Talking Soup

Songs!

I found the Motley Crew theme song. "Tubthumping," the old classic by Chumbawumba, remember them? And not because of the line "I get knocked down, but I get up again"--just because the song is so quirky, which in a word sums up the characters and the stuff going on around them.

And I finally found Kaiyss's song--"All Star", by Smash Mouth, another oldie but goodie. It suits him really well. Particularly the "All that glitters is gold" line.

You might think I'm a nerd for this--and I won't deny it--but now that I've gotten going I can't stop. I want to find songs for all my characters.

Movie review time!

Castle In the Sky

The quintessential Miyazaki movie. Made in the Eighties, before CGI and digital animation. If you want to confirm that Miyazaki is still a genius without the computery stuff, watch this movie.

What I want to know is, is there a bad Miyazaki movie out there somewhere? I certainly haven't found it yet. Castle in the Sky is, in my opinion, one of his best. It's got a wonderful story that is equal parts sweet, magical and drama. It's serious side is never so serious that it depresses you, and its sweet side is never so sugary that you want to vomit. Miyazaki's as much a master of storytelling as he is of animation.

The story is, this kid Pazu sees a girl floating down from the sky with a strange crystal around her neck. The girl's name is Sheeta, and not only are a group of air pirates after her, but the government as well. As the plot unfolds it appears that Sheeta has a connection to Laputa, a legendary island floating in the sky. Pazu and Sheeta make a promise to see Laputa together, but the people after Sheeta stand in their way.

The super-condensed version. But yeah. Pazu is awesome, Sheeta is sweet, and the pirates are just plain cool. I like the miners too, and the the military/government types do the villain thing pretty damn well. And dude, the robots. I love the robots. You've gotta love a robot that can blow things up with lasers or take care of bird nests, alternately.

I shouldn't even have to mention the animation--it's Miyazaki after all--but I think it warrants a mention that the movie was done before CGI and stuff, like I said. The animation is a lot simpler, not the kind of stuff you see in the likes of Spirited Away and Princess Mononoke. But think that over and realize, holy shit almost all of this was drawn by hand. The good old days of animating. Ah, the landscapes. Ah, the skies. I was particularly happy at the weather-related stuff (have I ever mentioned that my favorite scene in Princess Mononoke is the shot of the rain falling on the rock?) For instance, in a shot from the flying pirate ship there's a glory cast on the clouds below.

BTW, a glory is...well, it's hard to describe, but it's kind of like a really bright circular rainbow that you see directly below you, cast on the clouds when you're in an airplane. It's usually surrounding the airplane's shadow.

I mean--who the hell else would think to be that accurate when depicting weather and odd cloud anomalies? And the Ghibli guys drew turbulence in a scene later on. I almost died. Pazu says, "rough skies ahead" and then it's a shot of the cloud tops and I was like, "Yes! That's what turbulence looks like!"

I get excited about these sort of things.

Score: 9 out of 10