Not sure where to put this link, as it concerns both Miyazaki and Lasseter, but for those interested, a very interesting press conference (for the press) with Lassrter (and Miyazaki next to him) talking to the press about how to bring Ghibli’s films to the US now that Ponyo’s coming out. Video in 3 parts.
Thanks for posting this, joehisa. I posted a short comment.
I personally don’t think Hayao Miyazaki likes interviews in English because he has to think in English to get his point across. But these press questions were not so difficult. I don’t think there were any why or how questions.
Man, you guys in the states are lucky. I don’t remember Miyazaki-san going to a Comic Convention and having press interviews on Youtube to market Ponyo in Japan.
Hey Rey.
You’re right in that Miyazaki rarely travels to the US (in fact, he boycotted the Oscars the year he won because of the Iraq war) but he did come at least once before. I saw him in Los Angeles right before the premiere of… I think it was Spirited Away. He came to the El Capitan, there was a screening, and an interview with him on-stage. It was kind of a press + public thing (you could get tickets if you called Disney) and it was worth going to see, for as you said, he almost never comes to the US. I guess Producer Suzuki finally convinced him to do the publicity tour this time around.
By the way, I was in the Netherlands last month and saw Ponyo playing in cinemas there (dubbed into Dutch for the kiddies). Didn’t watch it, but I’ve seen it in Japanese already. I’ll probably go see it in English this week though just to see how they did. I heard they replaced the “…watashi wa genki…” line (where the mom does an inside joke referencing Totoro’s song lyric) into “when you wish upon a star” for the English dub…
EDIT: I just saw the film in English now, and the above is not true. There’s no “Wish upon a star” line. They actually kept it as “I’m happy as can be” which is true to the original Totoro (in-joke) lyric.
Thoughts on the English dub version of Ponyo (no spoilers):
(1) Sosuke’s voice was way too old for a 5yr-old. The reason the Peanuts (Charlie Brown) cartoons worked was because they had real kids doing the voices. I don’t know how old Sosuke’s English voice actor is (maybe a teenager?) but he’s not 5, or anywhere close from the sound of it – and it didn’t gel right with the character.
(2) The rap/rock version of the closing song at the end credits. Huh? The original end credits to the movie are quite short, and there’s a cute little song sung over them in the original. For the English dub, they needed more time (to list the English staff), and at first did keep some of the cute closing song (translated into English) for a bit – but then went into a rocking’ remix groove pa-chaa-chaa! of the song. Uh… what the? Terrible.
Well other than those two things, I thought they did a pretty good job…
I did notice the little icon next to Steven Alpert’s (Studio Ghibli’s English staff) name in the closing English version credits was I believe a martini glass…
Frankie Jonas (yes, as in the younger brother of the famous band) is the voice of Sosuke, and Noah Cyrus (I don’t think I need to explain this one) is Ponyo. It kind of seems like Disney made that casting decision at least somewhat on these two kids’ famous siblings and possibly their potential stardom. Noah and Frankie also sung the incredibly annoying English rendition of the once-cute theme song. I honestly think they should have stuck to the original version but with English lyrics. It appeals to a wider range of people, IMO.
But anyway, thanks for posting the video link!
joehisa wrote:
latimesblogs.latimes.com/herocom … f-us-.html
Holy Shinto! I really wish he hadn’t said that.
His silence? I didn’t know and I don’t think a lot of Japanese know about a boycott yet. The ‘official’ reason on this issue, from March 19th, 2003 and July 8th this year, was he was busy on making Howl’s Moving Castle* and he doesn’t like publicity**.
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asyura2.com/0304/bd25/msg/116.html (in Japanese from Tokyo Shimbun)
** nytimes.com/2009/07/09/movie … .html?_r=2
See what I mean when Hayao Miyazaki has to answer a why question in English. He gets into a situation at times.