Word: chihiro
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...Hard-core Miyazaki devotees will make a game out of seeing what they can recognize - from the wildly cluttered wizard's bedroom in Howl's Moving Castle to the dishes eaten by Chihiro's parents in Spirited Away (the fateful meal causes them to turn into pigs). But neophytes can get just as much satisfaction from the dynamic quality of the drawings. The opening sequence of 1984's Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (a Miyazaki-Takahata film that predated the foundation of Studio Ghibli) is there as a lush forest drawn from high above, with blocks...
...name name in anime, Miyazaki makes child-friendly films that bring kids into magic worlds where pigs (Porco Rosso) and witches (Kiki's Delivery Service) fly with equal ease. Spirited Away, Miyazaki's masterpiece, is set in a spectral bathhouse. Ghosts of every species set traps for plucky young Chihiro-- or help her step out of them. Here is a fantasy land as rich as Lewis Carroll's, a netherworld as poetic as Dante's, to transfix the child in every moviegoer...
...This scene from Bayside Shakedown 2, a Japanese cop drama debuting on July 19, is a terrific movie moment precisely because it's so charming and modest. But are charm and modesty the stuff of a box-office blockbuster? Chihiro Kameyama, producer of some of Japan's most memorable TV and film hits over the past 15 years, is banking on it. In a conference room high atop Fuji TV's futuristic Tokyo office building, he seems positively serene just days before the highest-profile movie release of his career. Kameyama predicts that Bayside Shakedown 2 will...
...boiler room, Kamagi, a six-armed troll, keeps stern watch over dozens of soot-ball slaves--cute vermin, thrilled when Chihiro shows up to lighten their work load. Ren, a scrubwoman, offers Chihiro the weary wisdom of the eternal underclass. The child's best hope for fleeing Yubaba on the undersea railroad is young Haku, a boy who can take on the shape of a dragon. When Chihiro and this beautiful beast take to the sky, they express the most elevated forms of teamwork and puppy love...
...picture, the grand emotion, one spectacular set piece stacked on another in brilliant colors and design. There's not a more impressive sequence in recent movies than the arrival at the bathhouse of a huge, amorphous river-god, encased in centuries' worth of stink and sludge, whom Chihiro has the daunting task of giving a sturdy wash and scrub. It's a visual aria, whose suspense is topped only by the scene's surprise payoff...