8. Animation Cinema / Short Films. Princess Mononoke…

Other films:SHORT FILMS, ANIMATION “anime” Cinema Princess Mononoke…
PRINCESS MONONOKE (directed by Hayao Miyazaki )
<a href=”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ws5-a2HOic”>Review</a>
<a href=”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ws5-a2HOic”>SEE THE VIDEO about the review!!!</a>.

PRINCESS MONONOKE (directed by Hayao Miyazaki )
Plot:
Princess Mononoke combines high-quality animation with a mythology-based tale of morals and environmental crisis. Ashitaka defends his village from a giant boar that has become a demon but in the process acquires its curse. He sets off to cure himself and discovers Irontown, where the inhabitants have learned to forge iron, make weapons and are working to clear the forest and subdue the animals. The animals have become angered at this invasion and are actively working to defend their land. Ashitaka hopes the humans and the animals can live together in peace, which puts him in great danger.

Review
BY Roger Ebert
Running Time: 133 Minutes. Dubbed Into English
I go to the movies for many reasons. Here is one of them. I want to see wonderful sights not available in the real world, in stories where myth and dreams are set free to play. Animation opens that possibility, because it is freed from gravity and the chains of the possible. Realistic films show the physical world; animation shows its essence. Animated films are not copies of “real movies,” are not shadows of reality, but create a new existence in their own right. True, a lot of animation is insipid, and insulting even to the children it is made for. But great animation can make the mind sing.
Hayao Miyazaki is a great animator, and his “Princess Mononoke” is a great film. It tells an epic story set in medieval Japan, at the dawn of the Iron Age, when some men still lived in harmony with nature and others were trying to tame and defeat it. It is not a simplistic tale of good and evil, but the story of how humans, forest animals and nature gods all fight for their share of the new emerging order. It is one of the most visually inventive films I have ever seen.
The movie opens with a watchtower guard spotting “something wrong in the forest.” There is a disturbance of nature, and out of it leaps a remarkable creature, a kind of boar-monster with flesh made of writhing snakes. It attacks villagers, and to the defense comes Ashitaka, the young prince of his isolated people. He is finally able to slay the beast, but his own arm has been wrapped by the snakes and is horribly scarred.
A wise woman is able to explain what has happened. The monster was a boar god, until a bullet buried itself in its flesh and drove it mad. And where did the bullet come from? “It is time,” says the woman, “for our last prince to cut his hair and leave us.” And so Ashitaka sets off on a long journey to the lands of the West, to find out why nature is out of joint, and whether the curse on his arm can be lifted. He rides Yakkuru, a beast that seems part horse, part antelope, part mountain goat.
There are strange sights and adventures along the way, and we are able to appreciate the quality of Miyazaki’s artistry. The drawing is not simplistic, but has some of the same “clear line” complexity used by the Japanese graphic artists of two centuries ago, who inspired such modern works as Herge’s Tintin books. Nature is rendered majestically (Miyazaki’s art directors journeyed to ancient forests to make their master drawings) and fancifully (as with the round little forest sprites). There are also brief, mysterious appearances of the spirit of the forest, who by day seems to be a noble beast, and at night a glowing light.
Ashitaka eventually arrives in an area that is prowled by Moro, a wolf god, and sees for the first time the young woman named San. She is also known as “Princess Mononoke,” but that’s more a description than a name; a mononoke is the spirit of a beast. San was a human child, raised as a wolf by Moro; she rides bareback on the swift white spirit-wolves and helps the pack in their battle against the encroachments of Lady Eboshi, a strong ruler whose village is developing ironworking skills and manufactures weapons using gunpowder.
As Lady Eboshi’s people gain one kind of knowledge, they lose another, and the day is fading when men, animals and the forest gods all speak the same language. The lush green forests through which Ashitaka traveled west have been replaced here by a wasteland; trees have been stripped to feed the smelting furnaces, and on their skeletons, yellow-eyed beasts squat ominously. Slaves work the bellows of the forges, and lepers make the weapons.
But all is not black and white. The lepers are grateful that Eboshi accepts them. Her people enjoy her protection. Even Jigo, a scheming agent of the emperor, has motives that sometimes make a certain amount of sense. When a nearby samurai enclave wants to take over the village and its technology, there is a battle with more than one side and more than one motive. This is more like mythical history than action melodrama.
The artistry in “Princess Mononoke” is masterful. The writhing skin of the boar-monster is an extraordinary sight, one that would be impossible to create in any live-action film. The great white wolves are drawn with grace, and not sentimentalized; when they bare their fangs, you can see that they are not friendly comic pals, but animals who can and will kill.
The movie does not dwell on violence, which makes some of its moments even more shocking, as when Ashitaka finds that his scarred arm has developed such strength that his arrow decapitates an enemy.
The drama is underlaid with Miyazaki’s deep humanism, which avoids easy moral simplifications. There is a remarkable scene where San and Ashitaka, who have fallen in love, agree that neither can really lead the life of the other, and so they must grant each other freedom, and only meet occasionally. You won’t find many Hollywood love stories (animated or otherwise) so philosophical. “Princess Mononoke” is a great achievement and a wonderful experience, and one of the best films of the year.

2. MOVIE INFORMATION

This $20 million animated adventure/fantasy quickly became the highest grossing Japanese film in Japanese film history (making $150 million in Japan during its first seven months). Set in the 14th century, the ecology-themed epic was directed by Hayao Miyazaki whose previous films were acquired by Disney for U.S. distribution plus other territories. Princess Mononoke depicts a mystical battle between Animal Gods of the forest and humans during Japan’s Muromachi Period. Young Ashitaka receives a fatal infection after a demonic wild boar attacks his northern village. Seeking a cure, he sets out to locate the deer-like god Shishigami. Along the way, he sees the rape of the Earth by a mining village. The constant plundering by the village has brought the wrath of the Wolf God, Moro, who attacks the village along with San, a human who was raised by the wolf god. She communicates with the nature spirits — which is why she is called Princess Mononoke (“spirits of things”). Ashitaka wants these opposing forces to co-exist, and he hopes to bring peace between San and the ironworks owner, Lady Eboshi. However, he is thwarted as higher powers, intent on killing the Shishigama, intrude, and a battle erupts over the future of all nature. ~ Bhob Stewart, Rovi

SHORT FILMS:

SHORT FILMS, A SUBJECT TO LEARN

El cortometraje es un vehículo idóneo para la sensibilización y la educación de la imagen. La brevedad de su discurso, la libertad de su narratividad, sus variaciones formales, su creatividad y el riesgo de algunas de sus propuestas, entre otras virtudes, lo convierten en un medio particularmente propicio para el aprendizaje y la educación en la imagen. Los cortos son una herramienta educativa propicia para esta labor. Afortunadamente, los cortos están adquiriendo más protagonismo en las aulas, tanto de primaria como de secundaria.

Para los estudiantes y para quienes quieren iniciarse en el mundo cinematográfico, los cortometrajes son uno de los recursos principales en su formación. Deberían ser algo más que un campo de pruebas que en el que, después de su visionado, se mostraran diversas opiniones.

Docentes y estudiantes debería aprovecharse de este recurso acercándose a los componentes de los procesos creativos y de géneros para contribuir en la formación del gusto, sensibilidad, curiosidad y espíritu crítico, además de su desarrollo cultural.
From:El cortometraje, asignatura para el aprendizaje from tv programme SOMOS CORTOS RTVE2

1- FOR THE BIRDS (PIXAR)

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJzQiemCIuY[/youtube]

2-OKTAPODI (2007 Oscar winner to the best animation short film
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=badHUNl2HXU&amp;NR=1[/youtube]

3- ALMA by Rodrigo Blas
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CbMVF8awLL8[/youtube]

4- El mueble de las fotos by Giovanni Maccelli
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mk78X5B_pdk[/youtube]

5- Flatmates 3.0 by Francesco Marisei
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sWW43S5BmBI[/youtube]

6 <a title=”El barco pirata” href=”http://vimeo.com/20520056″>El barco pirata</a> (Goya 2012)

7-Ataque de pánico / Panic Attack by Federico Álvarez (Uruguay)(Cost:300 dollars)
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-dadPWhEhVk[/youtube]

8-Love Sick
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JFDAvcwDPTA&amp;feature=related[/youtube]

9- Short stories
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nPoBurKFV4o&amp;feature=relmfu [/youtube]
10-Dulce (30 seconds)
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?NR=1&amp;feature=endscreen&amp;v=4SbFRIz_hBM[/youtube]

10- At the opera (1`)
[youtube]http://www.animacam.tv/index.php/es/seccion-oficial/ver-videos/vervideo/559/cortometraje/en-la-opera.html[/youtube]

11-Blind Date
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0iguWrS7qbU[/youtube]

12-<a href=”http://www.filmin.es/corto/treitum” title=”Treitum”> Treitum</a>

http://www.filmin.es/corto/treitum
13- El Columpio
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c7r2cJZ9M_I [/youtube]
14 – Pescados (Lucrecia Martell)
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Bok-jJK2ck[/youtube]
15 – Drugs throug a boy who is 11 years old
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e2gBmFSr0ic [/youtube]

*- White rabbit (song by Jefferson Airplane)
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pNAJi8Achj4[/youtube]

Lyrics White Rabbit
One pill makes you larger
And one pill makes you small
And the ones that mother gives you
Don’t do anything at all
Go ask Alice
When she’s ten feet tall
And if you go chasing rabbits
And you know you’re going to fall
Tell ’em a hookah smoking caterpillar
Has given you the call
Call Alice
When she was just small

When men on the chessboard
Get up and tell you where to go
And you’ve just had some kind of mushroom
And your mind is moving slow
Go ask Alice
I think she’ll know

When logic and proportion
Have fallen sloppy dead
And the White Knight is talking backwards
And the Red Queen’s “off with her head!”
Remember what the doormouse said;
“Feed YOUR HEAD…
Feed your head”