Screengrab Salutes: The Top 20 Animated Features (Part Four)

Phil Nugent — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 21:30:00 GMT

MILLENNIUM ACTRESS (2001)

This unusual Japanese film is arguably the most original and affecting movie yet from the Japanese director Satoshi Kon, whose other credits include Tokyo Godfathers and the wigged-out TV series Paranoia Agent. The title character here is Chiyoko Fujiwara, an ancient and reclusive film actress who consents to a rare filmed interview with her biggest fan, Genya Tachibana, a documentarian who once saved her life on a film set when he was a boy. As the actress, guided by the heavy-set, worshipful Tachibana, goes over the events of her life and career, they become inextricably mixed with scenes from her films and with Tachibana's own memories. (He sees himself as her devoted protector.) The film has some similarities to Kon's first feature, Perfect Blue, but without the murder-thriller plotting, and the violence and sexual nastiness that have stuck Kon with a reputation as Mister Kink. What's left is a dream about the movies and how they shape the memories and lives of those who make them, and those who watch them.

TOY STORY 2 (1999)

The third film from Pixar, which credits Ash Brannon and Lee Unkrich as co-directors alongside the busy John Lasseter, is one of those rare sequels that actually deepens and enriches the original. Partly this is just because the technology had already made great strides in the four years since the first Toy Story changed the face of animation. The visages of the human characters were no longer a freakishly hideous roadblock to enjoying what the computer animators were always able to accomplish when creating characters (toys, insects) with the appearance of hard plastic surfaces. By the time of Toy Story 2, their ability to play with the human form had improved to the point that they were able to cariacture it: the movie's villain, the fat, infantile collector (voice, inevitably, by Wayne Knight) who thinks that toys are for "appreciating" and profiteering (as opposed to being played with) is the nastiest, funniest potshot ever taken at geekdom from within the confines of a movie that might have been expected to kiss geekdom's ass a little. More importantly, the collector character paves the way for the humanoid triumphs of The Incredibles and the second half of Wall-E.

NAUSICAA OF THE VALLEY OF THE WIND (1984)

Technically, this epic sci-fi adventure predates the creation of Studio Ghibli, where its writer-director, Hayao Miyazaki, would go on to hatch such triumphs as Kiki's Delivery Service, My Neighbor Totoro, and Castle in the Sky. But it definitely laid the groundwork for what was to come. It was the first feature on which Miyazaki worked as both director and writer (adapting the screenplay from the manga series of the same name that he was working on, which was begun a couple of years before the movie went into production but wasn't completed until after its release) and it served as his introduction to several major collaborators. It also established key elements of his work, ranging from its plucky young heroine to its creator's aircraft fetish, that would become very familiar to Miyazaki fans in the coming years. And in its environmental message and apocalyptic imagery, it's an especially close cousin to one film where he really kicked out the jams, Princess Mononoke. An overseas sensation, Nausicaa was first seen in America in a badly dubbed, incoherently re-edited, much shorter version (called Warriors of the Wind) that was put out by some people who we should pity for the torments they will eventually endure in Hell. In 2005, the real movie was finally made readily available on our shores thanks to DVD.

YELLOW SUBMARINE (1968)

The animated feature as sixties pop banquet, and if it's one of the many contenders for the title of First Full-Length Music Video, that wouldn't be an insult if more music videos had employed a spirit half as playful to go with their eye-popping visuals. With its happy mix of styles from all over and a script that delights in punning wordplay, it has the feel of a commercial job that turned into a labor of love for the many different talents involved, ranging from the director, George Dunning, a Canadian who never worked on anything as high-profile again, to Love Story author Erich Segal, one of several fellows credited with the screenplay. Amusingly, the list of people who worked closely on it does not include the Beatles, who were required to cough up a few new songs for the soundtrack but otherwise were too busy working on that deathless masterpiece Magical Mystery Tour to do anything but drop by the studio long enough to film the live-action epilogue, without question the worst and most easily dispensable thing in the movie. Most of the songs were already well-established hits from earlier albums, and their speaking voices were provided by various actors. At one point in the middle of the production, the cops showed up and hauled off the free-spirited dude who was providing the voice of Ringo; it turned out that he was a deserter from the British Army. After his departure, the rest of Ringo's lines were done by Paul Angelis, who was already playing both George Harrison and the head of the Blue Meanies. Although they appeared to love it as much as everyone else after they saw it, the Beatles' attitude about the movie while it was being made can perhaps be gauged by the title of George Harrison's contribution to the soundtrack, "Only a Northern Song"--a reference to the publishing company that had been formed to handle Lennon/McCartney compositions. (At the time, the title and such lyrics as "It doesn't really matter what chords I play/ What words I say or time of day it is/ As it's only a Northern song" might have been taken as a hint that Harrison was getting fed up with having his own songwriting career treated by his bandmates as an afterthought.)

Click here for Part One, Part Two, Part Three, & Part Five.

Yesterday's Hits: Love Story (1970)

Paul Clark — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 20:00:00 GMT

What made Love Story a hit?: It takes some balls to title a romantic drama Love Story. In doing so, writer Erich Segal essentially threw down the gauntlet, proclaiming this to be the definitive romance for a generation. And for audiences of the early 1970s, it was embraced as an old-school romance they could call their own, both as a best-selling novel, then as a film. Love Story appealed to a wide audience- its anti-establishment message resounded with youth of the era, while attractive, clean-cut leads Ryan O’Neal and Ali McGraw were likable to “square” audiences. Moviegoers responded to the tune of more than $100 million, a huge figure in the pre-blockbuster era.

What happened to its popularity?: There’s a school of thought that says that cold, ironic movies tend to age better than warm, sincere ones, and while that’s not always the case, it’s pretty true of Love Story. Like Titanic (spotlighted in my last column), Love Story’s cornball tendencies became more glaring with the passage of time, making the film easy to deride. Supposedly there’s a tradition at Harvard- the setting of the film- of incoming freshman getting together to heckle Love Story. But more than that, Love Story had the misfortune of coming at the beginning of a decade that saw an unprecedented amount of adventurousness in Hollywood. Compared to subsequent hits like MASH, The Godfather, and Jaws, Love Story got lost in the shuffle.

As for its stars, McGraw quickly became more famous for her relationships- Robert Evans, Steve McQueen- than for her later work. O’Neal’s career fared better in the long run, finding him working with filmmakers like Stanley Kubrick and Peter Bogdanovich, but by 1978, when he starred in the film’s sequel, Oliver’s Story, his popularity had waned as well.

Does Love Story still work?: Much as I’d like to defend the film against its hecklers, the truth is that Love Story hasn’t aged well. One particularly grating element of the film is its dialogue. Great dialogue is rarely a hallmark of romantic films, but Love Story’s so overwritten that there’s hardly a point when the characters sound like they’re speaking naturally.

This is especially true of Ali McGraw’s Jenny, who begins the story by verbally strong-arming O’Neal (as Oliver) into a first date and never really lets up. Even after Oliver tells Jenny, “verbal volleyball is not my idea of a relationship,” Jenny’s dialogue still mostly comes off as self-impressed. This is a big problem when the film is largely predicated on the idea that Jenny is an irresistible life force, and McGraw just wasn’t actress enough to make it work.

But a bigger issue is how rushed it feels. The biggest casualty of the film’s abbreviated running time (just over 90 minutes) is characterization, in particular the parents of Jenny and Oliver. We know that Oliver’s relationship with his father (Ray Milland) is strained because he calls his father “sir” and his father casually says “that’s an order” when speaking to his son. Conversely, we know that Jenny and her father (John Marley) have a loving relationship because she calls him “Phil” and talks to him like a friend. This is typical of Segal and director Arthur Hiller’s approach, too often resorting to comfortable cliché to avoid dealing with the story’s thornier issues.

With its narrative arc- rich boy falls in love with and marries poor girl, gets disowned by family, but works his way back to a well-to-do lifestyle, after which she contracts fatal disease that for some reason never changes her appearance- Love Story might have made an effective melodrama. However, the film is in such a hurry that very little makes an impression. It’s like listening to a concert pianist play a concerto in double-time- sure, he hits all the right notes, but where’s the soul?

The Screengrab : erich segal

Screengrab Salutes: The Top 20 Animated Features (Part Four)

Yesterday's Hits: Love Story (1970)