Over the years, my membership in NYFCO has introduced me to some truly great animated films, all of which I would regard as superior to the typically overpraised Hollywood blockbuster. Two of them were Brad Bird films: “The Iron Giant” and “Ratatouille”, films that respectively deal with a friendship between a young boy and a giant robot from outer space, and a French rat who aspires to be a gourmet chef. I also loved “How to Train Your Dragon” and “Toy Story 3”, films targeting a more youthful audience than Bird’s animated features. (Both are reviewed here.)
But towering over them is “Princess Mononoke”, a 1997 Japanese anime that was directed by Hayao Miyazaki whose swan song “The Wind Rises”, a biopic of the engineer responsible for the Zero fighter plane of WWII, was judged by NYFCO as best animated feature this year—the only choice that coincided with my own. While this film is directed mostly at adults, I can strongly recommend “Wolf Children”, another Japanese anime that came out in 2013 and that can be enjoyed by 8 year olds as well as 68 year olds like me. It is the story of a single mother raising a boy and a girl who are the result of her marriage to a werewolf, and totally irresistible. full: http://louisproyect.org/2013/12/15/the-wind-rises-wolf-children/ _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
