Sniffing out the stuff that kids really get best
I think if I was President-For-A-Day I would ban all advertisements — except for ones for zoos. Why do zoos inspire such creativity? Did you ever play with the Build Your Wild Self from the Bronx Zoo? That was fun, but the San Francisco Zoo’s bus stop campaign rivals it. Snap a photo when you wait for your ride, then get home and send it on to them. Check them all out here.
The forest on the edge of Tokyo that inspired Miyazake to create MY NEIGHBOR TOTORO is being threatened. Where does beauty go when we let it disappear? Hmmm.
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.
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 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?
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.
Theo’s Mom has got the DOCTOR WHO bug and she’s got it good. She found this for The Bowl and although we’ve done reptile parties (where the giant lizard let loose in the most nasty way all over my office!), parties with magicians, and even a bionicle birthday, I now know we haven’t even really lived yet. I have seen the vision of the ultimate chocolate nightmare and here it is. If only I had the courage to bake it… Where’s my sonic screwdriver when I need it?
The City is a playground. Art is all around. Good ideas abound. Huckleberry is a hound.
