Alaskan Artist - Elise Tomlinson
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03/11/2005: "Spirited Away"


OH MAW GAWD! I saw the *best* anime ever last night, Hayao Miyazaki's film "Spirited Away". It was gorgeous, bizarre, and full of wonderful messages...all around breathtaking really! It pretty much blew me away.
:O
Has anyone else seen this film? I mean, I know it won a ton of awards but I'm curious to know if other artists were as impressed as I was. There were frames so beautiful I kept thinking that creating this movie would be the equivalent of painting thousands and thousands of individually gorgeous pieces. Robert Ebert wrote in his review "Not fond of computers, he (Miyazaki) draws thousands of frames himself, and there is a painterly richness in his work."

So true, it was humbling and inspiring. In fact, it was exactly what I needed to experience going into this weekend and all the work *I* need to do. Rather than feeling down and overwhelmed, I feel the joo joo again!

Thank you thank you thank you Miyazaki!


Replies: 4 Comments

on Friday, March 11th, Markus Barca said

I've never seen Spirited Away, but I've seen the movie Miyazaki did before that, Princess Mononoke, and it was wonderful.

Since I've been hearing nothing but good things about Spirited, I should put it on my watch list. Did you see it on television or did you rent or buy it?

on Friday, March 11th, Elise said

A friend loaned me their copy. I only watched the film itself but it comes with a second disc of extra features which I plan to watch tonight.

I watched it on my tiny crappy 10 year old tv, but I plan to take it with me to Anchorage over Easter Break and watch it again on my sister's MONSTER big screen TV with surround sound. I can't wait!

I haven't seen Princess Mononoke yet but my same friend loaned me that one to watch as well...I think it's that one...it's another one by Miyazaki anyway.

Also, here in Juneau we have a place that makes bubble tea and rents anime, they have a wonderful selection. I'm sure Anchorage has something similar, though you can probably rent it at blockbusters.

on Monday, March 14th, Jackie said

E:
I loved "Spirited Away". I've seen other films by the same animator - which ones? I can't recall! "Kiki's Delivery Service" is cute. "Grave of the Fireflies" is wonderful - and a real tear-jerker.
Can you do Netflix from Juneau? Or Blockbuster home video? (works the same way!). But then -maybe you'd never get your paintings done! :cool:

on Monday, March 14th, Elise said

I actually like to watch movies while I paint. Other artists think it's weird that I do that, but I enjoy it. Sometimes I see things come out in my paintings that I know were inspired by something I was watching at the time. For example, the clouds in the two landscape paintings in my in progress gallery were inspired by "Sprited Away" and the dark almost spooky looking face of the woman sleeping with her fiddle was inspired by Queen of the Damned, (vampire movie) that I was watching while painting that one.

We can do netflix from here but I can't afford it. We have a pretty good video store for anime though. Last night I started watching another film by Miyazaki called "Nausicaä of the Valley of Wind" but I had to stop it as I was too sleepy.

I want to see them all now!