwhile, her human father, Fujimoto, who lives in an undersea manse with Ponyo’s sea-queen mother, starts to search for her. With his long hair, beaky nose and tormented, bags-under-the-eyes expression, Fujimoto looks like a decayed aristocrat from a shojo manga (girls’ comic), but he possesses magical powers over the waves, which become like living creatures under his command. What can a mere kid, if one with a feisty mom he calls Lisa, and a good-natured, if mostly absent, ship-captain dad, do to stop him?
I wonder what will the equivalent of the Cat Bus in this one?
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Sharing Good Ideas
Awhile ago we looked at The Monster Engine, where Dave Devries turns childrens’ drawings of fantastical monsters into professional renderings of the very same beasts. If you haven’t checked it out, it’s pretty cool, and a great simple idea worth repeating.
Yesterday Very Short List blasted about Yeedoo Jung who in 2005 took childrens’ drawings and turned them into professionally render photographs akin to movie sets. They are pretty cool too. Check them out here.
It’s great how good ideas are never held by one person alone, but that all over the globe people are thinking the same thing, only a wee bit different.
I used to think clouds were the top improvising artists out there. These videos demonstrate otherwise. I can’t even conceive of the math formulas that were used to come up with these shapes. And coordination and timing.
BBoing turned me onto this one this morning (stop it at the commercial unless you are into bungee jumping), and a quick YTube search found the next one below.
I don’t have many regrets, but one is that I still have not hooked the video camera up to shoot out our window where I watch the birds’ ballet every morning. They dart and they swirl in organized clusters and seem to much prefer the cool air more than today’s heat which keeps them still. It’s on my To Do list, so one day….
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Books Not Bombs
Nicholas Kristof had another great piece in the NY Times yesterday, this one on Greg Mortenson‘s efforts to build schools in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Kristof writes regarding Mortenson:
Still, he notes that the Taliban recruits the poor and illiterate, and he also argues that when women are educated they are more likely to restrain their sons. Five of his teachers are former Taliban, and he says it was their mothers who persuaded them to leave the Taliban; that is one reason he is passionate about educating girls.
So I have this fantasy: Suppose that the United States focused less on blowing things up in Pakistan’s tribal areas and more on working through local aid groups to build schools, simultaneously cutting tariffs on Pakistani and Afghan manufactured exports. There would be no immediate payback, but a better-educated and more economically vibrant Pakistan would probably be more resistant to extremism.
“Schools are a much more effective bang for the buck than missiles or chasing some Taliban around the country,” says Mr. Mortenson, who is an Army veteran.
Each Tomahawk missile that the United States fires in Afghanistan costs at least $500,000. That’s enough for local aid groups to build more than 20 schools, and in the long run those schools probably do more to destroy the Taliban.
Mortenson has written a book “Three Cups Of Tea“, which I haven’t read, but is a best seller. If only we had an administration that understood what a good idea education is, both home and abroad.
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Change the Urban Landscape
Being a city-dweller, I was a fan of congestion pricing to reduce traffic, but I understand why it could not pass for NYC in the state capitol. Nonetheless I like the stick-to-it-ness of the mayor to find ways to make the city greener.
I am not sure if I would have started with Broadway between 42nd – 34th Street as my next urban park, but I dig the idea.
Read about it here in the NY Times.
