KEVIN GREENE-ILLUSTRATOR

Last night I had the extreme pleasure of watching Spirited Away by the famed Japanese director Hayao Miyazaki on TCM. Wow. What a beautifully animated film. I've wanted to see his movies for a long time ( My Neighbor Totoro, in particular) but this is the first time I've gotten a chance to see one(Actually, that's not entirely true: I didn't know that he directed The Castle of Cagliostro, which is a great movie). I love movies like this...Movies that just do what they do. Let me explain: Spirited Away is a great title for this film because this movie just picks you up and drops you right in the middle of all of this craziness. You either sink or swim with it. It's unapologetic in it's straight-forwardness. We're not gonna take a lot of time to explain to you, we're not gonna give you all of this exposition. This is our world, watch it. The animation is astounding in this movie. And the storyline, though fairly simple is very thought-provoking. I was in the shower this morning thinking about it and a particular sequence, which just blows you away, suddenly made more sense to me ( but I'm pretty dumb anyway, so this is not saying much.) All this month TCM will have Thursday night dedicated to Mr. Miyazaki, showing his greatest films ( with introductions by John Lasseter of Pixar). I'll definitely try to catch 'em.