№ 552. Ghibli Studio Theme Park

HBO Max

 

Children around the world have grown up with beloved animated films from Hayao Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli. Since 1984, Studio Ghibli films have often served as an introduction to the wider world of anime and have obtained a cult following all their own.

Many Ghibli fans have already made a pilgrimage to the popular Studio Ghibli museum in Tokyo. Others eagerly anticipate the 2020 release of the first Ghibli film since the studio went on hiatus in 2014, following Miyazaki’s retirement. Fans will be thrilled to learn that the construction of a Ghibli theme park is underway that will bring the films to life.

A Studio Ghibli theme park is being built near Nagoya, Japan

The park, based on the Tokyo anime studio's films, will be in Expo 2005 Aichi Commemorative Park near Nagoya, according to Variety, and will open in fall 2022.

 

The List

№ 394. Toy Story 4: To Infinity and Beyond

Back in grade school, I could not fully understand Velveteen Rabbit.

I couldn't really grasp the core idea in "What it means to be real?" The concepts of "love" and "real" were too mature for my young, less imaginative mind then.  It escaped me how these concepts translate in my life in school, home and play. It wasn't clear how these abstract concepts fuse with my experience, which was still very limited. These big ideas, to be sure, were simply beyond a ten-year old's imagination. At that time, the thesis and the story did not yet connect in my head.

Growing up, the life lessons made the ideas in Velveteen Rabbit no less slippery.

I thought the answer, which was written in the dialogue between the real bunny and the toy, was simple enough. But I also thought that the cliché too neatly tied up the kinks of a metaphor, which I suspected was far more than it appeared. I felt that the idea in the story mimicked the pop songs crooning about romantic love: love has the power to make things truly alive. These pop ideas are easy to enough to accept but somehow I knew they smooth out the rough maladies and many contradictions hiding under the hood.

CCP Art Exhibit

№ 372. Saturday Fun Machine: Your Name

By the time these two (and you) have figured out what’s happening, and why, Mr. Shinkai has set another change in motion, and “Your Name” has shifted from a comedy of confusion into a deeply moving meditation on nation, history, catastrophe and memory.

 

№ 308. Happy Mother's Week

"We are born of love. Love is our mother" --- Rumi

Mothers, love em, hate em, and love em still in the end. Through and through. I know I'm a week ahead. So Happy Mother's Week, then.

№ 149. Eyes Fastened with Pins

Eyes Fastened with Pins
by Charles Simic 

How much death works,
No one knows what a long
Day he puts in.
The little
Wife always alone
Ironing death’s laundry.
The beautiful daughters
Setting death’s supper table.
The neighbors playing
Pinochle in the backyard
Or just sitting on the steps
Drinking beer. Death,
Meanwhile, in a strange
Part of town looking for
Someone with a bad cough,
But the address is somehow wrong,
Even death can’t figure it out
Among all the locked doors ...
And the rain beginning to fall.
Long windy night ahead.
Death with not even a newspaper
To cover his head, not even
A dime to call the one pining away,
Undressing slowly, sleepily,
And stretching naked
On death’s side of the bed.

№ 114. Oscars: Best Short Animation

I was looking for Guacamole, but this isn't bad either.

 

№ 108. Fresh Guacamole, Batman!

Lean, crisp and fun. That's how we like our servings of diversions.

Lean narrative. Crisp sound. Fun visual.

Unique pairings of objects with the underlying reality they represent---you know, grenade for avocados, baseball for onion, pin cushion for tomato, dice for diced tomato, electric bulbs for peppers, etc. I could almost "see" in my head an actual onion being peeled as the film showed a baseball being shed its thin skin.

Metaphors? In animation?

Yummy.

№ 107. The Giving Tree

№ 83. 18th Century Social Network

Ideas travel. But there should be a feedback mechanism and a network to link the ideas, their creators and other creators.

Social networks, in all their primitive forms, proved to be the tides that brought foam and freedom, novelty, variety and dissent to distant lands.

It's interesting to actually see, not with our mind's eye, how the light that burned in the minds of these great thinkers spread across physical spaces.

Thanks Stanford.

 

№ 81.Animated Star Trek

Hmmm. It's been a while.

I haven't heard of any new trek series being lined up in WIP (work in process). Hurry up Hollywood! This will soon get stale.

 

№ 65. Renewal

It's the new year. It's a season to plant, nurture and grow roots. Let's paint the earth green, kid.

This is an old favorite that refuses to just gather dust and fade from memory. Classics have a way of resisting oblivion and forgetfulness.

Enjoy.

Bento Box:

"The Man Who Planted Trees (French title L'homme qui plantait des arbres), also known as The Story of Elzéard Bouffier, The Most Extraordinary Character I Ever Met, and The Man Who Planted Hope and Reaped Happiness, is an allegorical tale by French author Jean Giono, published in 1953.

It tells the story of one shepherd's long and successful singlehanded effort to re-forest a desolate valley in the foothills of the Alps near Provence throughout the first half of the 20th century. The tale is quite short—only about 4000 words long."

Thanks Wikipedia, please don't black out again.

№ 52. 99%

The Ninety Nine Percent, the dangling One Percent and the great divide.

99% Fur                        1% Monster
99% Blue                      1% White
99% Funny                    1% Hungry                 
99% Cute                      1% Bitter

from VodkaMom

№ 30. Animated Saturday

They're art born from relatively new and still evolving media. But the processes, I can imagine, require almost the same mindful creativity, vortex of resources, obsessive reach for perfection and marrow-seeping tedium as the genius behind Sistine Chapel.



Sometimes, just seeing the result, without the necessary but painful process, makes us forget of what it takes to create a gem. Is pain a necessary assumption for genius? Will art be denied its fruition without the fuel of misery? Is it really true that the boost of agony or the burn of acid at the seams of the tortured soul may propel the next breach in the limits of quantum physics? Should creators and their kind be unhappy? Otherwise, no art. Nada.

Well, assuming they already have the gift of genius, why else should they have access to a torrid sex life, right? Or at least a gum-pink healthy love life? What more do they need?