FINISHING SCHOOL: My Neighbours the Yamadas (1999)

Isao Takahata is often referred to as 'the other Miyazaki', which is a little dismissive of his unique style given that he just hasn't achieved the fame of his Studio Ghibli colleague. His four films share subtle characterisation yet are hugely diverse, even if they are not as visually dazzling as Hayao Miyazaki's.

I had yet to see My Neighbours the Yamadas on purchase, unlike most of the Ghibli collection, but my love of the studio meant that I bought it happily. Employing a completely distinct visual palette of watercolours and exaggerated, caricatured character design, Takahata's story of the everyday life of a contemporary Japanese family barely resembles a Ghibli production but unmistakably has the spirit of one, celebrating the joys of life despite adversity. Many have dubbed Miyazaki the Kurosawa of Japanese animation and Takahata the Ozu, and Yamadas gives the analogy great credence. Like Ozu, he luxuriates in the poetry of simple moments, celebrating the strength and eccentricity of ordinary people.

To that end, Yamadas is completely episodic, beginning and ending at arbitrary but satisfying points, alternating between wish-fulfilling fantasies and street-level confrontations. In one of these sequences, he fascinates by gradually transforming the exceptionally cartoonish Yamadas into taller, darker figures that flicker as if standing in candlelight, akin to the style of the short film adaptation of The Snowman. Such haunting gestures make me long to revisit this film, especially since in hindsight the random points that we enter and leave the film render it somehow cyclical, as if returning to the beginning knowing the structure to come will enable keener understanding of what Takahata is doing.

But for all its visual dynamism and meandering structure, this is primarily a very funny and endearing film about a family with numerous foibles but much love for each other. Some may dislike the lack of conflict and narrative momentum, and for that reason it's no wonder that Yamadas has not garnered the audiences of Spirited Away and co. But if you adore Ghibli as a style and an ethos, then you must see it and experience how versatile that style can be.

FINISHING SCHOOL: The Agenda

One of the perils of our age of DVD gluttony is putting the horse before the cart, and stockpiling far more of them than we can watch in the immediate future due to unmissable bargains or plain ol' Digital Versatile Lust courtesy of Amazon.com.

I have fallen prey to this on many an occasion, but rarely do I get home from JB HiFi and slam the disc straight into the player. My enthusiasm doesn't vanish upon purchase; rather I'm usually happy to let the movie sit, ready for when I get around to it. The problem is that unless someone else wants to watch one of these movies and blows the dust off, I usually get preoccupied with TV seasons and the latest episode of Lost and whatnot. Hell, I even have some seasons sitting on the shelf waiting for their turn (sorry, Brotherhood season one...).

So I decided to give myself some incentive to finally finish the bastards. I propose a recurring feature wherein I shoot off brief or not-so-brief reviews of the DVD that I've finally watched, with a view to how the films (and in some cases shows) hold up on rewatching. The vast majority of these discs are things I've seen before, either recently - in which case we'll see whether they earned being purchased - or long ago and I'm revisiting with a more mature eye (in theory). Earth 2: The Complete Series is an example of this, and hopefully not an embarrassing one - the point of this feature is that we'll find out together. [I rarely buy sight unseen unless I've heard amazing things and can't get it any other way, but there will be a couple.]

From a blogging standpoint though, this series will stretch my reviewing muscles, as I'll try to set myself new challenges each time, hence the title. They will all be as brief as possible while saying as much as possible, and I may shake things up with new formats (haiku may be pushing it though...).

This feature is likely to be two sides of a coin. Whereas this side is about reassessing old favourites, the other will be about completely new films. I'll save the details on that one until it begins, but it will share the trait of working through a collection, albeit a much larger one...

So let's begin. Hopefully this will be an interesting read in its randomness - we'll flit from The Godfather Trilogy to the Dilbert TV show - rather than self-indulgent. Let me know what you think