I’ve yet to see an ad for this movie…but if it was by the same person who did Princess Mononoke, I will surely see it on dvd. The thing I hate about the theaters around here is that they never show movies that aren’t big name, mainstream films(PM sure didn’t show any closer than Boston). Don’t get me wrong, mainstream movies can be good, but I always have to wait for indie and overseas movies to come out on video or dvd (or to be aired on IFC) before I can see them, which I find annoying. Especially when the movie ends up sucking after I waited months, if not a year to see it- or was I the only one totally underwhelmed by things like Ethan Hawke’s Hamlet?
So I finally saw it over the weekend. I liked it. It was very cute. But I still liked Princess Mononoke better. It was deeper.
As always the Miyazaki’s art was fantastic. I would see it again.
http://www.boxofficemojo.com/forums/viewtopic.htm?t=3509&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=0
Here is an interesting thread about SA’s box-office prospects which some of you might be interested in.
BTW KKBattousai, are you the same person as the Hitokiri Battousai on that thread by any chance?
About PM vs SA I would pick PM as well; IMO its serious themes and characters were better developed. Still both are great films and in terms of sheer visual imagination SA beats PM and every other Ghibli film I have seen.
Nope, tis not I. Simply similar tastes in anime, apparently. 
http://boxofficemojo.com/weekend/2002/41.htm
$623,000 from 138 screens for a per-screen average of 4500. This is a fairily sharp drop in PSA from 6,500. SA will have to stabilize soon to have a chance. Unfortunately I think there are many new films opening in the next few weeks so that looks unlikely baring a big marketing push.
OTOH there is this intriguing post from signorellil at box-officemojo :
“I was almost going to fall into the “Disney’s trying to kill SA deliberately” and then I spoke with a friend who was until recently in distribution (he has what you may call “an informed personal opinion” on the topic), and he gave me a completely different scenario, and not a bad one. More of this maybe tomorrow - I’m too tired now.”
http://boxofficemojo.com/forums/viewtopic.htm?t=3509&start=90&sid=ec133a088a11d5f065e1f8b385747ee7
So maybe there is some hope for this movie.
Could you explain why you hated it? I’ve heard this people say this before and I’m curious, because I didn’t think anything was wrong with it. I don’t watch a lot of anime, so I don’t have a strong basis for comparison.
I hope I’m not pushing this hijack too far, but I have another question. In Metropolis, I noticed that the subtitles and the dub aren’t the same words. Why don’t they just dub in the subtitle script?
I personally thought the PM dub was OK. The only real weak point IMO was Claire Dane as San whose Valley-Girl style was horrible. Many people didn’t like Thornton’s Jigo but it was not all that different from the Japanese original IMO. However undoubtedly the Japanese voice-acting was superior overall as it almost always is.
“Why don’t they just dub in the subtitle script?”
This is an interesting point. In PM they changed almost every line a little and added a few lines. Many people hated that but again it wasn’t a big problem for me. In some cases they improved on the original script and fleshed it out. The general idea is that literal translations don’t necessarily convey the correct feeling across cultures also to make some things clearer to American audiences. An example is the voice-over at the begining of PM which talks about forest-spirits and demons.
However one dub where they went overboard is in Kiki’s Delivery Service where they completely changed the personality of the cat Jiji and made it into a conventional Disney-style sidekick complete with (some not-very-funny) wisecracks. However I noticed that many Americans (on IMDB,Amazon etc) loved the cat so maybe they knew what they were doing.
Coming back to SA: I haven’t seen the original version but I thought the dub was excellent and that seems to be a consensus opinion even among die-hard fans who normally hate dubs.
For the dub, they have to try to match the words to the mouth movement.
At boxofficemojo Signorellil explains what his friend (who works in the movie business) says is Disney’s strategy:
“Disney is (according to his view) making a lot of pressures for SA reaching a Best Animated Feature nomination on the next Oscar (it may be not eligible for that, remember), and they’re in fact building a strategy to keep the whole thing alive and kicking until the Oscar, surviving (but not competing too much) with Treasure Planet, and more important, survviing Xmas.”
That is pretty interesting and makes sense. I think, based on the excellent reviews, Spirited Away should have a decent chance of getting at least one Oscar nomination. That would generate some excellent publicity and would be yet another great point in an advertising campaign. Then Disney could release the film wide and advertise it. Of course it all depends on whether Disney is really serious about pushing for a nomination or just talking about it.
I saw the movie last night at the one screen where it’s showing in Memphis. Luckily that one screen is a block from my house. I was very, very impressed! Visually, this movie is head and shoulders better than any American animation in recent memory. I was expecting a few “huh? What the hell?” plot or dialoge moments like you usually get from anime, but there were none. The movie set up its own self-contained world and operated according to its own rules the whole way. A shoe-in for Best Animated Feature (especially if the best thing Disney can come up with is Tresure Planet ! WTF is up with that?)
Anyway, there were about 40 or 50 people in the theater when I saw it, which is a huge crowd for a Memphis Tuesday night. Everybody who came out seemed to really enjoy it, so the word of mouth appears very positive. This movie deserves every penny it makes.
An excellent article by Jack Mathews, the NY Daily News film critic, in the form of an open letter to Disney Chairman Richard Cook. It nicely captures the frustration that some of us feel with Disney’s marketing strategy so I thought a few of you would enjoy reading it.
The money sentence:
“This is not only the bestreviewed movie of the year, but the best-reviewed family movie, and you guys are rolling it out as if it were some experimental gruel from Cremoria.”
Let’s hope someone at Disney is listening.
Spirited Away is one of the best movies I’ve ever seen. Yet when I saw it there were only about ten people in the theatre, and I can’t even convince my ten year old sister to go see it, because she has never heard of it before.
My dad is an ardent fan of Miyazaki and took my younger brother and me to see PM when it came out. We all really, really enjoyed it, and-- almost equally-- enjoyed the conversation on morals and good vs. evil that came out of it.
We had to make the forty-minute trip to downtown Cincinnati to see Spirited Away, but wow, was it worth it. It was such a refreshing change from the triteness that is Disney. Also, as others have noted, it’s truly visually stunning. I found some of the characters to be… unsettling… and clearly all the religious allusions went right over my head, as I didn’t even realize there WERE any. Though, that could just go to show that the film can be enjoyed even knowing very little background.
Not being a big anime follower, I don’t have any real expertise on the dubbing, but for what it’s worth I agree that it was more than appropriate. (NB to other teenagers: I completely fell in love with Haku, including the voice. I hope that doesn’t fall under anime blasphemy. Maybe I’m just susceptible to powerful, romantic fantasy men: I had a similarly swoon reaction to Legolas from LotR :D)