FROM UP ON POPPY HILL (Hayao Miyazaki, 2013 USA Release)

[tabuno]

Released in the United States nearing two years after its original release in Japan and before the big push for 3-D mainstream films becoming a normal movie format as found in Hugo (2011), Poppy Hill screenwriter Hayao Miyazaki (Spirited Away, 2001) and his son and director Goro Miyazaki bring this fascinating fusion of a flat two-dimensional presentation along with a sparkling, crisp and vibrant audio sound effect ridden film that is enhanced by the more plain two-dimensional format. While this multi-sensory fusion isn’t as startlingly new as the extended retro-use of non-dialogue in WALL*E (2008) or The Artist (2011), the stark staging of Dogville (2004) or the fantastic surrealism of Spirited Away (2001) there is something compelling and refreshingly visceral in how the sound effects project a tantalizing focused of interest in the storyline about two high school students discovering each other and their emotional rollercoaster and the soft and easy flowing of patterns and shapes on the screen of this period family drama set in 1964 in Japan that sees a student club building threatened with demolition for the Olympics.

The set design and the tone of the storyline is reflective an animated version of ambiance of Japan in Lost in Translation (2003) or the Japanese youthful version of Las Vegas cultural and musical subtext found in The Cooler (2003) or the good-feeling entertainment found in the musical Mama Mia!!! (2008). In some ways this is a very simplified adolescent version in the style of the personal experience of a geisha in the historical period piece Memoirs of a Geisha (2005) in its richness and layered culturally foreign presentation. Unlike Coraline (2009), Poppy Hill is much more straight forward in its depiction of reality with only a few undertones of dreamlike but more literal sequences. In some ways, Poppy Hill is the more sedate and less overly stylistic, dramatized version of Moonrise Kingdom (2012) but quite effective in its own light, and entertaining but penetrating nonetheless way.

[oscar jubis]

Thanks tabuno. I will definitely watch this. Did you watch THE SECRET WORLD OF ARRIETTY?!

[Chris Knipp]

This is another one that is very highly recommended but I have not seen.