This blog began in 1997 as a single news page called Nucelus. In 2005, during a long wait to move into a new house, I decided to learn some php and MySQL and write my own blogging system, which became inkyBlog and which now powers this, my own Webbledegook blog.
Thank you to my brother, Murray Ewing, for help with some of the more challenging aspects!
But then a second run was announced, so last April (2023) I gritted my teeth (tickets shouldn't be this expensive), booked tickets for March 2024, and, at last, we all went up to the Barbican last week, two days before the end of the second run.
And I'm so glad I did - my wife and I loved it, the children loved it, it was a wonderful production. The staging was incredible, the acting was spot-on, the music was enchanting - it was all the things the film is - funny, heartwarming, moving and uplifting. Huge congratulations to the performers and creative team.
It's a long time since I visited the Barbican - in fact the last time was September 2008 ... on the eve of a hospital visit for an operation I had to have, we went up to see Osamu Tezuki's Bagi, introduced with a talk by the always marvellous Helen McCarthy. There was a splendid exhibition of Tezuka's art as well (prints mostly) which was astonishingly good - all part of the Barbican's Tezuka Season.
Hopefully Totoro will warrant a third run at some point, maybe a touring production, in which case I heartily recommend you get along and see it.
The following is an article I wrote on High and Low last October and included in my 50'zine - copies still available.
Akira Kurosawa is my favourite director, but which is his best film? I vacillate between Seven Samurai, Hidden Fortress, Ikiru and High & Low, but High & Low might just edge it. Released in 1963, it is, for me, almost perfect cinema. The story is an adaptation of Ed McBain's King's Ransom (1959), the story of a shoe company executive who at first believes his son has been kidnapped and is willing to lose his hard-won fortune to save him, until he learns that it's his chauffeur's son who has been kidnapped by mistake - and he refuses to pay.
The book and the film part ways in a number of places. Kurosawa takes McBain's interesting moral dilemma, but rather forced set-up, and gives it a humanist spin, making it more exciting, logical, dynamic and overall more satisfying. Where McBain's Doug King refuses to pay and takes fake money to get the boy back, Kurosawa's Kingo Gondo (fantastically portrayed by Toshiro Mifune) finally relents and sacrifices almost everything he has to save another man's child. The roller-coaster of emotions is palpable through a number of starkly memorable scenes - the subdued chauffeur clutching his only child's jumper, Gondo sitting down to work with his old tool bag as the police rise from their seats with dawning respect, the discovery of the pink smoke over the city, and the shocking seediness of Yokohama's ghetto and underbelly.
The first half of the film is entirely set in the high-up house of Gondo, almost like a theatrical production - but the scene setting, composition and tension are masterfully presented. The action cuts suddenly to a speeding express train - a car in the book - after being still for so long (not that we realised) the jolting movement of camera and transport is exhilarating. Then the second half of the film commences - a solid police procedural set against the backdrop of Gondo, the destroyed but now revered man, and Takeuchi, the kidnapper, already in hell and pursued further and further into it. The Japanese title, Tengoku to Jigoku, translates more accurately as Heaven & Hell.
The film included four of Kurosawa's leading men - the unparalleled Mifune as Gondo, Nakadai as the lead investigator, with smaller roles for the great Shimura as the Section Chief, and Fujita, Kurosawa's first star, as the Police manager.
The book has King chase and fight the kidnapper, not to save the boy, but more out of anger at his own near-ruin. In Kurosawa's intense ending, the reflected faces of hero and villain merge, separated by fortune perhaps, but more - the film suggests - by the choices they made, the choice to do good or to do evil. High & Low is cinema storytelling at its finest.
Mahito is a young boy whose mother is killed in a hospital fire during WWII, after which his father evacuates him to the countryside where he is to live with his father's new wife - his mother's sister, the pregnant Natsuko. In the lush grounds of the old family estate Mahito discovers a mysterious ruined tower, said to have been built by a recent ancestor, and is harried by a grey heron who tells him his mother is alive and can be found.
All this leads to Mahito entering a dream-like world of shifting realities and weird creatures - swarms of aggressive pelicans, the cute, inflating Warawara, the militaristic and culinary parakeets, and the mysterious fire-girl, Lady Himi.
For much of the time the purpose of the characters and the world is unclear, leading to quite a bit of plot disorientation which probably reflects Mahito's state of mind quite well. There are no rules in this fantasy realm, and as soon as you think you've found your feet and direction, the floor falls away and a new scene takes its place.
It's incredibly rich, both visually and in ideas. Sometimes these will recall previous Miyazaki works - the tower with the bath house of Spirited Away, the little paper cut-outs from the same film, the Warawara beings with Princess Mononoke's Kodama spirits, the partnership of Mahito and Kimi with that of Pazu and Sheeta from Castle in the Sky, the depressed, melting Howl with the fake mother apparition, to name a few. But it doesn't rest on past glories, it's a unique, beautiful and very personal piece of work.
The animation, as you'd expect, is masterful. It's the time taken with the little details - the way a character balances before moving, the way a texture reacts to touch, a billowing in the wind. The sounds too add a whole dimension to the film - footsteps on a polished wooden floor, the age-old click of a door handle, the whiz of an arrow. Alongside Joe Haishi's wonderful score, it all builds up to a veritable feast for the senses.
Where does The Boy and the Heron sit alongside Miyazaki's classics? It's hard to tell at the moment and I definitely need to give it another watch to take more in. I immediately enjoyed it more than his previous film, The Wind Rises, but it's hard to dislodge long-time favourites such as Nausicaa, Castle in the Sky, Princess Mononoke, Howl's Moving Castle, Kiki's Delivery Service, etc, even if it's just on grounds of accessibility (I saw it with my two children, 12 and 10, and they enjoyed it but were, I think, somewhat bemused).
Spirited Away remains, for me, Miyazaki's masterpiece, and while Heron doesn't touch that, it has Miyazaki's quality, his heart, his magic, and comfortably sits alongside his other greats, which pretty much every one of his films has been.
While the film is not based on a Tardi album, his work is the inspiration for it, and he laid the visual groundwork, characters and look and feel that the producers and animators followed (much of which can be seen in L'histoire d'un Monde Truqué, Casterman, 2015). Its origin lies in a proposed WWI film writer Benjamin Legrand and Tardi planned to make but which never got off the ground. The two had worked together before, on the strip Tuer de Cafards (Cockroach Killer, 1984) and now Legrand wanted to come up with a scenario full of the things Tardi loved to draw, to wash away his sour experience from the WWI project.
Legrand created a uchronic adventure story with a nod to the Paris of the Belle Epoch, with a large dash of Adel Blanc-Sec (the film's heroine, April, is a little like her, but not as stony) and Le Démon des Glaces (The Arctic Marauder, 1974). The initial idea was for a TV series, but when it happened to come before Franck Ekinci, who had just made Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis (2007), he insisted it should be a feature film. Although Tardi did again experience the frustration and dashed hopes of delayed production, the film eventually got made and saw its premiere at Annecy in June 2015.
And it's a fantastic piece of work, up there with the best of Miyazaki. From the wonderful detail of the title credits that settle you firmly into time and place, to the cast of well-rounded characters (including Darwin, the talking cat), to the constantly driving pace from frying-pan to fire and back again.
The world's chronology splits from our own when the 1870 Franco-Prussian war is averted with the unexpected death of Napoleon III. Connected with this, the world's top scientists start to disappear, leaving a sooty world bereft of technological advancement except for its reliance on coal and steam, leading to the great Canadian Charcoal War. The setting is fantastic - the double Eiffel Tower, the international cable transports, the pedal-powered air balloons, and a house that springs legs, somewhat reminiscent of Ghibli's (and Wynne Jones') Moving Castle (2004) or a Baba Yaga's hut.
The French title, Avril et le Monde Truqué, translates more correctly to April and the Fake World, but it untwists itself and reconciles with our own timeline again by the end, with the destruction of one of the Eiffel Towers, the (perhaps questionable) benefits of electricity unleashed, and something a little odd going on with the moon.
The film has just the right balance of character, action and tension, all with an ending that gives a little emotional jolt. It survives repeated, even regular, viewings, and for fans of Tardi, I don't think it could be more perfect. Perhaps the only reason it's not on more people's radars is the French language (though it doesn't suffer at all in its English dub) - but for me that just adds even more atmosphere to an extraordinary world I'd love to keep exploring.
On my own for New Year's Eve I watched Riders of Justice, an excellent Danish revenge comedy (if there wasn't such a genre, there is now). The action is the stuff we've all seen before, but the characters and comedy are of that delightful Nordic quality and, in conjunction with the overarching theme, sets the film apart.
The previous evening I got round to watching the new Bond film, No Time to Die. As usual it's a slick production with another superb Bond performance from Daniel Craig. It didn't quite hammer in all the nails for me: a series of impressive and thrilling set-pieces, yet lacking some kind of core. Good overall, especially some of the supporting characters, but even so, I don't think Casino Royale has been beaten in Craig's run.
I also finally got to see the documentary, Mifune: The Last Samurai. If you like Mifune or Kurosawa (they are inseparable) then you'll love it. To get critical, Mifune's early films are glossed over, missing out on a chance to examine his development as an actor, and the majority of the content focuses on his samurai roles (thus also leaving out one of my favourites, High and Low), but these are minor quibbles. It's great for a short section on early silent Chanbara films, and also its interviews with some of the now elderly people who worked with Mifune.
Possibly the best thing I saw this year, watching it with my wife over Christmas, was Peter Jackson's The Beatles: Get Back - quite an astonishing look at the band's development and recording of what would eventually become the Let It Be album. The original director of the footage, Michael Lindsay-Hogg, had initially edited it into a piece that highlighted the difficult moments in The Beatles' relationship, giving birth to the idea that the whole studio experience was strained and negative. Jackson has brought it into its full context and the strength of their bond is re-established, along with the joy they evidently had in creating. McCartney is particularly impressive. Great stuff.
Not so good was a TV adaptation of Stephen King's 11/22/63 - a book I really like and have listened to more than once on audiobook while working at the drawing board. I couldn't finish this as I found the changes to the book too overwhelming and to the detriment of the story as a whole. I know screen adaptations have to change, but this seemed to make all the wrong choices. The cast and production were decent though, and maybe if you don't know the book it'll be fine.
Contrasting nicely with that has been the BBC's terrific Around the World in Eighty Days - not yet completed as I write this, but so far every episode has been excellent (edit: up to the penultimate episode now, and one of my favourite watches of the year).
I can't recall much else of what I've watched this year ... many children's films (some excellent - I hugely enjoyed Cruella with its fantastic soundtrack; many CG animations with the same characters and moral of the story that all blend into one), Jojo Rabbit was a stand-out film, Free Guy was on the entertaining side of 'meh', and Don't Look Up, which I watched just a couple of nights ago, was great, if depressingly close to the bone.
Murray and I started the War Films series back in 2014 - seven years ago ... and it's only ten podcasts! Well, we did say we wouldn't keep to a regular schedule.
Before that we'd recorded ten podcasts for the Adventure Films Podcast. Those went up much more quickly - ten films from May to December 2011.
Kurosawa is my favourite director and this is the second of his films that Murray and I have looked at, the first being part of the Adventure Films Podcast series, The Hidden Fortress.
A little while later we decided to continue the series, but this time we chose ten war films to discuss - and we've just recorded and published episode 8, looking at the 2004 film Downfall.
More at The Adventure Films Podcast (and on iTunes here).
Both were driven by nostalgia to a large degree. We always used to go and see the new Bond film at the cinema ... I particularly recall seeing Moonraker, but I think The Spy Who Loved Me (1977) was the first. But just six months later my life would change, because that is when I went to see Star Wars (at The ABC in Tunbridge Wells, now sadly flattened).
Up until then it was war - comics, toys, models and films - that were my main preoccupation, but I mostly dropped that after Star Wars, and science fiction and adventure became my new obsession.
It was a great time to be a young kid. After Star Wars came Superman, The Empire Strikes Back, Flash Gordon, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Superman II, Time Bandits, Clash of the Titans, E.T, Conan the Barbarian, Blade Runner, Tron, The Dark Crystal, War Games, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, Ghostbusters, and Return of the Jedi, to name a few that have stood the test of time.
And it's nostalgia that is at the heart of The Force Awakens - an aspect that is partly responsible for its huge success, but which has also been one of the main points of criticism of the film.
I enjoyed it immensely, but then perhaps the film was rather aimed at me and those like me, and it pushed all the right buttons. I liked it so much that I started 2016 by going to see it again, and was not disappointed with a second viewing and with the hype somewhat cooled.
It's nice seeing the old faces again, but the best thing about the film is the new faces: Rey is an intriguing and positive main character, Fin is entertaining and hugely likeable, and the dark side offers up a very interesting personality in the guise of Kylo Ren.
Unlike some critics, I didn't mind the plot parallels with the original Star Wars. I think it's a trait of the series (or perhaps the Force) that patterns repeat, and I'm not surprised, after the reception that greeted episodes I-III, that the writers and producers wanted to play it safe to get the new franchise off the ground.
My worry is that the creative team behind episode VIII, slated for late 2017, will give too much attention to the voices of the fans when they come to map out future instalments. While, as I said, I loved every minute of The Force Awakens, it has also, actually, given me a greater appreciation of the originality and vision of George Lucas's prequels.
I re-watched them over the past couple of weeks, for the first time in a long time (in fact, in the case of episode III, for the first time since seeing it just once at the cinema) and was pleasantly surprised. Jar-Jar Binks wasn't as annoying as I, perhaps, mis-remembered, and I even found young 'Anni' likeable and somewhat sympathetic. Certainly the over-baked scenes with Hayden Christensen and Natalie Portman are a bit difficult to watch, but I got a better sense of Anakin's path to the dark side by seeing all three in sequence. I surprised myself by really enjoying the last of the three, even Darth Vader's "Noooooooo!" didn't seem half as bad as I recalled.
The setting of the prequels is a feast for the eyes, and I think the story just about works - especially if you immerse yourself fully into the fantasy. This isn't science-fiction, after all, it's pure space fairy-tale!
Was Lucas largely criticised for being original? For telling the story he wanted to tell, and not the one his films' keenest fans wanted (ie. a more Star Wars-y Star Wars). Are those who are criticising The Force Awakens for being too much like A New Hope the same people who criticised The Phantom Menace for not being 'Star Wars' enough?
I'm not saying the prequels were perfect films, not one bit. I do wonder if, because of what they are, they are put under a great deal more scrutiny than would ever be directed at the original trilogy. Episodes I-III are world-building, background, nerd-notes. I shed myself of some of the internet stigma that has built up around them, and found I enjoyed them more than I thought I would.
We've had our nostalgia moment with The Force Awakens, and that's brilliant. Now let's hope we move forward into new territory, where quality storytelling will prevail over commercial interests and fan pressure. I want to see the new characters grow, and I'd love to see Luke Skywalker - the kid that started it all - used intelligently, with new aspects revealed, giving impetus to the new series, so that a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, has a bright, absorbing, and exciting future.
It was part of a Koreeda boxed set that I got for Christmas - I'd forgotten I'd put it down as a suggestion, based on reading something over a year ago that made me think I simply must watch this man's films, and since forgotten, so it was a nice surprise. The other films in the boxed set are After Life (1998), Nobody Knows (2004) and Air Doll (2009).
Still Walking is the story of a family that get together for a memorial to the eldest son who, we gradually learn, drowned fifteen years previously when he went into the sea to rescue a young boy. There are two grown-up children left, Hiroshi, who has married a young widow with a son, and Chinami, who has a husband and two children.
The family come home to their parents, the father a retired doctor who has lost both his heir and his purpose in life, and a probably fairly typical elderly Japanese mother, serving, fussing over her children, commenting on their lifestyle choices, and cooking, complaining and loving the rare gathering of her clan.
The film is peaceful and undramatic, but full of beautiful moments: the tension between the father and the younger, surviving son, who has failed to live up to expectations; the young widow's little boy, quietly trying to make sense of his own father's death; the uncomfortable annual visit of the boy (now man) whose life was saved by the dead son (and the mother's admission of why she continues to invite him); the yellow butterfly; the conversations; the gentle humour.
And the ending. I won't spoil it, but it brought an unexpected tear, though not a sad one. Well, maybe a bit - Hiroshi, it seems, could only be himself once his own parents had passed away, freed of his role as second son. Various aspects of this film will resonate with most people in different ways - something recognisable for everyone.
The whole film immediately brought to mind the great director Yasujiro Ozu, in setting, theme, style and mood, particularly Tokyo Story (see my review here). It even has a role, in the young widow (played by Yui Natsukawa), that would have fitted Setsuko Hara perfectly. I look forward to seeing the remaining Koreeda films, even if it might take a little while.
