The Boy and the Heron | Hayao Miyazaki | Studio Ghibli | GKIDS | NA Debut at TIFF | WINNER OF THE OSCAR FOR BEST ANIMATED FEATURE

[TMP]

54 minutes ago, MovieMan89 said:

Well we’re not in the top 10 by IQ average, but we also have a way bigger pop than any in the top 10 besides China. The biggest factor is likely education system, since most top 10ers are known for good education, while US education is wildly uneven. 
 

And as an aside, Japan is #1 on said IQ ranking, and as already discussed, they arguably had the most polarized reaction of all to this movie. 

Yeah, one of the biggest shocks to me when I came to America was that a college degree was a privilege and not an expectation. The polarization to this sounds so strange because it's not like Miyazaki is an uber-conventional story-teller. Would Mononoke have been polarizing if it released today? Really interested to catch this regardless.

[Morieris]

1 minute ago, TMP said:

Yeah, one of the biggest shocks to me when I came to America was that a college degree was a privilege and not an expectation.

 

I would kind of call it both. People are expected to have one, but it's a privilege if you do get one...and even then, they're not uncommon, so it makes no difference in getting a job.

[cannastop]

Just now, TMP said:

Yeah, one of the biggest shocks to me when I came to America was that a college degree was a privilege and not an expectation.

Hmm at the risk of completely derailing this thread:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_tertiary_education_attainment

 

the US doesn't seem like an outlier here.

 

 

Still true that University Educations are expensive in the USA.

[Danhjpn]

The more I think about it, I'm pretty sure Spirited Away wasn't a crowd pleasure at the time it won the Best Animated Feature at the Oscars (more than 20 years ago).

 

Nowadays, even anime has become much more popular, it is still a limited group, a small number among the general audience, imagine more than 20 years ago.....I bet many many many people didn't even know about its existence before the 75th Oscars.

 

It (and Ghibli studio) only started to become more and more popular in the whole time after that day.

 

Conclusion: I think the "Spirited Away won the Oscars in 2002" purely based on the dicision of the Academy memmbers/critics/cinepile,.... and rarely being affected by the general audience reception. 

 

Edited December 7, 2023 by Danhjpn

[cannastop]

1 minute ago, Danhjpn said:

Conclusion: I think the "Spirited Away won the Oscars in that year" purely based on the dicision of the Academy memmbers/critics/cinepile,.... and rarely being affected by the general audience reception. 

they also had the support of like everyone from Pixar and WDAS going to bat for Hayao Miyazaki. This was even before Disney bought Pixar but they still had John Lasseter as the public face of Miyazaki appreciation.

[Morieris]

On 12/5/2023 at 8:34 AM, Morieris said:

I checked tickets or our 1 PM RDX Friday and we have 10 tickets sold.

 

All in a row, which makes me wonder if it was a family that showed up and are about to probably get a surprise. This is more people than my showings of Hunger Games, -1, and Chevalier combined.

 

 

Update: I...uh, misinterpreted the legend; Those 10 seats aren't sold, they're just flat out unavailable to buy.

 

So the showing is empty except for me so far.

 

On the plus side, the 10PM showing has 4 people. Still more than Chevalier and THGBOSS combined!

[Danhjpn]

Metacritic just updated another bunch of reviews for this film, so far

 92 (37 reviews)

RT

98% from all crirics (8.6/10) 120 reviews

100% from top critics (9.2/10) 40 reviews

Edited December 7, 2023 by Danhjpn

[MovieMan89]

The critical reception is just stunning, probably end up an all-timer on RT in terms of wide releases that aren’t retrospective reviews. Probably impossible for Miyazaki to top this critically too. 

 

[harrisonisdead]

8 minutes ago, Danhjpn said:

Metacritic just updated another bunch of reviews for this film, so far

 92 (37 reviews)

RT

98% from all crirics (8.6/10) 120 reviews

100% from top critics (9.2/10) 40 reviews

It probably doesn't have many more Metacritic reviews left in the tank, so it should stay in the 90s for the foreseeable future. That's wild. After those early rave festival reviews I expected it to go down at least a little, but if anything it's gone up.

[MovieMan89]

I just hope this is way more satisfying for me than The Wind Rises since I maintain that movie just wasn’t it as far as Miyazaki goes. 

[MovieMan89]

2 hours ago, Danhjpn said:

The more I think about it, I'm pretty sure Spirited Away wasn't a crowd pleasure at the time it won the Best Animated Feature at the Oscars (more than 20 years ago).

 

Nowadays, even anime has become much more popular, it is still a limited group, a small number among the general audience, imagine more than 20 years ago.....I bet many many many people didn't even know about its existence before the 75th Oscars.

 

It (and Ghibli studio) only started to become more and more popular in the whole time after that day.

 

Conclusion: I think the "Spirited Away won the Oscars in 2002" purely based on the dicision of the Academy memmbers/critics/cinepile,.... and rarely being affected by the general audience reception. 

 

I’ve said it many times now but Spirited Away winning the Oscar in 2003 was just insane. Why I don’t count this out of BP with the critical reception. One of the highest grossing animes DOM would make it even more likely. 

[Lighthouse]

They just wasted a huge opportunity to promote this by taking advantage of that english cast and the narrative about it being his supposedly final movie or his comeback after 10 years. Meh
I doubt the actors would have said no to a red carpet or interviews with Hiyazaki. 

[Danhjpn]

36 minutes ago, harrisonisdead said:

It probably doesn't have many more Metacritic reviews left in the tank, so it should stay in the 90s for the foreseeable future. That's wild. After those early rave festival reviews I expected it to go down at least a little, but if anything it's gone up.

 

I also think it will finish with 40-ish reviews in Metacritics. That side doesn't have many critics, often from 20 to 60.

 

[Flip]

2 hours ago, MovieMan89 said:

I’ve said it many times now but Spirited Away winning the Oscar in 2003 was just insane. Why I don’t count this out of BP with the critical reception. One of the highest grossing animes DOM would make it even more likely. 

if it was actually his final movie I could see it winning, but since it's confirmed he's making another one they'll definitely give it to Spiderverse, which has the advantage of being more visible and also being more liked by the public while maintaining similar critic scores

[MOVIEGUY]

This was kinda a "journey is more important than the destination" kind of movie for me. The whole movie is pretty cryptic and weird and honestly I'm not sure exactly what the hell was going on (especially in regard to the last act) but god damn if it isn't a gorgeous movie.

 

I was thinking about what the last traditionally animated movie I saw in theaters before this was and realized it might be The Simpsons Movie. Wish there were more of these.

 

 

Edited December 7, 2023 by MOVIEGUY

[JonathanMB]

11 hours ago, Danhjpn said:

The more I think about it, I'm pretty sure Spirited Away wasn't a crowd pleasure at the time it won the Best Animated Feature at the Oscars (more than 20 years ago).

 

Nowadays, even anime has become much more popular, it is still a limited group, a small number among the general audience, imagine more than 20 years ago.....I bet many many many people didn't even know about its existence before the 75th Oscars.

 

It (and Ghibli studio) only started to become more and more popular in the whole time after that day.

 

Conclusion: I think the "Spirited Away won the Oscars in 2002" purely based on the dicision of the Academy memmbers/critics/cinepile,.... and rarely being affected by the general audience reception. 

 

 

I remember following that race, and while Spirited Away winning was very surprising, there also wasn't a clear frontrunner that year, as none of the Hollywood animated films had particularly great reviews and none of them were Shrek level or even  Monsters Inc. level smashes. I think Lilo & Stitch was the default frontrunner, but even then Disney was in its fallow period so there wasn't much passion around it. Spirited Away meanwhile had some of the best reviews of any movie that year, and Miyazaki's reputation was already solidifying in critics circles as one of the great filmmakers working today. I think all of that allowed enough voters to give its screener a shot and then give it the win.

 

As for this year, Spider-Verse is very strong competition still, but I do think the passion around it has cooled a little since the summer, after it became very clear that we aren't getting Beyond the Spider-Verse any time soon and when the working conditions story broke. It still has ther mainstream advantage, but if Heron breaks out this weekend, and maybe even hangs onto theaters through the holidays, it could become the frontrunner.

[Danhjpn]

41 minutes ago, JonathanMB said:

 

I remember following that race, and while Spirited Away winning was very surprising, there also wasn't a clear frontrunner that year, as none of the Hollywood animated films had particularly great reviews and none of them were Shrek level or even  Monsters Inc. level smashes. I think Lilo & Stitch was the default frontrunner, but even then Disney was in its fallow period so there wasn't much passion around it. Spirited Away meanwhile had some of the best reviews of any movie that year, and Miyazaki's reputation was already solidifying in critics circles as one of the great filmmakers working today. I think all of that allowed enough voters to give its screener a shot and then give it the win.

 

As for this year, Spider-Verse is very strong competition still, but I do think the passion around it has cooled a little since the summer, after it became very clear that we aren't getting Beyond the Spider-Verse any time soon and when the working conditions story broke. It still has ther mainstream advantage, but if Heron breaks out this weekend, and maybe even hangs onto theaters through the holidays, it could become the frontrunner.

I wish the Academy members watched this film rather than "I will vote for the film my kids like" 

[JustLurking]

The idea that SA wasn't a crowdpleaser when it won immediately falls apart even just considering the fact that it became the highest grossing film in its home country unlike this one which had really bad legs by jp standards.

 

It may not have been seen by many people in the US but it was certainly a crowdpleaser and Miyazaki in general has quite a legacy making films that are extremely beloved by the public, which makes me curious to see what he did so differently with this one.

[Issac Newton]

RT is now at 98% and Verified Audience at 84%

 

[Danhjpn]

38 minutes ago, JustLurking said:

The idea that SA wasn't a crowdpleaser when it won immediately falls apart even just considering the fact that it became the highest grossing film in its home country unlike this one which had really bad legs by jp standards.

 

It may not have been seen by many people in the US but it was certainly a crowdpleaser and Miyazaki in general has quite a legacy making films that are extremely beloved by the public, which makes me curious to see what he did so differently with this one.

 

This has nothing to do with the general audience in the USA where Oscars happened (as well as people in rest of the world beside Japan) in 2002.

 

That's what I mean by saying it wasn't a crowd pleasure (in the worldwide scale, not Japan scale) at that time. Many many many people in the USA as well as the rest of the world didn't know about its existence yet.

 

"which makes me curious to see what he did so differently with this one."

 

Because when he was doing this film, the man thought this would be his last film and decided to go full force in the arthouse film direction, rather than the common "easy to digest" film 

Edited December 7, 2023 by Danhjpn