Word: miyazaki
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...Hayao Miyazaki is frowning. The director's latest animated feature film Spirited Away is hurtling past Titanic to become Japan's top-grossing movie release ever. The magical fable has cemented his status as a cultural icon in Japan. And his pet project?a whimsically playful children's museum on the outskirts of Tokyo celebrating his work?is finally a reality. But it's Sept. 12, the day after terrorist attacks in New York City and Washington took the lives of thousands, and the 60-year-old director is angry. His mouth is set in a straight line behind...
...startling to confront this fierce, crotchety man when you're expecting the human version of Totoro, the fat furry sprite from one of Miyazaki's best-loved movies. Miyazaki is known for his oeuvre of wildly popular, feature-length animation films that showcase a childlike vision and an imagination from which spring fantastic kingdoms, strange creatures, flying contraptions and plucky-kid heroes. But he also possesses an intellectual intensity that drives his projects and a disdain of publicity that makes him about as easy to interview as J.D. Salinger. Yes, he's weaving stories for children. But he commands...
...cicadas screech in the pine tree towering over the museum's outdoor cafE, Miyazaki stalks off to find more cigarettes and for a while it's not clear he'll return. He does, though, intent on discussing why he makes films, not how. "In dreams you search for a better self," he says, lighting up again. "Don Quixote says much the same thing. We must do all we can to seek truth. This is the responsibility of the filmmaker, not to make a mountain of money...
...Despite his protestations Miyazaki is as much Spielberg?audience-pleasing and moneymaking?as he is Kurosawa, with whom he is often compared. His current hit, Spirited Away, is a case in point. Set in modern-day Japan, the film begins with a family's wrong turn during a move to a mountainside town. Passing through a tunnel, they arrive in a strange land where a spell turns the parents into pigs. That leaves their 10-year-old daughter, Chihiro, to save them. Nothing is as it seems here?a boy turns into a flying dragon, a paper bird into...
...Weinstein is notorious for his itch to trim foreign films to suit the faster American pulse; he reads a sonnet and dreams of a couplet. Says Weinstein: "It's a genius movie. Could it be streamlined? Yeah, and it could be more accessible as a result of cutting. But Miyazaki is like Kurosawa or Sergio Leone--one of the greats of international cinema. The very idea of cutting is anathema to a director of this importance...