Forum - View topicNEWS: No English dub for Millennium Actress
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Aaron White
Old Regular
Posts: 1365 Location: Birmingham, Alabama |
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No dub? Is they crazy? I'm sure petulant sub-only purists are delighted that I'll have to watch it with scads of tiny type distracting me from the visuals, but surely dubbing is still essential to actually selling furrin films over here.
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Tenchi
 Posts: 4542 Location: Ottawa... now I'm an ex-Anglo Montrealer. |
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I'm a sub fan but I usually watch the dub at least once out of curiousity to see how most North Americans would watch any specific anime.
I can't criticize Dreamworks too much, since they have bought the rights to the film and I didn't and their marketing guys probably have a better idea on how they can make a better return on their investment than I would and I'm sure the DVD will be great, but, still... no dub? Now it's certain that it will be relegated to the arthouse circuit and won't even get a token release at one or two normal multiplexes in most cities and it almost certainly won't get enough attention to stand any real chance of being nominated "Best Animated Feature" for the Oscars next Marc... erm, February (apparently). Not that it would actually *win* BAF, since Finding Nemo should prove to be a fairly unstoppable juggernaut, unlike the last BAF, where none of the American animated films nominated were seen as being strong contenders (not by me... I still prefer Lilo & Stitch... but I'm not an Academy voter), but, still, it would be nice to see Millenium Actress at least be nominated since I think it's a far more interesting film than was Spirited Away. What a shame it won't be widely noticed by critics if it's sub-only. |
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king_micah
 Posts: 994 Location: OSU |
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Ah, but the sub only gives help to the art slant that some like to put on Anime. Life is Beautiful was released in this country, as was Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon orginally subbed only. Later, dubs came, but by then the critics were wowed. Subs lend credit on the art house circuit, while dubs only help mainstream.
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ANN_Bamboo
ANN Contributor
 Posts: 3904 Location: CO |
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Well, companies release subbed-only foreign flicks all the time. Case in point Life is Beautiful, Amelie, Kolya, the color trilogy, etc, etc, etc. Just because it's anime doesn't warrant there having to be a dub.
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Aaron White
Old Regular
Posts: 1365 Location: Birmingham, Alabama |
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I know they release foriegn films without dubs; I got a stack of DVDs with no dubs. It's just odd that Dreamworks has decided to treat it that way. They're breaking from the anime pack. I dunno if it's the best way to go, commercially. It automatically puts a cap on the audience. I know, Crouching Tiger and all, but still.
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jmays
ANN Associate Editor
 Posts: 1390 Location: St. Louis, MO |
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Yeah, I agree. Surely they compared the numbers, but it seems strange that additional sales from having a dub wouldn't make up the cost of making an English audio track...
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GATSU
Posts: 15570 |
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The non-dub thing is old news. Akadot and ANS mentioned it last year.
Tenchi: "Now it's certain that it will be relegated to the arthouse circuit and won't even get a token release at one or two normal multiplexes in most cities" I've said it before, and I'll say it again. That's exactly how it was released in Japan. That's exactly how Perfect Blue was released in Japan. For any big Hollywood movie studio to notice a filmmaker like Kon, instead of just a spin-off an anime series popular in America, is a major coup. I'm sorry to say, but the Japanese film distribution system is not much different from the American film distribution system, especially now that like the U.S., one of their major studios(Toho) now has a monopoly ownership on most of the theaters. So while the latest One Piece or Godzilla movie will be everywhere over there, you're very lucky if you can get a movie like Takashi Miike's Dead or Alive to get any theatrical release. (Especially since that one almost went to home video.) "and it almost certainly won't get enough attention to stand any real chance of being nominated "Best Animated Feature" for the Oscars next Marc... erm, February (apparently)." I talked to Dreamworks, and even they admitted Finding Nemo would be the real winner for next year. (Although I don't watch Pixar movies, because Max Fleischer with cgi is just stupid.) But anyway, I'm not even sure that there will be enough contenders for this year for the Academy to decide. Nonetheless, I think Millennium Actress will have a better chance to win, just because it's an Oscar kind of movie. It has period settings, deals with the crowd-pleasing theme of lost love, and it looks like it could be a good upsetter. (I.E. Everyone expects Nemo to win, therefore it won't. ) And the last time Monsters, Inc. went up against Shrek, it lost, even though Monsters, Inc. probably had better cgi. (I can't tell, seeing as I never saw it, but instead endured Katzenberg's "original" idea of bashing Disney while ripping off their style. And yes, I recognize the irony of my statement, considering Katzenberg was a former animator of Disney. He's still as much of a hypocrite as Don Bluth though.) "but, still, it would be nice to see Millenium Actress at least be nominated since I think it's a far more interesting film than was Spirited Away. " I agree there. Spirited Away was just another example of Miyazaki selling out(other than letting Disney handle his properties after he said he refused to work with them) by ripping off Alice in Wonderland. And knowing that the Academy loves the unoriginal, it came as no surprise that it won. Sorry, but I'd rather wait for another Totoro, which was what Spirited Away should have been. Guess I'll have to make a trip to the Ghibli Museum to see the real thing though... king: "Life is Beautiful was released in this country, as was Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon orginally subbed only. Later, dubs came, but by then the critics were wowed." Though the dub for CTHD came out on dvd, while Miramaxe decided to release Life is Beautiful dubbed, and started a whole PR campaign brainwashing Americans to think foreign movies dubbed can be as good as the original, as they started raping more and more Asian films. Anyway, IMHO, Millennium Actress can't be dubbed. It's one of those "too Japanese" anime which would seriously overlook a lot of their cultural trends and achievements in the effort to save people from being more literate by forcing them to read subtitles. It'd be like dubbing a Kurosawa film. (And I'm sure that's happened.) |
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Tenchi
Posts: 4542 Location: Ottawa... now I'm an ex-Anglo Montrealer. |
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Ugh... don't ask me what I think of Shrek beating Monsters, Inc. for the first BAF award, since I am one of the minority of people who likes Monsters, Inc. best of the five Pixar films, so I'm rather biased. Well, to put it mildly, though the quality of the CGI was about even**, my own opinion is that Monsters, Inc. had real heart, whilst Shrek was only "clever".
**with Monsters, Inc perhaps having a slight edge over Shrek in terms of CGI quality, both because of the complexities of Sully's fur, with something like 3 million individual hairs to render, but also because of very impressive "particle" effects with the snow. But, if the Academy was awarding for just technical innovation in the field of CGI, then Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within would likely have won it... at least if it had been nominated. |
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JETBLACK87
 Posts: 1073 |
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maybe dreamworks is treating it like a Foreign Film and not like a cartoon. do you think that the type people that are going to like this movie are going to mind subtitles? maybe, and hopefully, it would have a better chace to win Best Foreign film than Best Animation.
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LordByronius
ANN Columnist
 Posts: 861 Location: Philippe for America! He is five. |
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Millenium Actress is ineligible for the Best Foreign Film award because the Japanese Academy didn't bother to submit the film when it was originally released there - last year.
Anyway, Dreamworks is about on par with Miramax as far as enormous Oscar-sluts go; in fact the first thing I thought of when I heard "Dreamworks" and "Millenium Actress" were mentioned in the same sentence was "Oscar bait." Regardless, I can TOTALLY understand going sub-only on their theatrical release (I mean, if it's only going to play in 16-25 screens, why bother with a dub?), making the DVD dub-free is still somewhat confusing to me. I can see why they might market the film like they would most foreign films - Actress is about as far removed from most anime as anything that's still animated and from Japan can possibly be - but even Columbia put a dub on their Metropolis DVD, after their sub-only theatrical run. FYI, the website says that the MPAA has rated the film a PG rating. "Thematic elements, violence, and brief mild language" or somesuch. As for the BAF race: Nemo is unquestionably the frontrunner, and while it's certainly enjoyable, it's far from great. Actress is. Even the Pixar folks would acknowledge that. All Dreamworks has to do is MAKE SURE THAT ACADEMY VOTERS ACTUALLY SEE THE FREAKING MOVIE and they've got an upset in their favor. |
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GATSU
Posts: 15570 |
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Byron: "but even Columbia put a dub on their Metropolis DVD, after their sub-only theatrical run."
Yeah, but Metropolis is less Japanese than Millennium Actress. "FYI, the website says that the MPAA has rated the film a PG rating. "Thematic elements, violence, and brief mild language" or somesuch." That's about right. The rating will help attract soccer moms, and yet the content will still be appealing to the rest of us. "Nemo is unquestionably the frontrunner, and while it's certainly enjoyable, it's far from great. " I always detest anything which uses over 50% of cgi myself. What I get from Pixar movies are computerized Max Fleischer cartoons. "All Dreamworks has to do is MAKE SURE THAT ACADEMY VOTERS ACTUALLY SEE THE FREAKING MOVIE and they've got an upset in their favor." Of course they will. They're not Miramaxe. |
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Neilworms
 Posts: 155 Location: Chicago IL |
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The theatrical release of Metropolis was mixed... some subbed some dubbed releases. Look in the archives of this forum for information about it in relation to a New York newspaper review that hated it only on the grounds of the dubbing.
I think these are going to be the frontrunners for the oscar BAF award: Finding Nemo The Triplettes of Belleville (which is a french film that was shown at cannes, got a lot of buzz from that film festival. For more info look at the trailer and at the US distro homepage) and of course Millennium Actress. Unless some other film comes along out of nowhere (maybe the korean film My Beautiful Girl Mari..... which I think is still eligable... ) these are going to be the three nominations most likely or at least most deserving to win. |
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Tenchi
Posts: 4542 Location: Ottawa... now I'm an ex-Anglo Montrealer. |
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As much as I'd like to believe otherwise, I think non-American animated productions winning Best Animated Feature will be the exception, not the rule. Just because it happened once doesn't mean it's going to happen every year. And, while Lilo & Stitch was quite popular, last year didn't have any American animated films that really set the box office on fire like Finding Nemo did this year; I know box office shouldn't really be a consideration, but I don't think the Academy voters are going to ignore that Finding Nemo is the Lion King-killer in terms of overall Box Office take.
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GATSU
Posts: 15570 |
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True, but a movie like Nemo won't win just because of how big it is. It'll, at best, win in the area of Best Special Effects. Plus I think the Academy has a grudge against Disney for trying to buy their votes over the last few years, which is why they voted for the Disney parody Shrek in 2002, and then chose Spirited Away this year. My feeling is if Pixar cuts ties with The Mouse, then they have a better chance of winning in the future.
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animaniac
 Posts: 246 Location: Idaho |
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i dont mind but a dub would be cool and who knows could get more people it could be like mononoke. no big hope the dvd is out soon. is her other film non nudity/sex filled or is it i notice its from manga and looked kinda questionable.?
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