Episode Transcript
[00:00:04] Speaker A: Hello and welcome to the Geeky Brewery podcast. Here at Botanical Gardens, Birmingham feels a little bit roomier than the usual studio.
[00:00:13] Speaker B: We've actually left the house.
[00:00:14] Speaker A: Yes, we've actually escaped the void that we've been stuck in for the last few years.
It's me, your host, Miss Ryan Harris. Joining me, Mister Lee Fries.
Mister Keith Bloomfield. I'm Mister Sam Edwards. Hello, and the reason we're here at Botanical Gardens is because we are screening the boy in the heron this evening as part of Birmingham Anime Film Festival, along with the lovely people from Flatpak Film Festival, Mockingbird Cinema, Birmingham Botanical Gardens itself, of course, and the amazing Sakimoto who will be giving us a lullaby later, and Digworth Dining Club, who are doing food.
So if you've not had chance to read Sam's blog about the boy and the heron, Sam, do you want to tell us what the boy in the hero is?
[00:00:54] Speaker C: In 2013, legendary filmmaker Hayao Miyazaki announced that he would be retiring from filmmaking after the release of his passion project, the wind rises. He had made such announcements several times before, only to be tempted back by a new story, but this time it looked like he meant it. At 72 years old, and with such beloved classics as spirited away and Hal's moving castle having comfortably secured his place in the animation history books, there are few people working in the film industry who have done more to earn a rest. But incredibly, unfortunately for the rest of us, he came out of retirement yet again to make the beautiful swan song that is the boy and the heron. Like many of his films, it follows a young protagonist who is drawn into a fantastical world, much like Miyazaki himself is forever pulled back into his own fantasy worlds. It also pulls together all of his favourite themes from his sumptuous back catalogue, the conflict between man and nature, the divergence of tradition and progress, and the parallels between magic and realism.
The titular boy is Mahito, whose mother is killed in a hospital fire during the bombing of Tokyo in World War Two, easily one of the most harrowing openings to any studio Ghibli film. Some years later, when his father finds a new wife, Natsuko, they move to Mahitos new stepmothers family home. Nahito struggles to warm to the pregnant natsuko and is tempted when a mysterious talking heron offers to help him find his real mother. But when Natsuko goes missing, Mahito and the heron go on a quest to a magical realm to find her. On the journey, they encounter a mob of sinister parakeets, a fire wielding warrior girl, some adorable fish loving spirits and a tired old wizard trying desperately to hold the world together.
The ambition is extraordinary, with a huge sprawling world populated with all sorts of creatures and societies. But Miyazaki never loses track of the intimate, personal human touches that mark the relationships between Mahito and his family. Despite the magic and wonder, it all feels relatable and sympathetic. And as you would expect from the studio Ghibli, the hand drawn animation is utterly beautiful, whether it's the impressionistic flames of war, the bucolic scenery of Natsuko's rural estate, or the surreal architecture of the magical dimension.
If this is Miyazakis final film, its a fitting closer to his incredible career fending off stiff competition from the spider Verse. This films Oscar win made Miyazaki the oldest ever recipient of the Academy Award for best animated feature at 83 years old, breaking his own previous record from when he won the award at 62 for spirited away. But there are already rumours that hes thinking of picking up the pencils again. Will he be tempted, like Mahito, back to the worlds of fantasy that he's made us all fall in love with? Or is he more like the exhausted wizard, hoping someone will step up and carry on his legacy for him? Boy and the heron is a perfect film to watch in a lovely, picturesque outdoor screening. We had a beautiful one the other week at the botanical gardens, but if you missed that, we have another one coming up at the Midlands Arts Centre. That's the MACD on Saturday the 7 September at 07:00 p.m. tickets are available at BAFf dot UK. That's baff dot UK.
We hope to see you there.
[00:04:13] Speaker A: Yeah, it's quite interesting with Hayao Miyazaki, it seems to be every time Koto Shinkai releases a movie, he just shakes his fist and decides to get his pens out again and start drawing another film.
[00:04:23] Speaker B: It's just that image of him with the cigarette just like head in his hand.
[00:04:29] Speaker A: It's like turning into a Scooby Doo villain of anime. I'll get those kids.
[00:04:32] Speaker D: Yeah, you sort of get the impression he doesn't quite trust anyone enough to take over the studio Ghibli franchise.
[00:04:39] Speaker B: Son.
[00:04:40] Speaker D: Yeah, yeah.
[00:04:42] Speaker A: I feel sorry for poor Goro because he's made some amazing movies, but he just never seems to get any love. Yeah, it's like the tortured son of like the auto director father, isn't it?
[00:04:51] Speaker E: It's pretty big shoes to fill though, isn't it really?
[00:04:53] Speaker A: So, yes, but yeah. So we are screening a wide range of movies for the Bomera anime film Festival.
No spoilers, but we have released some on the BAF website. So it's BAF UK.
Some really interesting stuff coming up. So we're not just sticking with new releases. We go back into them, delve into the archives, pull out a few anime films that you haven't seen for a while.
But we're doing this in collaboration, of course, with the Mockingbird cinema. So it's going to be the last weekend of September and the first two weekends of October from Thursday to Sunday. If you are in Birmingham and you are for a bit of an anime treat, please come down and give us a watch and give us a sport.
But yeah, how do you think about baf 23?
[00:05:37] Speaker E: It was great. It was great. I mean.
[00:05:39] Speaker B: I mean, I wasn't here, but, you know, the best thing to go, okay.
[00:05:43] Speaker E: From what I heard, seeing them on the big screen. Yeah. You know, I'm so used to seeing them on tv and a lot of the kind of particularly the older anime movies I just saw on CRTV screens off vhs cassettes from when manga was a supplier. So it's nice to see them, like, properly presented, you know?
[00:06:03] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:06:04] Speaker A: It seems to be a bit of a massive resurgence of anime in the last few years. I mean, I know there's a big around the late two thousands with the Toon army block if you're on the Toonarmi Batuu network. And then since Netflix has come around, there's a lot more anime films are coming out now.
[00:06:17] Speaker E: Well, in the movie and comics as well, from western comics to manga. There's a lot of comic shops now. Their biggest sellers are manga titles.
[00:06:25] Speaker A: So shout out to our friends at worlds apart, three for two on manga at all times.
[00:06:30] Speaker E: So it means the audience is growing rather than kind of like, you know, shrinking. It's actually, you know, one of the big, big audiences out there really at the moment. So there's a lot of interest in the legacy stuff as well as the more contemporary stuff.
[00:06:43] Speaker D: We were getting big audiences last year at the anime festival as well. A lot of the bigger films were sold out and rightly so.
[00:06:51] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:06:51] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:06:51] Speaker A: I think we did over 600 for my neighbor Totoro last year. We beat that one there. And this year I think we're nearing 750 plus for this one. So it's gonna be a fun screening. But surprise question, favorite anime movie?
[00:07:09] Speaker B: Okay, this is gonna be difficult.
[00:07:14] Speaker D: You've said surprise question, Ryan.
[00:07:16] Speaker E: Yeah.
[00:07:18] Speaker D: Really are going to need to think about it.
[00:07:20] Speaker B: You know what I think obviously, because we're on Ghibli I'm going to go with Castle in the sky just because it was like the first anime movies that I saw. And obviously introduction to Ghibli long before spirited away because I distinctly remember getting it off like a sort of pirated vhs that my mom obtained through someone at work of thing and had no idea about anime before that. And it sort of reopened my own. And it's still a great film to this day. So I really enjoy that film.
[00:07:49] Speaker A: Yeah. And you two have got no excuse now. So Sam, you're next.
[00:07:53] Speaker D: I'm gonna stick with Gobli as well and go with Princess Mononoke. I think it's just got such a lovely, rich mythology to it. And it's the sort of world that you want to kind of read more about afterwards somehow.
Yeah. And really beautiful film, lovely animation, memorable characters, cute, weird little forest spirits. So. Yeah, great.
Yeah.
[00:08:17] Speaker E: And I'm just gonna cheat completely because I'm not gonna pick one. So I obviously ghibli's the kind of head and shoulders above everywhere else. Yeah. Although I will go with the Fox dub on my neighbour totoro. Not the fancy pants modern one, which is terrible in comparison. But that would then be tied with the cat returns and Howl's moving castle, which I love. I also do quite like Steamboy, which is an anime film from the kind of mid to early two thousands.
[00:08:43] Speaker A: Yep.
[00:08:44] Speaker E: Which is kind of cool because it's all rocket packs and steampunk and everything.
[00:08:46] Speaker A: So I think the only thing I remember that is Patrick Stewart's in the dub version.
[00:08:50] Speaker E: I wouldn't know the dub version. So never listen to his dubbed version.
[00:08:55] Speaker B: Can I throw in an additional one?
Because I thought of your name, which.
[00:09:00] Speaker E: Is a really good film girl who jumps through time.
[00:09:03] Speaker A: There's just too many, too many shinkai and Ghibli. Because I was going to pick Shinkai as well. I was going to go with 5 cm/second which is one of my favorite Shinkai movies. It's one of the shorter ones. It's 320 minutes vignettes and three. They're all tied together through length of time and distance.
[00:09:19] Speaker E: But this is the beauty of anime in the same way as manga is that there is a title for everybody from young children through to kind of adults. Because obviously if you were an eighties fan of manga, the first things you've seen is like, you know, legend of the over fiend. It'd be the first introduction.
[00:09:36] Speaker A: The guy, those kind of really ninja scroll, those kind of really hefty movies.
[00:09:40] Speaker E: But there's something for everybody. That's. That's the beauty of it as a medium or an art form or.
It's not really a genre, it's a. It's an art form, you know, same as any animation, really. But manga and particularly japanese audiences embrace that thing of like, this is a. It's just a film. It's animated, but it's just a film telling a story that we kind of engage with. So I think it's. Yeah, it's great.
[00:10:06] Speaker A: The whole Heart of Bath is we want to bring these films to a bigger screen. So as we mentioned, Mockingbird Cinema and Mac Birmingham, the two last independent cinemas, Millennium in Birmingham. And it's a case of use them or lose them. So this is an opportunity to come out and see something that you would never have seen before on a big screen. We've been really picky with our titles this year. Can't really spoil it too much, particularly on the back website. And if you have missed the opportunity to see this outdoor screening, we actually have a special second day coming up at the Mac Birmingham on Saturday the 7 September. So they've got their beautiful outdoor screen as well. So we'll be screening it there as a kind of people who've missed out on accounts for this one.
[00:10:46] Speaker C: Lovely.
[00:10:48] Speaker B: Awesome.
[00:10:48] Speaker A: Well, we'll see you shortly and then. Hope you enjoy the film if you're here. If not, we'll hopefully see you at the festival at some point too.
So we've come into a quietish little corner. We'll manage to squeeze onto a comfy part wench.
[00:11:06] Speaker E: It's as cozy as the actual auditorium is now. There's like 700. 700 people.
This is quite cool.
[00:11:14] Speaker A: So one geek thing, keep it nice and short. Keith, what we've been up to since we last spoke to you.
[00:11:19] Speaker E: Okay, I'm gonna go with something that I don't know if many people watch, but I quite enjoy. And it's a tv show that is, I think, on Hulu in the states, but Disney plus here in the UK. And it's the unloved cousin of Rick and Morty. And it's the solar opposites, which is basically the story of four aliens who get stuck on earth and escapades. And since certain incidents with a certain person a couple of years ago, Dan Stevens has now taken over the lead voice acting job, which he did quite well last season. But this season he's been more doing his voice as he wants it than Steven Legion. Yes, he was also the beast in the live action Beauty and the Beast, and he was Arthur in the, the third night of the museum movie or Gawain or something. He was a knight or anyway, he.
[00:12:11] Speaker D: Got sort of actual puffs up in everything and is usually the best thing.
[00:12:14] Speaker E: And he was in. He was in some horror movie earlier. This was quite good. I mean. Yeah, he just, he's just himself. He's like Anthony Hopkins.
[00:12:20] Speaker B: He's about to be in the among us tv show.
[00:12:24] Speaker A: I know Susanna Reid asked him if he beat off a lot of Americans once when he.
[00:12:30] Speaker B: Oh, now I know who he is.
[00:12:31] Speaker E: Yeah. Yes, he did. I've seen Magla, and it's just silly and funny and full of Sci-Fi tropes. And there's a great bit where they do. They have two kind of stories inside the main story, which is silver cops, which is a guy they jettisoned off into space, and he's now joined this intergalactic space cop agency, and that's a whole story going on itself. And also the two kid characters in the main film had a wall was just full of shrunken humans, and it was kind of like a madman, the.
[00:12:59] Speaker A: One they captured, basically.
[00:13:00] Speaker E: Yeah.
[00:13:00] Speaker A: And if they annoyed them, they just.
[00:13:02] Speaker E: Stick all these people in this wall shrunken down. And it's had a whole kind of thing. And they've all escaped the wall now and are living in the garden, and there's a whole thing going on with that. And they just have little episodes and amongst the others, and it's just really funny and entertaining, and I quite enjoy it and I do like watching it. And if you've not caught it, you should. You had any love for Rick and Morty? You should definitely catch the solar opposites on Disney. Brilliant.
[00:13:25] Speaker A: Awesome sound. How about yourself?
[00:13:27] Speaker D: I'm going down a similar line of an animated show that's been on for a while, but I'm only just getting into it. But I've got very into it, which is a kid's show called the Dragon Prince, which Netflix has been recommending to me for a while. And I put it on as a sort of, I needed something to have on in the background while I was ironing type program. But having started it, it's really, really, really, genuinely very good. It's a sort of fantasy show about a world that's been used to be populated by humans and mythical creatures, but then there's been a big sort of cataclysm that split all the mythical dragons and elves into one side of the land, or the humans on the other side.
Dragons and elves and so on, use sort of elemental magic which humans don't have access to, but they've developed what's referred to in the show as dark magic, which is created by basically killing something magical to create your spell, which is obviously not a very nice thing.
It's got incredibly well written characters. There's a couple of people who are sort of villains, but weirdly likable.
The main character is voiced by the guy who played soccer in Last Airbender.
[00:14:54] Speaker A: Which version.
[00:15:00] Speaker D: I was going to say.
[00:15:01] Speaker A: Because the anime one does the film, which we don't speak of. And then there's the Netflix animated live series, which was.
[00:15:06] Speaker E: Meh.
[00:15:07] Speaker D: Yeah, no, the original, proper animated one.
And yeah, all the cast are very, very good.
And yeah, I sort of slightly fallen in love with it. Been quite a lot of it over the last couple of days. And it's, yeah, short episode, so very easy to watch and similar sort of sense of humor to avatar as well. So if you like that, you'd probably like this.
[00:15:32] Speaker A: Awesome Lee. How about yourself?
[00:15:35] Speaker B: So I have a game recommendation, mostly because it's game that I have played for work, for a review and some guides and stuff, but it got a solid nine out of ten from me writing this review. It's called Cat Quest three.
Basically, the cat quest games, they're obviously, as you can probably guess, there are two other cat quest games. Both of them are kind of like, you know, very silly, cartoony action rpg's starring a cat in a medieval world, but the third one is a pirate adventure.
[00:16:06] Speaker A: Oh, okay, so black flag, but with counts.
[00:16:09] Speaker B: Yes. And it is like a sort of very small, open world kind of thing, but it's more like, it's kind of the best way to describe how it looks is it's almost like a diorama. If you sort of think of like, things like Octopath Traveler and that sort of like Square Enix 2d hd thing that they're doing where it's like you've got 2d sprites, but like, everything's kind of layered in a sort of pseudo three.
[00:16:30] Speaker A: So, like those old paper theaters used to like.
[00:16:33] Speaker B: And the way that the world is constructed is as if it actually is like a treasure map and everyone's walking around it. So, like, bits of the map are marked with the location and like, the border of it is like the actual sort of meters and all that sort of stuff. But yeah, like, you play as this little cat pirate, and you just sort of sail around in your ship and you. You're on a quest to find this mythical treasure which holds a secret, and you just sort of encounter, like, characters along the way and the world's very open. You can kind of just explore it at your will and you've got lots of sort of side areas and stuff and it's just such a good time.
[00:17:10] Speaker A: So if you're a fan of zelda, those kind of games.
[00:17:12] Speaker B: Yeah, it's very sort of similar to that. It's obviously got like, you know, real time combat and stuff, so.
But also like the. There's like a range of weapons you can use. You've got swords, you've got claws, you've got shields, you can. You get like a ranged weapon. So obviously you can have like a, you know, sort of like pistol, like a pirate would, or you can carry like magic wands and things, those bits of magic and stuff.
[00:17:33] Speaker E: And is that on all formats? Because I remember playing the first one, I didn't. I don't know why I didn't play the second one. I quite enjoyed the first cat quest and because I think that just ended up on literally every platform from mobile to console. Is this one?
[00:17:49] Speaker B: Yeah, sure, if it's on mobile, but it's definitely on all, like, on PC and all the consoles. Cool. And, yeah, like, I really enjoyed my time with it. It's just such a. It's such a fun little adventure just because, like, all the dialogue, they just shove as many cat puns in as possible.
And this tradition even like, where it, like, really feels ridiculously forced, like, you can get a meow sheen gun and you're up again, you're fighting against pirates and it's just such a fun little, like, it does not take itself too seriously. Was it a fun little, sort of, you know, ten to 15 hours adventure, depending on how much you're exploring and just really gorgeous visuals, really fun gameplay and just really fun dialogue. And I highly recommend everyone goes out and plays it.
[00:18:38] Speaker E: How do you make things better? Make them pirates?
[00:18:40] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:18:40] Speaker E: Yeah, classic.
[00:18:42] Speaker A: It's got pirates or ninjas. Those are YouTube options.
[00:18:44] Speaker B: We're all aware.
[00:18:45] Speaker A: You either go ninja or the pirate room. Maybe cat quest. Four will be ninjas.
Cat ninjas would work quite nicely.
[00:18:51] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:18:51] Speaker A: And they are quite silent.
[00:18:52] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:18:53] Speaker A: Undeadly.
So my one geek thing I am going to pick. Not a good geek thing. I'm going to pick the beigiest thing I have ever seen in the world.
[00:19:03] Speaker D: Ok.
[00:19:04] Speaker E: Surprise.
[00:19:04] Speaker A: Currently in cinemas.
[00:19:05] Speaker B: I think I might know where this is going.
[00:19:07] Speaker E: Oh, gosh.
[00:19:08] Speaker A: It's based on a video game.
[00:19:09] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:19:09] Speaker D: Yep.
[00:19:10] Speaker A: Directed by Eli Roth.
[00:19:11] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:19:12] Speaker A: But it's at twelve a, starring Kate Blanchett. Jack Black, Kevin Hart.
[00:19:17] Speaker B: On that note, it's, you know, being a twelve, a bear in mind that the games are 18 and Peggy 18.
[00:19:23] Speaker A: And went out a decade ago. So anybody who was 18 at the time is probably about 28, 30 now.
[00:19:28] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:19:28] Speaker A: It's the beigest thing I've ever seen in my life, which is just. Yeah, terrible. So basically, you can tell it was made to be an r rated movie originally, and they've cut out all the violence. Well, there was violence in it, but there's no blood, there's no gore. The bullets just hit people and they fall over. The psychos are just basically like wacky, wavable, inflammable arm guys just attacking people.
You can tell about 90% of the good stuff in the film has been cut. Kevin Hart is miscast because he's playing Roland, but he's playing the straight man.
Cate Blanchett's playing a superhero at the age of 60. Nothing wrong with that. But Cate Blanchett is not superhero acting style. She just brings her normal acting style to this. And I think she gets pretty miscast. Ariana Greenblatt is good as tiny Tina. Jamie Lee Curtis doesn't have a clue what is going on. I think she just turned up and went, oh, I'm getting paid for this, so I'm just gonna try and enjoy it while I'm here. The villain is awful. Please do not see this. Don't even watch it on streaming. Don't give them any of your.
[00:20:29] Speaker E: Wait, wait for the extended r rated version that goes to Blu ray and the director's cut. Yeah, yeah.
[00:20:34] Speaker B: This is like, the general opinion I've been hearing about it is that it's like, it's not even good enough to watch as, like, entertainingly bad.
[00:20:43] Speaker E: You know, the trailer just bugged me from the start because, like, I thought, oh, this might be okay. I quite like some of the Borderlands games. But then there's a whole sequence in the. In the trailer where they're flying into the mouth of a monster. They shoot some missiles into the monster. Then the car goes into the monster's mouth.
[00:21:02] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:21:02] Speaker E: Then there's like several seconds, and then the back of the monster explodes and the car, traveling at the same velocity, entered the. It's like, that's not how physics works. If you'd gone in the mountain, you've stopped. You don't come flight. It's like, no.
[00:21:14] Speaker A: Do you know what the water problem is, Keith? That is the best action scene.
And it is just, you're watching the film and you're just like, it's just there's no character development. You have no empathy, no association with the characters. So much plot has obviously been cut out. It's just dull.
[00:21:35] Speaker E: Do they kind of try and emulate the Guardians of the Galaxy? Vibe needle drops and stuff?
[00:21:40] Speaker A: Well, even the big monster with the big gopey mouth that is part of Gardens of the galaxy three.
[00:21:47] Speaker E: The second part.
[00:21:49] Speaker A: Three or two?
[00:21:50] Speaker E: Beginning of two, isn't it?
[00:21:51] Speaker A: Yeah, beginning of two, yeah. So it's basically just a rip off of the beginning of two.
All the jokes fall flat. It's boring. The villain's terrible.
Just don't go and see it.
[00:22:02] Speaker E: Avoid.
[00:22:03] Speaker A: Right, we're going to wrap this up now because the string quarter has just started playing. We would like to go.
[00:22:07] Speaker E: It's very pleasant drifting over the.
Well, we're sat under some dappled trees, which is very nice.
[00:22:13] Speaker A: Very nice. Overcast August evening here in botanical gardens. Yes, don't forget to check out Bafta Bafta UK for the website for any of the film listings coming up.
If you missed the night, don't forget September 7, we're doing the second outdoor screening at the Mac Birmingham.
Thank you very much for joining us. We've been geeky Brummy. Keith, I can find you online.
[00:22:34] Speaker E: You can find me like everybody should have. It's the same name on all social media platforms.
[00:22:39] Speaker B: Broken.
[00:22:40] Speaker E: Six years worth of tweets, hard on everything. Now I've lost my underscore, but it's the same on everything, so it's the same in threads as it is on Instagram. I don't have to go looking up 44 different names for everybody on every platform. And I'm trying to do my talking of comic of the week, Sam.
[00:22:56] Speaker D: I'm nice and awkward.
So I'm at Sdedwards 89 on Instagram. One name and I'm Dragonsam 89 on Twitter.
[00:23:06] Speaker A: Lee, how about yourself?
[00:23:09] Speaker B: You can find me bob the pet ferret on YouTube and the cheap ferret on Twitter. And you can also find the cat quest three review that I mentioned. You can find that on Silicon era, which I wrote for as part of my job. And obviously all the usual geeky brewery places.
[00:23:29] Speaker A: Yes, don't forget to check out our comic of the week listing every once in a while. Wednesdays.
[00:23:34] Speaker E: Yeah.
[00:23:34] Speaker A: Our film of the week listing every Thursday and our game of the listing most Fridays. Yes, don't forget to check out Baf UK. That's baf UK on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook threads. And don't forget to kick out geeky Brummie on Twitter. Instagram threads, YouTube, geekybrummy.com, anywhere that geeky brummy. All the words geeky and brummy come together, but we shall see you again soon. Thanks very much. Bye.
[00:23:59] Speaker E: Cheerio, folks.
[00:24:00] Speaker D: See ya.
