Princess Mononoke

PRINCESS MONONOKE: HAYAO MIYAZAKI: POCKET MOVIE GUIDE
REVISED AND UPDATED, WITH NEW ILLUSTRATIONS

This book focusses on Hayao Miyazaki's 1997 masterpiece Princess Mononoke.

Princess Mononoke is a work of genius. It is a masterpiece. It is one of the most staggeringly incredible films you will ever see. By any standards you want to apply, the level of imagination and artistry and detail and insight and energy in this movie is simply astounding. As well as being a visionary piece, with the highest quality animation achievable, with fascinating characters, stupendous action, brilliant set-pieces, and with some deeply poetic episodes, Princess Mononoke is also a thematically rich movie. There are many levels to this wonderful picture.

This new study of Hayao Miyazaki's Princess Mononoke includes sections on Miyazaki's influences ¿ his contemporaries and colleagues (including Akira Kurosawa) ¿ his characters ¿ his movies' relation to Western animation (including the Walt Disney Company) ¿ and his themes and motifs. The book also explores Japanese animation, its production and style, some classics of anime, and digital animation.

Born on January 5, 1941 in Tokyo, Hayao Miyazaki is known as the 'Japanese Disney', a filmmaker as revered - and as popular - as Walt Disney or Steven Spielberg. Miyazaki, in short, is a true phenomenon in contemporary animation and in world cinema.

Hayao Miyazaki's movies include Princess Mononoke, Spirited Away, Howl's Moving Castle, Laputa: Castle In the Sky and My Neighbor Totoro.

Hayao Miyazaki may be the most talented fantasy filmmaker of his generation: not even the finest filmmakers of Hollywood can rival his films when it comes to creating fantasy worlds, and fantastical characters and events. Miyazaki has millions of fans around the world, not least among fellow animators and filmmakers, for whom he is a genius.

What Hayao Miyazaki's films do is to bring you completely into a fantasy world that is instantly recognizable and familiar. It's as if these fantasy realms have always existed - very much like J.R.R. Tolkien's Middle-earth or Ursula Le Guin's Earthsea (both influences on Miyazaki). The visionary and magical elements are fused with the domestic and familial and social elements, so that it seems completely ordinary and believable that, say, flying machines soar overhead which have flapping wings like an insect, or that little white creatures pop up out of trees and make strange clicking noises.

To write one hit animation movie is amazing, to write eleven is remarkable. To write and direct one spectacular animated picture is very impressive, to write and direct eleven features is unheard-of in the world of contemporary commercial animation.

Includes quotes by Miyazaki; reviews by fans; and resources.

Fully illustrated. 264 pages. With filmography, bibliography and notes. ISBN 9781861715180.
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