In the Movies Ep. 22: Spirited Away & Miyazaki's Female Heroes

Tish and Juliana talk about Spirited Away and Hayao Miyazaki's female heroes. Spirited Away was the first anime movie for a lot of Western people, including us, and remains one of our favorites of the genre. Along with Chihiro/Sen, Lin, and even Yobaba, we talk about all of the inspiring, complete, complex, interesting female characters in Studio Ghibli movies.

Listen on iTunes, Podbean, or stay right here with the player below! Let us know what you think about this episode, suggest future episodes, or just say hi by emailing us at inthemoviespodcast@gmail.com or tweeting us @IntheMoviesPod!

Movie Marathon: Magic

It's that very special time of year, folks. But, before we get to the straight-up Halloween movies, let's ease into the theme of the holiday with some magical movies. 

Now, I've had a thing for movies and TV shows to do with magic and witches since I was a wee youngin'. I suppose it was just one type of the wider fantasy genre that I latched onto. I was always dreaming about finding an ancient spellbook or amulet in the attic that would give me my magical powers. I think most of that comes from wanting to be special. (Woah, Tish. Calm down, this isn't therapy.) My friends and I even pretended to be witches for while and when I was older, my love of Charmed led me to discovering Wicca, and I was actually really into that for a while. 

My witchy childhood aside, magic in movies is usually reserved for us girls. Once upon a time, we were just the evil witches ruining the Disney princesses' lives, but over the years, and particularly during the girl power revolution of the 90's, we started to see more female-starring movies, including magical movies. Witches no longer had to be old hags. They were beautiful young women- teenagers, even. And magic didn't have to be evil, it was used for good- even fun! Unfortunately, I'm long past those formative teenage years when girls get the "You're a witch!" notice. But, it's fun to watch some witchy movies and daydream that it's still not too late for me to discover some ancient token that will finally give me my powers...

Practical Magic (1998)

What movie could have been better for my young, impressionable mind but a witch-romance combo? Well, probably a lot of things, but I fell in love with Nicole Kidman's flowing orange hair and goth-boho style, Sandra Bullock's hair, too, actually, the sister-sister bond, the occult style, the beautiful Victorian house in the idyllic coastal town, and "midnight margaritas!" Although, I kind of hate Sally for rejecting her inner witch and going on and on about wanting to be "normal". Why would you want to be normal when you can be magical?! I think she just has really low self-esteem and the childhood taunts of "Witch! Witch! You're a bitch!" really broke her spirits. While some magical movies are focused on the magic, this movie really just uses it as a tool to tell a story of sisters, family, and tolerance.

The Craft (1996)

Now this one is definitely, maybe a movie that was not so good for my impressionable young mind. I became just slightly obsessed with it in grade 9. I started dressing in all black and white, pleated skirts, collared shirts like they do. (Ya, my somewhat-goth phase.) Nancy (Fairuza Balk) was of course my favorite. I mean, yes, she goes crazy and evil, but I identified with her so much. Not the evil crazy thing, but because she was way more into this stuff than the rest of them. She wanted to complete the circle, she taught them everything, she was the leader. And she looked so badass while doing it, amiright?

Sabrina the Teenage Witch (1996)

Ah, 90's high school movies. There's nothing like 'em, right? I feel like this story is almost the opposite of another 90's high school movie, Clueless. Here, we are with the losers of the school, instead of the popular kids.  Sabrina just wants to fit in at her school, and then suddenly she finds out she's even more of an outsider than she thought. (Who else was hoping for that news on your 16th birthday? Anyone?) Poor, naive teenagers always wanting to fit in. Again- Why be normal when you can be magical?! Fortunately, for all of us, Sabrina learns to appreciate and love being a witch. So much that she continues to use (or misuse) her magic for 7 seasons of the following TV series!

Bewitched (2005)

Yes, I'm going to talk about the recent movie, not the original series. This is Movie Marathon, okay? Also, I haven't seen the series. I'm sure I caught bits of episodes here and there, but I'm no expert. Each witch movie has its own witch rules. In Charmed they fight demons, Sabrina points her finger, some witches are old school with spells and potions, but in Bewitched world, it's a nose twitch (or an ear tug). It also appears that witches live in their own world where they use their magic freely and only a crazy witch would want to live in the mortal world where she has to hide her magic and do crazy stuff like get a job. (Does she really, though? I mean, she just magicked up herself a house, a car, home furnishings, and anything else she needed first.) This is definitely a magic-lite movie. None of the negative aspects of a magical life. It's all sunshine and lollipops and Will Ferrell.

The Worst Witch (1986)

This is one of the rare times that I will include a movie in a Movie Marathon that is actually just bad. The Worst Witch is one of the worst movies. But in a delightful, 80's, bad special effects, Tim Curry kind of way. Which means it's actually worth a watch. See, bad movies can be bad in a boring, forgetful way or a "This is so bad! Look at that! That's so awful! And now they're doing what?! Oh my god, I can't believe someone was allowed to make this movie!" way. At the very least you have to check out the best worst part of the movie. Tim Curry aka The Grand Wizard is introduced to the students in this horrifying, trippy musical sequence. It's also clearly where J.K. Rowling got her idea of a school of witchcraft and wizardry. While I didn't discover the movie until much later, I watched the TV show growing up. And consequently dreamed of a witchcraft boarding school with cute uniforms, broomstick riding lessons, and mandatory pet cats.

Kiki's Delivery Service (1989)

I only discovered Hayao Miyazaki's movies a few years ago, so I'm always jealous when someone says they grew up watching his movies, including this magical delight. I can only imagine how seeing this movie as a child would have led to even more daydreams about being sent off at age thirteen to begin my witch training. I mean, I was already in love with the idea of black cats, spellbooks, and secret worlds. This story of a young witch somehow manages to be magical and yet mundane in that she uses her magical powers, not for fun as any 13 girl would be expected to, but to start her own business. I mean, when I was thirteen I wanted to start my own occult shop online, but it never happened. Maybe if I had a talking cat and a broomstick, my entrepreneurial dreams would have come true a lot sooner.

Movie Marathon: Time Travel

Even before I became a Doctor Who fan a year ago, I've been fascinated by the idea of time travel, and therefor, interested in any time travel movies. I think the reason it most fascinates me is because it is simply impossible. That's why most movies do a horrible job of using it in their plots; they just can't make sense. However, there are some really smart movies that work time travel into their story and manage to keep it comprehensive. Even if it requires a second or third viewing for you to understand it. See if you can keep up and keep track of these time travel movies.

The Dark & Twisty: The Butterfly Effect

After I watched this movie for the first time, I had to sit on my bed in the dark for a while and just take it all in. (I can be a bit dramatic.) It really will blow your mind, if you're clever enough to keep up. Evan Treborn suffered from blackouts, when he remembers nothing, throughout his childhood. Years later, in college, reading from his old journals, it triggers a jump back in time, where he is back in his thirteen-year-old body living the time during one of his blackouts. Evan continues to trigger these mental time leaps, going back in time to figure out what happened during those blackouts, and then trying to do things differently to improve the lives of himself and his friends. However, this movie demonstrates the theory from which it gets its name, the Chaos Theory, often explained with the saying "Something as small as the flutter of a butterfly's wing can ultimately cause a typhoon halfway around the world." Which means we don't know what the consequences will be of even the smallest actions. This movie inspired me to want to learn more about the Chaos Theory and fun stuff like that.

The Romance: The Time Traveler's Wife

The problem with being in love with a time traveler; meeting in the wrong order. (*See Doctor Who, below.) Clare first meets Henry when she is a young girl and he is a grown man. When she meets him again, in college, she knows him very well, but he has not yet traveled back to those times when she was a child. Are you keeping up so far? They fall in love and all that, but all the while, he is- and here's what makes it different- involuntarily time traveling at random moments. It's a gift, it's a curse- Well, mostly it's a curse as it gets him into trouble most of the time and leaves her worried about him. You'll cry. Just warning you.

The 80's: Back to the Future 

This movie demonstrates the basic principle of why we know traveling back in time would not be possible: The Grandfather Paradox. The paradox is; if you were able to travel back in time and kill your own grandfather, you would never be born, so who went back in time to kill him? In this movie Marty McFly watches himself fade away as he tries to get his parents to fall in love so they can get busy and make him. Scientific flaws aside, I think we can all agree that, if time travel were possible, we would want a DeLorean to be the way to do it.

The Indies: Donnie Darko & S. Darko

Some people may shun me for including the "continuation" S. Darko with the original masterpiece, Donnie Darko, but I don't care! I like it, okay?! They both use the same time travel principles which include worm holes, rewinds, countdowns, fate, and creepy dead messengers. In Donnie Darko, the titular character is guided by a guy in a creepy bunny mask named Frank, who tells him to do scary things, but it's only because he was in the wrong place at the wrong time, so time got screwed up and he has to go back to fix it. Basically. Seven years later, Donnie's little sister, Sam (played by Daveigh Chase in both movies) is experiencing the same time travel symptoms as Donnie, but so are other characters. It takes the original principles and makes it even more complex, not necessarily making it a better, smarter movie, but I still enjoyed it. (Okay, it may be mostly because the first scene is really pretty and I have a crush on Daveigh.)

The Anime: The Girl Who Leapt Through Time

I don't consider myself an anime fan (I really don't know much about the art form/pop culture.) but I can say that I am a fan of Hayao Miyazaki, the Japanese writer/director of such moves as Spirited Away and Howl's Moving Castle. Oh, wait. This isn't a Miyazaki movie. But if you're a Miyazaki fan, like I am, you will also love Mamoru Hosoda. In this anime feature, a girl accidentally discovers a device that allows her to, quite literally, leap through time. It features the typical time travel movie tricks such as re-doing scenes several times to try to get it "right" and dealing with the consequences of using time travel to mess with people's lives.

TV Bonus

Doctor Who: There are two types of people in the world: Doctor Who fanatics and people who have never seen Doctor Who. For the latter, Doctor Who is a British series about a Timelord (called, simply, The Doctor) who travels throughout space and time usually just for fun but he also ends up saving the world (whichever one he's on). Go watch it right now or we can no longer be friends.

Into the Universe with Stephen Hawking: If you want to know the science behind these time travel ideas, watch episode two of this three-part documentary series. Stephen Hawking explains how time travel to the future is theoretically possible (if we could travel faster than the speed of light) and invites his future self to travel back in time to attend his own party (Spoiler Alert: It doesn't work.) 

Monthly Movie Marathon: Hayao Miyazaki

This is a new blog feature I'm going to be doing. Every month I'll compile a list of a few movies of a theme that I think you should watch.

This month is Hayao Miyazaki movies.

Hayao Miyazaki is a Japanese writer & director of animated movies. He's known as "The Japanese Walt Disney." Although he does make a lot of animated movies like Disney, I think Miyazaki's movies are much different. Disney movies are more for entertainment. Miyazaki movies always have a really deep moral to the story. His movies are so much more than entertainment. They are very complex and have political or ecological themes. His style might seem a little weird at first, it was to me, but then I fell in love with the magical, fantastical stories and the young characters.

I was going to write my own little opinion blurb about each movie, but I love them all, so I don't know what to say different about each of them. The trailers give you a pretty good feel for the movies. They're all similar style, visually and story-wise, so if you like any of them, you'll probably like all of them.

(Don't be put off by the poor quality of some of the trailers. The movies are all very good quality and available with English dubbing.)

Castle in the Sky (1986)

Summary (from IMDb.com): A young boy stumbles into a mysterious girl who floats down from the sky. The girl, Sheet, was chased by pirates, army and government secret agents. In saving her life, they begin a high flying adventure that goes through all sorts of flying machine, eventually searching for Sheet's identity in a floating castle of a lost civilization.

My Neighbor Totoro (1988)

Summary (from IMDb.com): Two young girls, Satsuke and her younger sister Mei, move into a house in the country with their father to be closer to their hospitalized mother. Satsuke and Mei discover that the nearby forest is inhabited by magical creatures called Totoros (pronounced toe-toe-ro). They soon befriend these Totoros, and have several magical adventures.

Kiki's Delivery Service (1989)

Summary (from IMDb.com): Kiki, a young witch-in-training, has reached the age of 13. According to tradition, all witches of that age must leave home for one year, so that they can learn how to live on their own. Kiki, along with her talking cat Gigi, fly away to live in the seaside town of Korico. After starting her own delivery service (using her broom as the delivery vehicle), Kiki must learn how to deal with her new life, especially after she loses the power to fly.

Princess Mononoke (1997)

Summary (from IMDb.com): While protecting his village from rampaging bore-god/demon, a confident young warrior, Ashitaka, is stricken by a deadly curse. To save his life, he must journey to the forests of the west. Once there, he's embroiled in a fierce campaign that humans were waging on the forest. The ambitious Lady Eboshi and her loyal clan use their guns against the gods of the forest and a brave young woman, Princess Mononoke, who was raised by a wolf-god. Ashitaka sees the good in both sides and tries to stem the flood of blood. This is met be animosity by both sides as they each see him as supporting the enemy.

Spirited Away (2001)

Summary (from IMDb.com): The story begins as Chihiro and her parents take a wrong turn down a dirt path while traveling to their new home in the country side. They discover a tunnel at the bottom of the path which leads them into an old abandoned theme park. While Chihiro and and her parents explore the place they come across a place full of restraunts filled with all different kinds of delicious foods. Chihiro's parents then start helping themselves to some food. As Chihiro leaves her parents and starts exploring the place herself she comes upon a bridge only to be found by a boy named Haku. The boy then tells Chihiro that she must leave before nightfall. She then runs off to find her parents only to find them as pigs. Chihiro gets scared and runs off to the river only to find it full of water. She then runs off and hides, Haku then comes looking for Chihiro promising her that he will help her save her parents but the only way was for Chihiro to get a job in the bathhouse for the Gods and spirits of Japan.

Howl's Moving Castle (2004)

Summary (from IMDb.com): A young woman named Sophie is cursed by the Witch of the Waste, turns into an old woman, and is unable to tell anyone of her plight. Unable to continue her job at her mother's hat shop, she goes to the ambulatory castle of the notorious wizard Howl and insinuates herself into his household. Sophie befriends Calcifer, the fire demon who powers the castle and who is bound to Howl by a contract, the terms of which Calcifer cannot reveal. They promise to help each other with their problems. Like Calcifer, Howl can also see through the Witch's spell, and he and Sophie fall in love. Sophie helps Howl confront his former teacher, and the Witch of the Waste.

Ponyo (2008)

Summary (from IMDb.com): The son of a sailor, 5-year old Sosuke lives a quiet life on an oceanside cliff with his mother Lisa. One fateful day, he finds a beautiful goldfish trapped in a bottle on the beach and upon rescuing her, names her Ponyo. But she is no ordinary goldfish. The daughter of a masterful wizard and a sea goddess, Ponyo uses her father's magic to transform herself into a young girl and quickly falls in love with Sosuke, but the use of such powerful sorcery causes a dangerous imbalance in the world. As the moon steadily draws nearer to the earth and Ponyo's father sends the ocean's mighty waves to find his daughter, the two children embark on an adventure of a lifetime to save the world and fulfill Ponyo's dreams of becoming human.

I hope you all have the opportunity to see all of these amazing movies this month. When you watch them, let me know what you think!

P.S. I finally finished adding all of my movies and tv shows to My Movies list on IMDb.com. You can now check out all of my movies I own if you're interested. I also thought it would be helpful having my movie list on the internet so my friends can browse my movies and decide what they want to watch before we hang out to watch movies.