10 years of Flick Filosopher: in which I am introduced to the wonders of Hayao Miyazaki

Yea! My retrospective on the occasion of the tenth anniversay of Flick Filosopher -- coming up in August September -- returns! I finally found a little time to migrate more of my old reviews, from the pre-blog days, into the new database, and I’m back on track with reminding you of what has come before in this long, strange trip.

From my review of Spirited Away:

As soft and strange as a dream, Spirited Away is like all the wonderful children's books that fired my imagination as a kid, before my head got saturated by fantasy clichés and almost anything could surprise and delight and startle me. There's barely a moment here that is predictable or conventional, and yet there's a kind of coziness to anime master Hayao Miyazaki's latest film, too -- the simple and buoyantly lovely animation is like one of those children's books come to life. For a tale from a culture that could not be more exotic to me, Spirited Away has a comfortable familiarity to it among all its strangeness, like a story I just barely remember from childhood.

• review of Spirited Away, posted 01.09.03

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