The new anime version of "The Borrowers," titled "The Secret World of Arrietty" by screenwriter and "supervisor" Hayao Miyazaki, has the fascination with household "spirits," the same lovely color palette and attention to detail for which his films are famous.
But Miyazaki, director of "Ponyo," "Spirited Away" and "My Neighbor Totoro," didn't direct this Studio Ghibli film.
Perhaps that is why it lacks his sense of whimsy, that little sprinkling of Miyazki magic that the Japanese director has given his best work over the decades.
Mary Norton's oft-filmed 60-year-old novel is about the miniature people who live in the walls and below the floorboards of old houses, creatures who "borrow" what they need from the "human beans."
Every shopping trip is an expedition — nabbing one cube of sugar, that could last them months, a cracker that can be crushed to make Borrower bread.
They live by two rules. "Borrowers take only what they need," and once they've been seen, it's time to move. Those humans and their curiosity are nothing but trouble for Borrowers.
Arrietty (voiced by Bridgit Mendler of TV's "Good Luck Charlie" and "Wizards of Waverly Place") is a 13-year-old straining at the limits of her world.
She only knows her family, can only hope that there are other Borrowers, still surviving elsewhere. She sneaks outside , tempts the evil ravens who wouldn't mind gobbling her up as a snack — and is spied by a sickly human boy.
Shawn wants to help, and Arrietty wants to make contact. She sees no threat from this fellow her own age and no need to move, or even tell her parents . Naturally, they see things differently.
The gorgeous pastels of Studio Ghibli films and famous attention to detail are much in evidence in this Hiromasa Yonebayashi film. The Borrowers' world of re-purposed human detritus — pins and empty spools and discarded bolts, double sided tape, which allows father Pod to scale the heights of a kitchen counter to fetch sugar — is ingeniously realized.
Carol Burnett voices an old housekeeper who longs for the day when she can catch a real Borrower and be exonerated from those childhood charges that she was "crazy," one of the film's many lightly humorous touches.
And there are hints of the larger world of Borrowers beyond this garden cottage. Norton wrote more than one book in the series, after all.
But Miyazaki, who co-wrote the script, had nowhere to take it. Either the Borrowers leave, or they stay. They're either discovered and survive or captured and exposed.
There's no romance, no way to open the tale up, despite the fact that they're using that most fantastical film form, animation.
So as pretty as it is, this "Secret World" is too Earthbound by far.GO!
2011年8月1日星期一
Marvel Studios moving forward towards the mystical with 'Dr. Strange'
I know everyone's predicting the death of the comic book superhero adaptation, but don't tell Marvel Studios. According to Twitch Film, the Disney subsidiary is moving ahead with development on "Dr. Strange." Reportedly, scribes Thomas Donnelly and Joshua Oppenheimer have turned in a draft and the studio is now looking for a director to oversee continued development.
When the duo were hired last year, they had just done drafts of "Cowboys & Aliens" and the "Conan the Barbarian" reboot. "Cowboys" did not have the opening weekend the powers-that-be had hoped for, but nonetheless, Donnelly and Oppenheimer were hot off the hot list at the time they were signed. In other words, Marvel was serious about bringing their supernatural superhero to the big screen.
Created in 1963, the "Dr. Strange" comic tells the story of a surgeon who,injured in a car accident, goes on to become the Sorcerer Supreme of the Marvel universe and uses magical powers to protects the world from otherworldy menaces.
Although Thor is a god, the movie sidestepped the supernatural aspects to a large degree. Thor himself says he's from a place where science and magic are the same thing. The Cosmic Cube is showing itself now, but that's not quite the same as the world of Dr. Strange. To fans of Marvel mysticism, nothing else will do.
Word is the Donnelly/Oppenheimer script is now being shopped to a short list of potential directors. Sounds like Marvel is still serious and it is possible that "Dr. Strange" could reach multiplexes by summer of 2013.
When the duo were hired last year, they had just done drafts of "Cowboys & Aliens" and the "Conan the Barbarian" reboot. "Cowboys" did not have the opening weekend the powers-that-be had hoped for, but nonetheless, Donnelly and Oppenheimer were hot off the hot list at the time they were signed. In other words, Marvel was serious about bringing their supernatural superhero to the big screen.
Created in 1963, the "Dr. Strange" comic tells the story of a surgeon who,injured in a car accident, goes on to become the Sorcerer Supreme of the Marvel universe and uses magical powers to protects the world from otherworldy menaces.
Although Thor is a god, the movie sidestepped the supernatural aspects to a large degree. Thor himself says he's from a place where science and magic are the same thing. The Cosmic Cube is showing itself now, but that's not quite the same as the world of Dr. Strange. To fans of Marvel mysticism, nothing else will do.
Word is the Donnelly/Oppenheimer script is now being shopped to a short list of potential directors. Sounds like Marvel is still serious and it is possible that "Dr. Strange" could reach multiplexes by summer of 2013.
2011年6月12日星期日
WTC daredevil Philippe Petit’s one-man show is all talk — and no walk
In August 1974, Philippe Petit committed what some call “the artistic crime of the 20th century.”
The lithe, ginger-haired Frenchman and a ragtag gang of accomplices snuck into the then-new World Trade Center and, under cover of night, set up a steel cable between the top floors of the towers. At dawn, Petit walked over the void, with nothing to catch him if he slipped.
Petit’s exploit was illegal, but instead of going to jail he was adopted by New Yorkers as a cultural icon. In the early ’80s, he became artist in residence at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine. In 2008, the WTC feat was immortalized in James Marsh’s Oscar-winning documentary “Man on Wire” and the following year it became the linchpin of Colum McCann’s hit novel “Let the Great World Spin,” which won the National Book Award.
In “Wireless!,” Petit says “primitive magic” drew him to master acrobatics and clowning.
Tamara Beckwith
In “Wireless!,” Petit says “primitive magic” drew him to master acrobatics and clowning.
Now Petit, 61, is about to step down to earth — a k a the Lower East Side’s Abrons Arts Center — where he’s performing the one-man show “Wireless!” from Thursday through Saturday.
“It’s autobiographical in the sense that I’m sharing who I am and what I do with the audience,” Petit says, before warning that there won’t be any actual wire-walking. “I wouldn’t want to have a little demonstration of the high wire in a show like this, which is the kind of thing that people love here: ‘Can you show me? Can you teach me?’ Well, do you have two years? In five minutes, you want me to hold your hand so you can make a fool of yourself and of my art? Also, putting a wire in a theater is a total nightmare. You need tons of equipment, you have to drill holes, weld things.”
Rest assured that Petit won’t skip out on his claim to fame, though: “I’m constantly on a metaphorical wire,” Petit says, “miming what happens on the actual one.”
Besides, he has enough tricks up his sleeve to fill 90 minutes, as was obvious to those who saw him make a coin appear and disappear during his Oscar acceptance speech.
“I learned magic around 6 years old, which led to juggling when I was a young teenager,” he recalls. “Magic requires a certain amount of dexterity and involves the art of misdirection, and all that I see on the wire. There is a certain amount of primitive magic in the presentation of someone walking on a wire.”
Jay Wegman, the director of Abrons, compares Petit to a Rubik’s Cube: “He has all these sides to him, and it’ll be interesting to see how he twists and turns them around. He’s a clown and acrobat and magician, and that French accent of his helps a lot — it just adds to the sense of playfulness.”
Indeed, the ebullient, mischievous Petit seems to be a bottomless font of enthusiasm.
“He’s the most extraordinary storyteller you’ll ever meet,” says J. Ralph, the musician who wrote the theme for “Man on Wire” and is contributing an original score and sound design for the new show. “He’ll make any jaded person feel excited.”
After all this time, Petit knows people still expect to hear about his trademark coup, even if for him it’s just one of many.
“I keep a box of index cards, and for each walk I write down the length, the height, how much I was paid, the music I used, the costume I wore,” Petit says. “I’m now at 80 walks in 45 years.”
What was No. 1 like?
“It was a Bastille Day lake-
crossing in France. Nobody noticed because there was a fishing contest going on underneath the wire.” He laughs. “It was a fiasco.”
The lithe, ginger-haired Frenchman and a ragtag gang of accomplices snuck into the then-new World Trade Center and, under cover of night, set up a steel cable between the top floors of the towers. At dawn, Petit walked over the void, with nothing to catch him if he slipped.
Petit’s exploit was illegal, but instead of going to jail he was adopted by New Yorkers as a cultural icon. In the early ’80s, he became artist in residence at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine. In 2008, the WTC feat was immortalized in James Marsh’s Oscar-winning documentary “Man on Wire” and the following year it became the linchpin of Colum McCann’s hit novel “Let the Great World Spin,” which won the National Book Award.
In “Wireless!,” Petit says “primitive magic” drew him to master acrobatics and clowning.
Tamara Beckwith
In “Wireless!,” Petit says “primitive magic” drew him to master acrobatics and clowning.
Now Petit, 61, is about to step down to earth — a k a the Lower East Side’s Abrons Arts Center — where he’s performing the one-man show “Wireless!” from Thursday through Saturday.
“It’s autobiographical in the sense that I’m sharing who I am and what I do with the audience,” Petit says, before warning that there won’t be any actual wire-walking. “I wouldn’t want to have a little demonstration of the high wire in a show like this, which is the kind of thing that people love here: ‘Can you show me? Can you teach me?’ Well, do you have two years? In five minutes, you want me to hold your hand so you can make a fool of yourself and of my art? Also, putting a wire in a theater is a total nightmare. You need tons of equipment, you have to drill holes, weld things.”
Rest assured that Petit won’t skip out on his claim to fame, though: “I’m constantly on a metaphorical wire,” Petit says, “miming what happens on the actual one.”
Besides, he has enough tricks up his sleeve to fill 90 minutes, as was obvious to those who saw him make a coin appear and disappear during his Oscar acceptance speech.
“I learned magic around 6 years old, which led to juggling when I was a young teenager,” he recalls. “Magic requires a certain amount of dexterity and involves the art of misdirection, and all that I see on the wire. There is a certain amount of primitive magic in the presentation of someone walking on a wire.”
Jay Wegman, the director of Abrons, compares Petit to a Rubik’s Cube: “He has all these sides to him, and it’ll be interesting to see how he twists and turns them around. He’s a clown and acrobat and magician, and that French accent of his helps a lot — it just adds to the sense of playfulness.”
Indeed, the ebullient, mischievous Petit seems to be a bottomless font of enthusiasm.
“He’s the most extraordinary storyteller you’ll ever meet,” says J. Ralph, the musician who wrote the theme for “Man on Wire” and is contributing an original score and sound design for the new show. “He’ll make any jaded person feel excited.”
After all this time, Petit knows people still expect to hear about his trademark coup, even if for him it’s just one of many.
“I keep a box of index cards, and for each walk I write down the length, the height, how much I was paid, the music I used, the costume I wore,” Petit says. “I’m now at 80 walks in 45 years.”
What was No. 1 like?
“It was a Bastille Day lake-
crossing in France. Nobody noticed because there was a fishing contest going on underneath the wire.” He laughs. “It was a fiasco.”
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