[EVA] [OT]My Neighbors the Yamadas Premiere

[Luna1883 at aol.com]

since we're having a slow week with the perfect blue reviews and all, i thought i should do an update on the ongoing Gibli/Miyazaki retrospective at the MoMA. 
I just saw the american premiere of the newest Takahata/Miyazaki collaboration from July 1999,  "Houhokeyko Tonari no Yamada-kun" here in NYC...it was double-billed with the theatrical premiere of "On Your Mark," and had some 400+ people in attendance.

Despite the "financial under-performance" of the Yamadas in Japan (which most of the press was too eager to compare with the receipts from monnonoke hime), it is quite possibly the most innovative anime i have seen in quite a while. And i say that with a great deal of conviction as i tend to avoid using superlatives unless absolutely necessary ...not since what anno decided to do in conveying the content's of shinji ikari's mind in TV episodes 25-26 had i seen a fresh approch to narrative, employing a technical dexterity heretofore unseen in film, rendering a conceptually forthright story about a typical company man and his seemingly oh-so-typical family life with the simplicity & grace of an utamaro print. painted and animated ENTIRELY on computers, the uniform pastel & watercolor effect with which background art and cels are rendered is so realistic that it would be hard-pressed to convince anyone who hadnt read the backgrounder that it was all CGI. the film truly marks evol!
ution in the medium. 

Incidentally, hurricane floyd prevented takahata from being there, but some gibli types made it, and provided a cursory explanation of techniques employed...