From Up On Poppy Hill (コクリコ坂から) : Why animate?

Since Studio Ghibli's "From Up On Poppy Hill" will be released in a few days,  I thought it would be good to finally get around to soapboxing my impression of the film.

"From Up on Poppy Hill" (known as Kokuriko Zaka Kara here in Japan)  is an absolutely brilliant film.    It was directed by Hayao Miyazaki's son, Goro and based on a 1980's manga series.   Without giving too much away, it tells a nostalgic (well, nostalgic for Japanese people anyway) story about a group of ambitious high school students in the rapidly developing Showa Period of Japan,  post-World War II.  

This 1960's period in Japan had a resurgence of development industry-wise as well as an accelerating "We Can Do It" spirit amongst Japan's youth. These kids would be the ones who eventually would be the leaders of Japan's economic boom period.  

This was one of the better animated films I have seen in a long time.  Not so much for technical reasons but for it's ability to tell a very moving and compelling story.  Which brings me to my dilemma about the film:  "Why Animate It?"  

Traditionally and even more in the USA, animation has been used as a tool to tell stories that cannot be told with conventional live action.  IE: the use of caricature for exaggeration, as a special effect.    "From Up On Poppy Hill" was beautiful,  but it was completely devoid of any need for exaggerated effect and I'll even go as far to say it borders on lacking a sense of caricature since all of Ghibli's characters literally have the same face --- with the exception of over-the-top characters.    

On the heels of news that Disney announced that has no intentions of doing any hand-drawn animated projects in the near future, it made me think also about the importance of a film like this ---

I noted my opinion to a Japanese friend who felt the movie was spot on in terms of the atmosphere it was trying to convey.  As she put it, this time in Japan was a very hopeful, and beautiful time in Japan mainly for its simplicity.  If the film was done up to the teeth with fancy zooming shots and, near- photorealistic backgrounds -- it simply would have killed the charm of that time for Japanese --- and the movie.  

Point taken.

Some say we don't go to animated films to see the technical merits of the animation since story always is what people ultimately remember.  But in a sense we do go for the atmosphere that animation brings to a story.  As the saying goes, less can be tremendously more. 

Currently it seems many animation studios don't appear to believe in this.  Nice to know not all  haven't. 

6 Artists: Civil Rights Roundtable

THE QUESTION of what qualifications do artists and entertainers have to use their high visibility to comment on worldly affairs has been long debated.   However that is the very essence of what defines an artist isn't it?

An artist might be an entertainer, but an entertainer is not an artist. More and more, serious issues are given more attention and gravity when an entertainer postures on issues of social importance.

An artist has an responsibility to express him- or herself with sincerity and truth. Though artists are given to idiosyncrasies, to be an artist is an honor and a responsibility.   When one speaks, it should be with done with a degree of forethought and eloquence.  

August 28th, 1963,  the date of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, six noteworthy artists met in a studio immediately after attending the march and witnessing "I Have A Dream" speech of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference's (SCLC) leader, Dr. Martin Luther King. Jr. : 

Marlon Brando
Sidney Poitier
James Baldwin
Harry Belafonte
Joseph Mankiewicz
Charlton Heston

No posturing, no antagonizing. Everything said was sincere towards bringing light and positive solutions to the truly serious issue of the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950's and 1960's.

Artists are the voices of society.   Past, present and future.  Artists can be some of the greatest forces in bringing about social change.

Drawing professor Robert Beverly Hale of The Art Students League in New York summed it up:

"We are the intellectuals, we are the artists
We are the music makers, we are the dreamers of dreams
Wandering by lone sea breakers, sitting by desolate streams
World losers and fore sakers, on whom the pale moon beams
But we are the movers and shakers of the world forever it seems
With wonderful deathless ditties we built up the world's great cities
And out of a fabulous story we fashioned an empire's glory
One man with a dream that pleasures shall go forth and conquer a crown
In tune with a new song's measure shall trample an empire down
We in the ages lying in the buried past of the earth built a Nineveh with our sighing
And Babel itself with our mirth
Then all through them with our prophesying to the old, to the New World's worth
For each age is a dream that is dying or one that is coming to birth."

Robert McGinnis Part 1 : Defining Bond and his Women

"An artist is a one-man theater.  He or she conceives the plot, writes the script,  stages, directs,  and acts out the roles.  In my career, I have covered an enormous range of subject matter and hope to never be confined to just one.  But to the community of art critics there is something unsettling about about a person who won't be indelibly stamped with a narrow label. "   - Robert McGinnis  (The Last Rose of Summer)  


ROBERT MCGINNIS is not just an illustrator but an artist who deserves to be a household name just as Norman Rockwell or even Andrew Wyeth.

Responsible for more than 40 movie posters (such as Breakfast at Tiffany's and Barbarella) his artwork was the last (and possibly the first) driving force to make movie-goers put down money for that movie ticket.

In an age of digital dependency,  illustrated movie posters are rare today.  (See previous blogs:  Bob Peak - Father of the Modern Movie Poster )  However an illustrator can bring more to the subject matter than a photograph, altered or not.  Sometimes skin-pore depth realism is not always what stimulates the imagination.

Robert McGinnis is a significant contributor to the modern James Bond myth as he painted and illustrated seven James Bond theatrical posters. Half of which during the defining 007 Sean Connery years.

McGinnis, didn't simply illustrate scenes and faces from the film, but he gave an artistic "thematic sense" of what to expect from the story and the characters as well as adding his own slight personal artistic insight and touch.

His women have a heightened appearance of sensuality that can more haunting and appetizing than a simple photograph.  His illustrations touch the imagination and the deep sexual psyche.  Sultry eyes, perfect hourglass silohuettes, slightly elongated legs is the stamp of the Robert McGinnis woman.

His concept of using tarot cards for Live and Let Die was a brilliant compositional choice as well as a boldly creative statement about the film.   A choice elevating the poster from a disposable advertisment,  to a work of art.

Works of art people like to keep around and revisit and again and again.  The same can't be said for something that simply wants to sell you a just product.   More to come on Robert McGinnis.  Much more to be said about his other movie posters and his 1200 (!) paperback illustrations.  

GRAFFITI ART: From NYC streets to Tokyo Bridges

Was the father of graffiti Japanese?  

Arguable, but it's pretty much accepted that modern urban graffiti art started with the graffiti artist Taki 183.  Despite a Japanese sounding name, Taki was in fact a Greek-American youth in the late 1960's who tagged his name all over the NYC landscape, setting in motion the underground culture which has snowballed to a global level.  

Near my Japan residence, the Tamagawa Bridge has it's fair share of graffiti art.  It's doubtful my neighbors have the same fascination as I do since I can remember graffiti in it's early days in 1970's New York.  

Graffiti in Japan is just as expressive, urban, rebellious and rhythmic as anything on the NYC subway trains before technology destroyed subway art culture literally overnight by the late 1980's.  Despite that, graffiti art has survived and grown exponentially since then.

There are tag names, graffiti characters to be sure, but the use of Japanese kanji, katakana or hiragana is notably absent.  At least I haven't seen it.    It seems Japan's graffiti artists prefer western words or sounding names to Japanese ones.  However the picture below seems to be a combination of stylized kanji and hiragana.

I am sure there are even more dynamic graffiti pieces to be found around Tokyo, but this is just a taste of what's in my backyard.   Below are two clips on graffiti art.  One historical, the other from Japan's perspective.

The Power to Visualize and See

"The science of design, or of line-drawing, if you like to use this term, is the source and very essence of painting, sculpture, architecture... Sometimes... it seems to me that... all the works of the human brain and hand are either design itself or a branch of that art."  - Michelangelo 

Drawing is a communication tool and indispensable skill which helps condition the mind to visualize abstract ideas, concepts, emotions, designs and paradigms.   Something to remember.

Illya Repin: Russia's Norman Rockwell

It's humbling a great to "discover" an artist who inspires you so much, but had existed for so long without your knowing.  At Tokyo's Bunkamura Museum,   I was lucky stumble up on the works of Illya Repin (1844 -1930) a great Russian painter whose works can mentioned in the same breath as Leo Tolstoy as being one of Russia's great artistic treasures.




Without a doubt a master painter in terms of his ability to capture realism.  (At a time where impressionism was becoming the new flavor of the month)  His ability to capture the spirit of people almost borders on caricature and almost has an "animated" feel to it.

Subtle caricature,  dramatic staging as well as subtle social commentary, there is certainly something Norman Rockwell-ish about Repin.   There is this love of people and ability to capture the most appealing or compelling parts of people in his paintings and portraits.  Truly inspiring.  Today will be the last day Repin will be exhibited at Bunkamura in Tokyo but someday a trip to St. Petersberg's Russian Museum would be more than worth it to see his works up close again.

Bruce Lee and Hanna Barbera Animation Deal?

 I was rummaging through my old martial arts reference books.  Many of which are related to Chinese martial arts.  One of my favorite historical references is a comprehensive collection of Bruce Lee's letters to his family, friends, martial arts and film colleagues:   Bruce Lee:  Letters of the Dragon, Correspondence, 1958 - 1973. edited by John Little.  

The last letter written by Bruce Lee on the last day of his life, July 20, 1973 leaped out at me:

41, Cumberland Rd. 

Kowloon, H.K.

July 20, 1973.

Adrian Marshall
Suite 920, Century City
10100 Santa Monica Blvd.
Los Angeles, Calif. 90067
U.S.A.


Dear Adrian,

Will be arriving Los Angeles on Aug. 3rd, would like to sit down and hope you can leave open the weekend of Aug. 4th and 5th to discuss the followings:
1/ the deal with Hana Barbera
2/ Warner's proposition
3/ Titanas from Italy
4/ Andy's proposition from H.K. which I will explain to you when I see you in person
All in all, it will be a hectic schedule with television shows, United Press interview, etc., spending one week in L.S. and leaving on Aug. 18th to New York for another week of publicity, maybe Johnny Carson Show and so forth etc. And then, my publicity tour will officially end on Aug. 24th and on Aug. 25th I will meet Linda at L.A., ready to come back to H.K. hopefully in one piece.
In the meantime, if there is any preliminary discussions that you can start without my presence, go right ahead. However, I would prefer you and I sit down first and discuss the whole plan of the income tax situation before we proceed on. Also, I would like to meet with you first before meeting with Raymond Chow and then both of us will hear him out. By the way, there are also other propositions of books, clothings, endorsements, etc. At any rate, I will talk to you personally when I see you.

Take care my friend,
Very truly yours, 


Bruce 

PS: Looking forward to a sincere opened and honest relationship between you and I to really do something fair and square. By the way, SY Weintraub had just called and will be flying here to H.K., supposedly to have devised a super plan for me. At any rate , I won't sign anything until I and then maybe Raymond and/or SY sit down and we all talked. So get prepared!! See you soon. 



At the top of the list  Bruce Lee wanted to discuss with his attorney, Adrian Marshall was a "deal" with the animation studio Hanna-Barbera, which in 1973 was exploding with made for TV animation content.  Hanna-Barbera's other Chinese themed cartoon, "The Amazing Chan and the Chan Clan" had already run its one season course.  However the faces we were seeing on television slowly but surely were becoming more ethnically diverse.  It's doubtful that Bruce would have landed a whole animated TV series this at this point in his Hollywood career.  But it's likely he could have been slated as an animated guest on "The New Scooby-Doo Movies"  which featured both real and fictitious popular personalities such as Cass Elliot, Davy Jones, and Batman and Robin. 

 

 In 1973, the "Kung Fu" TV-Series was doing well, and Bruce Lee, (the man who fathered the idea of that show) was about to bombshell western pop-culture with his re-introduction to American audiences in "Enter the Dragon".  The film, which even 40 years later is still the bar for all martial arts films to live up to. 

 If this deal with Hanna-Barbera was already greenlit, it's a no-brainer that the studio's animation great Iwao Takamoto would have overseen the project.  Iwao Takamoto, former assistant to Disney's Milt Kahl was a world-class draftsman.  Would have loved to see his model sheets interpreting Bruce Lee for animation.