the m0vie blog

Hosted by Andrew Quinn and Darren Mooney and with special guests Graham Day and Marianne Cassidy, The 250 is a (mostly) weekly trip through some of the best (and worst) movies ever made, as voted for by Internet Movie Database Users. New episodes are released every second Saturday at 6pm GMT, with the occasional bonus episode between them.

This year, we are proud to continue the tradition of Anime April, a fortnight looking at two of the animated Japanese films on the list. This year, we watched a double feature of Hayao Miyazaki’s Kaze no tani no Naushika and Katsuhiro Ôtomo’s Akira.

This week, the first part of the double bill, Kaze no tani no Naushika, celebrating its thirty-fifth anniversary.

Unofficially and retroactively folded into the Studio Ghibli canon, Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind was only Hayao Miyazaki’s second film. Nevertheless, it demonstrated remarkable confidence. It also signalled a lot of the director’s interests, with its tale of a strong young woman navigating the aftermath of a horrific environmental disaster and trying to prevent a new war from breaking out.

At time of recording, it was ranked the 216th best movie of all time on the Internet Movie Database.

Show notes:

• Recorded 7th April 2019.
• Anime April is an annual tradition on The 250, with our anime experts Graham and Marianne. This was Graham’s idea, and prompted in large part by our satisfaction with the episode that we recorded on Your Name. Last year’s installments were Isao Takahata’s Hotaru no haka and Hayao Miyazaki’s Tonari no Totoro.
• Kaze no tani no Naushika at The Internet Movie Database.
• The IMDB 250 as it appeared at time of recording.
• Read Marianne’s blog at Massive Hassle.
• Follow Marianne on Twitter.
• Read Graham’s reviews at Scannain.
• Hear Graham on Speaking Geek.
• Read Graham’s guide to Irish Gaming at Gameir.
• Follow Graham on Twitter.
• Caroline Cao at birth.movies.death discusses Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind as a key part of the history of Studio Ghibli, February 2017.
• Brian Ashcraft at Kotaku on the branded beer served at the Studio Ghibli Museum, October 2011.
• Monolith Magazine publishes Hideaki Anno’s live action recreation of the “giant warrior” sequence, April 2013.
• Ryan Lamble at Den of Geek charts Hayao Miyazaki’s path to Studio Ghibli, December 2014.
• Sean O’Mara at Otaku USA takes a look at Hayao Miyazaki’s manga work, January 2016.
• Leah Schnelbach at Tor.com charts the origins and evolutions of Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, March 2017.
• Hayao Miyazaki explains the concept of “ma” to Roger Ebert at RogerEbert.com, September 2002.
• Anna Cafolla at Dazed on the worlds of Studio Ghibli, November 2016.
• Bill Benzon at The Valve on world-building within the films of Hayao Miyazaki, June 2006.
• Jeff Wexler talks to Den of Geek about the process of dubbing Studio Ghibli films, September 2014.
• James LaPierre at Cinematheque on the infamous “Warriors of the Wind”, the English language dub of Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, September 2016.
• Hayao Miyazaki talks to The Guardian about fighting Harvey Weinstein’s plans to cut Princess Mononoke, September 2005.
• Garson O’Toole at Quote Investigator on Groucho Marx’s famous boast about the clubs he would refuse to join, April 2011.
• Chantel Tattoli at Vanity Fair on the production and legacy of Fern Gully, April 2017.
• Kevin Conroy tells We Got This Covered that Tim Curry was replaced as the Joker on Batman: The Animated Series because he was too scary, August 2018.
• Daniel Riley at Slate on whether cockroaches could survive the end of the world, July 2008.
• Sarah Gibbens at National Geographic on the rate of discovery of new species in the Amazon, September 2017.
• Sarah C.P. Williams at Wired on how there are 6,000 species of insect found within one acre of rainforest, December 2012.
• Doctor Stephen Juan at The Register on the Minamata Disaster, July 2006.
• Alex Selwyn-Holmes at Iconic Photos on W. Eugene Smith’s “Tomoko Uemura in Her Bath”, May 2009.
• Jeremy Hsu at LiveScience on how the Earth will survive mankind, June 2010.
• Christine Dell’Amore at National Geographic on the escalating rate of species extinction, May 2014.
• Jared Viz at The Odyssey Online charts the evolution of Disney princess into feminist icons, February 2016.
• Talia Smith at Paper Magazine on how Hayao Miyazaki’s films explore intersectional feminism, March 2018.
• Chris Michael at The Guardian on Studio Ghibli’s female characters, June 2016.
• Crosby Day at The South Florida Sun Sentinel on General Isoroku Yamamoto’s famous “sleeping giant” quote, October 2001.
• Inkoo Kang at Slate on the attempted update of Disney princesses within Ralph Breaks the Internet, November 2018.
• Linda Woolverton talks to The Los Angeles Times about the challenges of being a woman writing a Disney princess, January 1992.
• Kaitlin Ebersol at Highbrow Magazine on how Disney’s princesses have responded to evolving ideas of feminism, October 2014.
• Sophie Gilbert at The Atlantic argues that Pocahantas features one of Disney’s most radical feminist heroines, June 2015.
• Vassar College on the connections between Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind and The Odyssey, May 2015.
• Josh Marsfelder at Vaka Rangi on Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, June 2014.
• Jess Conrad at WrightlySo on Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind and The Lady Who Preferred Insects, February 2018.
• Kathryn Hemmann offers a translation of The Princess Who Loved Insects at Japanese Translations, June 2009.
• André-Naquian Wheeler at Vice on Hayao Miyazaki’s latest film, Boro the Caterpillar, January 2018.
• James Vincent at The Verge on Hayao Miyazaki’s return from retirement, February 2017.
• The BBC on musicians perpetual recurring “farewell” tours, February 2018.
• Michal Wojcik at One Last Sketch on the similarities between Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind and Dune, November 2017.
• David Moisan at The Japanese Animation News and Review on the similarities between Frank Herbert and Hayao Miyazaki, July 1991.
• Liz Rugg at Flixist on the relationship between Hayao Miyazaki and Joe Hisaishi, February 2012.
• Em Nordling at Tor.com on the troubled and divisive Studio Ghibli adaptation of Earthsea, November 2018.
• Christopher Runyon at Movie Mezzanine on the trouble with Earthsea, April 2014.
• Alex Clements at Vodzilla on Howl’s Moving Castle as an adaptation, November 2014.
• Katie Awad at Hypable on the question of how faithful adaptations should be, July 2015.
• Matilda Battersby at The Independent on the necessary of change in adaptation, June 2016.
• Who Dat Boy by Tyler, The Creator, June 2017.
• Zack Sharf at IndieWire on Hayao Miyazaki’s recurring fascination with flight, February 2017.
• Matt Kamen at Wired on the real-world Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind glider, August 2016.
• Christopher Muther at The Boston Globe wonders what happened to the glamour and magic of air travel, September 2014.
• Nicole Smith on Bitten by the Travel Bug on how aeroplanes became flying buses, July 2015.
• Nigel Tisdall at The Telegraph on the lost romance of flying, March 2008.
• Susan Napier at The Paris Review on the relationship between Princess Mononoke and Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, October 2018.
• Jeffrey Kluger at Time on the sixth great extinction, July 2014.
• Mark Boyle at The Guardian on the cynicism of modern environmentalism, May 2017.
• S.E. Smith at Meloukhia on performative environmentalism, February 2017.
• Eliza Relman and Walt Hickey at Business Insider on millennials’ anxiety about having children due to climate change, March 2019.
• Fiona Harvey at The Guardian on the crisis in modern agriculture, January 2019.
• Brian Ashcroft at Kotaku on Hayao Miyazaki’s obsession with talking about Nausicaä’s breasts, January 2017.
• Hayao Miyazaki talks to Comic Box about his proportioning of Nausicaä’s body, January 1995.
• Garson O’Toole at Quote Investigator on “the arc of the universe”, November 2012.
• Matt Lewis at The Daily Beast on Barrack Obama’s use of “the arc of the moral universe”, January 2017.
• “Armello” by League of Geeks.
• The Japanese Film Festival of Ireland.
• The East Asian Film Festival of Ireland.
• Our Planet on Netflix.
• Ed Yong at The Atlantic on Our Planet as the environmental show willing to be explicit about the state of the planet, April 2019.
• Kat Stoeffel at The Cut on the masculine appeal of Coke Zero, August 2014.
• Follow The 250 on Twitter.
• Subscribe to The 250 on iTunes.
• Subscribe to The 250 on Stitcher.
• Listen to The 250 on Soundcloud.
• Listen to The 250 on Spotify.

Filed under: The 250 | Tagged: animation, anime, anime april, Darkness, environmentalism, feminism, ghibli, graham day, Hayao Miyazaki, hope, Kaze no tani no Naushika, marianne cassidy, Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, warriors of the wind, worldbuilding |