The Essence of Hayao Miyazaki Films: A Short Documentary About the Humanity at the Heart of His Animation

in Animation, Creativity, Writing | October 20th, 2015

Film­mak­er Hayao Miyaza­ki detests being referred to as the Japan­ese Walt Dis­ney. The great ani­ma­tor and sto­ry­teller admires the gor­geous ani­ma­tion of clas­sic Dis­ney films, but finds them lack­ing in emo­tion­al com­plex­i­ty, the ele­ment he prizes above all else.

Miyaza­k­i’s films are cel­e­brat­ed for their mys­ti­cal, super­nat­ur­al ele­ments, but they take shape around the human char­ac­ters inhab­it­ing them. Plot comes lat­er, after he has fig­ured out the desires dri­ving his peo­ple. “Keep it sim­ple,” he coun­sels in Lewis Bond’s short doc­u­men­tary The Essence of Human­i­ty above. An inter­est­ing piece of advice, giv­en that a hall­mark of his 40-year career is his insis­tence on cre­at­ing real­is­tic three-dimen­sion­al char­ac­ters, warts and all.

Amer­i­can ani­ma­tors are also taught to sim­pli­fy. They should all be able to sum up the essence of their pro­posed fea­tures by fill­ing in the blank of the phrase “I want _____,” pre­sum­ably because such con­ci­sion is a nec­es­sary ele­ment of a suc­cess­ful ele­va­tor pitch.

As Bond points out, West­ern ani­mat­ed fea­tures often end with a con­ve­nient deus ex machi­na, free­ing the char­ac­ters up for a crowd pleas­ing dance par­ty as the cred­its roll.

Miyaza­ki doesn’t cot­ton to the idea of tidy, unearned end­ings, nor does he feel bound to grant his char­ac­ters their wants, pre­fer­ring instead to give them what they need. Spir­i­tu­al growth is supe­ri­or to wish ful­fill­ment here.

Such growth rarely hap­pens with­out time for reflec­tion, and Miyaza­ki films are notable for the num­ber of non-ver­bal scenes where­in char­ac­ters per­form small, every­day actions, a num­ber of which can be sam­pled in Bond’s doc­u­men­tary. The beau­ti­ful­ly-ren­dered weath­er and set­tings have pro­vid­ed clues as to the char­ac­ters’ devel­op­ment, ever since the love­ly scene of cloud shad­ows skim­ming across a field in his first fea­ture, 1979’s The Cas­tle of Cagliostro.

via Devour

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Hayao Miyaza­ki Ani­mate the Final Shot of His Final Fea­ture Film, The Wind Ris­es

Watch Sher­lock Hound: Hayao Miyazaki’s Ani­mat­ed, Steam­punk Take on Sher­lock Holmes

Hayao Miyazaki’s Mas­ter­pieces Spir­it­ed Away and Princess Mononoke Imag­ined as 8‑Bit Video Games

French Stu­dent Sets Inter­net on Fire with Ani­ma­tion Inspired by Moe­bius, Syd Mead & Hayao Miyaza­ki

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. Her play, Fawn­book, opens in New York City next month. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

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Terry Gilliam’s Lost Animations from Monty Python and the Holy Grail Are Now Online

in Animation, Film | October 16th, 2015

This year marks the 40th anniver­sary of Mon­ty Python and the Holy Grail and as the group has always been upfront about shame­less­ly milk­ing their fans for cash, there’s a new ver­sion of the Blu-Ray out, and a new print tour­ing the world. John Cleese and Eric Idle are cur­rent­ly also on an Amer­i­can tour, shar­ing the stage as a duo for the first time. Michael Palin has a book tour for the third vol­ume of his diaries. Ter­ry Jones is still work­ing on movies and plug­ging char­i­ties on his Twit­ter stream. Ter­ry Gilliam has an auto­bi­og­ra­phy com­ing out this month. And Gra­ham Chap­man, despite his beau­ti­ful plumage, is still dead.

How­ev­er, the Pythons are giv­ing a few things away and one of them is the above com­pi­la­tion of unused ani­ma­tions by Gilliam from the Holy Grail. They can be found on the new Blu-Ray, but the group’s offi­cial Youtube chan­nel is shar­ing them-—first with Gilliam’s com­men­tary, then with sound effects—for free.

These ani­ma­tions are links between the skits that make up Holy Grail, and include drag­ons, giants, and a very large snail. Gilliam took a lot of the illus­tra­tions that he didn’t do him­self from a book on illu­mi­nat­ed man­u­scripts, and, see­ing them all togeth­er in one go, one can imag­ine an alter­na­tive uni­verse where the ani­ma­tor makes an entire movie this way. (On the com­men­tary track, he half-jok­ing­ly describes him­self as “the man who could have gone on to become a great ani­ma­tor but was forced into live action film.”)

As per Python, a lot of the com­men­tary track berates the view­er for throw­ing mon­ey away on a redun­dant ver­sion of what the con­sumer prob­a­bly owns, and how Gilliam isn’t get­ting paid enough to do this. (Cue some coinage sound effects and Gilliam gets back on mic.)

If this kind of archiv­ing is going on, it would be inter­est­ing to know the sta­tus of Gilliam’s oth­er ani­ma­tions for both Python and the var­i­ous shows he did in the years run­ning up to it. There are indeed some inter­est­ing ear­ly works out there that need a facelift.

As for Gilliam and the Holy Grail, he says he doesn’t watch it:

I’m glad it makes a lot of mon­ey and keeps me in the style I’ve grown accus­tomed to. But watch it again? Why? We’ve got lives to lead.

via Digg

Relat­ed con­tent:

Ter­ry Gilliam Reveals the Secrets of Mon­ty Python Ani­ma­tions: A 1974 How-To Guide

Mon­ty Python and the Holy Grail Re-Imag­ined as an Epic, Main­stream Hol­ly­wood Film

Watch Ter­ry Gilliam’s Ani­mat­ed Short, The Christ­mas Card (1968)

John Cleese’s Eulo­gy for Gra­ham Chap­man: ‘Good Rid­dance, the Free-Load­ing Bas­tard, I Hope He Fries’

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the FunkZone Pod­cast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.

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An Animated Introduction to Jane Austen

in Animation, Literature | October 14th, 2015

From Alain de Bot­ton’ School of Life comes the lat­est in a series of ani­mat­ed intro­duc­tions to influ­en­tial lit­er­ary fig­ures. Pre­vi­ous install­ments gave us a look at the life and work of Mar­cel Proust and Vir­ginia Woolf. This one takes us inside the lit­er­ary world of Jane Austen. And, as always, de Bot­ton puts an accent on how read­ing lit­er­a­ture can change your life. “Jane Austen’s nov­els are so read­able and so inter­est­ing…” notes The School of Life Youtube chan­nel,” because she wasn’t an ordi­nary kind of nov­el­ist: she want­ed her work to help us to be bet­ter and wis­er peo­ple. Her nov­els [avail­able on this list] had a phi­los­o­phy of per­son­al devel­op­ment at their heart.” The video above expands on that idea. Enjoy.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

An Intro­duc­tion to the Lit­er­ary Phi­los­o­phy of Mar­cel Proust, Pre­sent­ed in a Mon­ty Python-Style Ani­ma­tion

An Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tion to Vir­ginia Woolf

Jane Austen Used Pins to Edit Her Aban­doned Man­u­script, The Wat­sons

Down­load 55 Free Online Lit­er­a­ture Cours­es: From Dante and Mil­ton to Ker­ouac and Tolkien

Down­load the Major Works of Jane Austen as Free eBooks & Audio Books

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Animated Map Lets You Watch the Unfolding of Every Day of the U.S. Civil War (1861–1865)

in Animation, History, Maps | October 9th, 2015

The bor­der-obsessed map ani­ma­tor known as Emper­or Tiger­star views war from a dis­tance. The Emper­or leaves such details as jour­nal entries, let­ters home, and tales of val­or and cow­ardice for oth­er his­to­ry buffs.

His niche is metic­u­lous­ly clock­ing the defeat and tri­umph in terms of shift­ing ter­ri­to­ries, by year, by fort­night, and, in the case of World War I and World War II, by day.

His five minute take on the Amer­i­can Civ­il War, above, leaves out most of the hair-rais­ing small scale skir­mish­es famil­iar from the pages of The Red Badge of Courage.

Trans-Mis­sis­sip­pi The­ater aside, it also makes plain how lit­tle ground the Con­fed­er­ates gained after 1861.

The Blue and the Gray are here rep­re­sent­ed by blue and red, with the mus­tard-col­ored dis­put­ed bor­der states pick­ing sides before the first minute is out. (The Union’s Naval Block­ade is in for­ma­tion with­in sec­onds.)

Leg­end:

Maroon = Con­fed­er­ate States of Amer­i­ca and ter­ri­to­ries

Red = Areas occu­pied by Con­fed­er­ate forces

Pink = Gains for that Day

Dark Blue = Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca and ter­ri­to­ries

Blue = Areas occu­pied by Union forces.

Light blue = Gains for that day

Yel­low = Bor­der states / dis­put­ed areas.

The mag­ni­tude is mov­ing, espe­cial­ly when paired with ground-lev­el obser­va­tions, be they fic­tion­al, his­tor­i­cal or eye­wit­ness.

Even the place-names on the map, which now were mere­ly quaint, would take on the sound of crack­ling flame and dis­tant thun­der, the Bib­li­cal, Indi­an and Anglo-Sax­on names of ham­lets and creeks and cross­roads, for the most part unim­por­tant in them­selves until the day when the armies came togeth­er, as often by acci­dent as on pur­pose, to give the scat­tered names a per­ma­nence and set­tle what man­ner of life future gen­er­a­tions were to lead.  

His­to­ri­an Shel­by Foote, The Civ­il War: A Nar­ra­tive

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch World War I Unfold in a 6 Minute Time-Lapse Film: Every Day From 1914 to 1918

Watch World War II Rage Across Europe in a 7 Minute Time-Lapse Film: Every Day From 1939 to 1945

“The Civ­il War and Recon­struc­tion,” a New MOOC by Pulitzer-Prize Win­ning His­to­ri­an Eric Fon­er

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. Her play, Fawn­book, opens in New York City lat­er this fall. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

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Innovative Film Visualizes the Destruction of World War II: Now Available in 7 Languages

in Animation, History | October 7th, 2015

Back in June we high­light­ed Neil Hal­lo­ran’s 15 minute film, The Fall­en of World War II, which used “inno­v­a­tive data visu­al­iza­tion tech­niques to put the human cost of WW II into per­spec­tive, show­ing how some 70 mil­lion lives were lost with­in civil­ian and mil­i­tary pop­u­la­tions across Europe and Asia, from 1939 to 1945.” It’s a pret­ty stag­ger­ing illus­tra­tion of the dead­liest war. As the film went viral, Hal­lo­ran raised mon­ey that would enable him to devel­op new films explor­ing “oth­er trends of war and peace — from drones and ter­ror­ism to democ­ra­cy and peace­keep­ing.” He has also trans­lat­ed the film into six dif­fer­ent lan­guages. They all went online in the last few weeks. Here they are: Russ­ian, Japan­ese, Pol­ish, French, Ger­man, and Ser­bian.

Above, you can watch the orig­i­nal in Eng­lish (cer­tain­ly worth doing if you were vaca­tion­ing in June), and you might also explore the accom­pa­ny­ing inter­ac­tive web site here.

Fol­low Open Cul­ture on Face­book and Twit­ter and share intel­li­gent media with your friends. Or bet­ter yet, sign up for our dai­ly email and get a dai­ly dose of Open Cul­ture in your inbox. And if you want to make sure that our posts def­i­nite­ly appear in your Face­book news­feed, just fol­low these sim­ple steps.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free Online His­to­ry Cours­es

Watch World War II Rage Across Europe in a 7 Minute Time-Lapse Film: Every Day From 1939 to 1945

31 Rolls of Film Tak­en by a World War II Sol­dier Get Dis­cov­ered & Devel­oped Before Your Eyes

Dra­mat­ic Col­or Footage Shows a Bombed-Out Berlin a Month After Germany’s WWII Defeat (1945)

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A Short, Powerful Animation on Addiction: Watch Andreas Hykade’s Nuggets

in Animation, Life, Psychology | October 2nd, 2015

From Andreas Hykade, the Direc­tor of the Ani­ma­tion and Visu­al Effects pro­gram at Germany’s Fil­makademie Baden-Würt­tem­berg, comes a short ani­mat­ed film called Nuggets. Things start off innocu­ous­ly, with a kiwi tak­ing a casu­al stroll down a road, even­tu­al­ly encoun­ter­ing and tast­ing some gold­en nuggets. The nuggets are deli­cious, it turns out, too deli­cious to resist. Then [spoil­er alert!] things take a dark turn, as we watch our friend­ly kiwi sink into addic­tion and despair. In an inter­view con­duct­ed by the Ani­ma­tion World Net­work, Hykade says that he cre­at­ed the film for young teenagers who might be tempt­ed one day (pre­sum­ably by drugs). And when that day comes, he hopes they’ll think about Nuggets and its strik­ing, stripped-down mes­sage about addic­tion and the life it brings.

You can watch more ani­ma­tions by Hykade on his web site. And find more thought-pro­vok­ing Ani­ma­tions in our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

via io9

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Cof­fee Pot That Fueled Hon­oré de Balzac’s Cof­fee Addic­tion

Bela Lugosi Dis­cuss­es His Drug Habit as He Leaves the Hos­pi­tal in 1955

How a Young Sig­mund Freud Researched & Got Addict­ed to Cocaine, the New “Mir­a­cle Drug,” in 1894

Free Online Psy­chol­o­gy Cours­es

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Fantastic Mr. Fox Meets The Shining in an Animated, Cautionary Tale About Consumerism

in Animation, Business | September 28th, 2015

In this short stop-motion film, Alexan­dra Lemay draws some cre­ative inspi­ra­tion from Wes Ander­son and Stan­ley Kubrick and leaves us with a “cau­tion­ary tale of what hap­pens when we don’t think enough about what we buy.” Pro­duced as part of the Nation­al Film Board of Canada’s Hot­house appren­tice­ship pro­gram, All the Rage fol­lows a mink’s expe­ri­ence shop­ping in a lux­u­ry fur store. It’s per­haps not too much of a spoil­er to say, it does­n’t end well. Lemay tells you more about the mak­ing of the film here. And don’t miss the many great films in the Ani­ma­tion sec­tion of our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

Fol­low us on Face­book, Twit­ter, Google Plus and LinkedIn and share intel­li­gent media with your friends. And if you want to make sure that our posts def­i­nite­ly appear in your Face­book news­feed, just fol­low these sim­ple steps.

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Queenie: A Handmade Paper Animation About a Lovesick Professor and His Strange Academic Project

in Animation | September 24th, 2015

From direc­tor Paul Nea­son comes Quee­nie, an ani­mat­ed short film hand­made with paper and card­board. This tragi­com­ic short fol­lows Dan­ny, a uni­ver­si­ty Geog­ra­phy tutor/professor, as he and his stu­dents embark on a cut­ting-edge aca­d­e­m­ic project, which has noth­ing to do with his recent divorce from his wife.

Cre­at­ed by  in New Zealand, Quee­nie pre­miered at SXSW 2014, and, after gath­er­ing a few awards, it’s now mak­ing its debut online. It will be housed in the Ani­ma­tion sec­tion of our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

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