Azur et Asmar

T

Turtleheart

Kiznaiver
I'm posting it in here as it's not directly Japanese, but is animé nonetheless.

I just have to say, out of sheer excitement, that Michel Ocelot's Azur et Asmar (which was recently released in Japan as part of Ghibli Museum Library) is now lined up for a UK release - making it only the 2nd of his several films to make it across the channel. According to IMDb, it won't be until October this year, but there's already an official weblog for it.

I doubt that anyone else here will knowingly know about any French animé, but I've become utterly obsessed in Ocelot's work as it resounds so perfectly with my desire to escape from reality into fairy tales and theatre. Because of this I've been working Nausicaa.net-ish web site about his work, and until I get that online I've added some of the info I wrote for it to Wikipedia.

http://www.ghibliworld.com/news.html has some images of the small Azur et Asmar exhibition currently in the Studio Ghibli Museum. For some examples of his tales, most of Princes et princesses can be found on YouTube if one searches for "Michel Ocelot" or "Princes and Princesses".
 
I actually saw this in FACT cinema being advertised there yesterday and then I thought of you mentioning it several times. Now you've gotten me curious... to watch it or not, is the biggest question on my mind.
 
Obviously I'm going to want you to watch it. :)

But you should try to find out whether the cinema is showing it in the original French with English subtitles or the English dub, and which of these you'd prefer to hear. Seeing the respective trailers would be one way to decide on this.

The dub has, technically a lot going for it – British actors rather than American, and co-written and directed by the original director. But this can't resolve the fact that, due to western animation following mouth moments more closely than the Japanese "lip flap" tradition, the characters will always seem somewhat divided from the voices.Both trailers can be found on the MySpace page http://www.myspace.com/theprincesquest

As to whether or not you'd like the film itself, that mostly depends on whether you agree with its philosophy. The faces look like paintings, rather than real flesh, they move like mechanical dolls or geisha, and the environments consist of flat, painted things, like a stage set. All these are normally thought of as things to be avoided, but here they've thought, "If CGI characters look like dolls, then let's make them living dolls. Let's exaggerate and exploit this, make it something interesting in itself, a positive rather than a negative." And here's some pretty pictures as examples of the result.

musique_01.jpg


critique_12.jpg


intro_08.jpg
 
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