Wednesday, October 8, 2008

October's Screening: Tokyo Godfathers


Most of you know me well enough to be acquainted with my love of Anime, and I have to give those of you who’ve sat through FLCL marathons and Miyazaki movies and the occasional episode of Outlaw Star a lot of credit. There is a lot of Anime out there, and not all of it is great. A lot of people have preconceived notions about Anime, and a lot of them are true. Most Anime I love does have giant robots, buxom animal-girl hybrids, weird ninja sex, and plenty of upskirt shots of school girls. But those cliché elements are not the bits that draw me to Anime. I love that a lot of Anime really subverts traditional Western forms of storytelling but, even more essentially, I love it because I am an adult, and I love animation. You may know that a lot of the cartoons you watched growing up were Japanese imports, like Voltron or Robotech. Moreover, though there would be no Anime without Hollywood, there would be no Saturday Morning Cartoons without Anime. In 60s due to the creation of cable television, suddenly broadcasters had many more channels and a lot more airtime to fill. Producer Fred Ladd worked with NBC and brought Astro Boy and Gigantor to the US starting in 1963, and the translated versions of Japanese hits found their greatest success with American kids on Saturday mornings. In the US animation never shook a stigma of entertainment for kids, but over the last 10 years thanks to programming on Cartoon Network like Adult Swim and some intrepid film distributors, that has started to change. If you loved Anime on Saturday mornings when you were ten, I encourage you to try some cartoons for grown ups.

The movie we’re watching this month was directed by Satoshi Kon, a newish fave of mine. I first encountered his work watching Paranoia Agent on Adult Swim, and last year saw his most recent film Paprika. For the most part Kon’s work is highly realistic in style, and deals mostly with modern, urban or suburban life, but in doing so delves into the stress, the repression, the palpable pressure that isn't unique to Japanese society, but is present in modern life universally. Kon’s movies and television series are post-modern and creepy-- kind of in a David Lynch way-- but with a clean, bright, humorous undercurrent. We’ll be watching Tokyo Godfathers (2003, 92min) which is about as charming a movie as you can get. Based on the John Ford film 3 Godfathers, Tokyo Godfathers follows a similar premise, replacing outlaw thieves with a rag-tag assemblage of Tokyo’s homeless, who find a baby on Christmas Eve, and set out to reunite her with her mother. And lest you think you’re about to enter some twisted world of tentacle rape and space pirates with unexplainable ambiguities, this movie is highly narrative, there are no ninjas, and it’s so damn heartwarming it made Dan’s Dad cry. As an additional challenge to you, friends, this month we’re switching our nights—we’ll be watching Tokyo Godfathers on Sunday October 19th at 7pm. Happy Hour will still be in effect, we’ll still be at Heathers Bar 506 E 13th St btw A and B, and I’ll even bring some Japanese snacks to share just to make this even more enticing. Come change your mind about Anime and next thing you know we might be hitting up Comicon together…