girl of the alps

I’ll be in my trailer… watching trailers: Domo arigato, Swiss Miss

MattLeave a comment

Join us every week for a trip into the weird and wonderful world of trailers. Whether it’s the first teaser for the latest instalment in your favourite franchise, an obscure preview for a strange indie darling, whether it’s good, bad, ugly or just plain weird – your favourite pop culture baristas are there to tell you what they think.

What’s the kids’ TV we grew up with? For Matt, who grew up in Switzerland, it was a surprising number of TV series based on European children’s books but made in Japan. (Okay, this is not a trailer so much as it is the title sequence of Heidi, Girl of the Alps in the Japanese original, I know, but what can you do.)

Continue reading →

Six Damn Fine Degrees #224: When I was a child, I watched as a child

Matt3 Comments

Welcome to Six Damn Fine Degrees. These instalments will be inspired by the idea of six degrees of separation in the loosest sense. The only rule: it connects – in some way – to the previous instalment. So come join us on our weekly foray into interconnectedness!

I wonder: there must be researchers that analyse the children’s TV programmes that people grow up with, across generations and countries. If so, what does their research say about the shows I grew up with, in 1980s Switzerland?

Continue reading →

A Damn Fine Cup of Culture Podcast #44: Isao Takahata – radical naturalism

The Barista Collective4 Comments

When Isao Takahata died in 2018, the world lost one of the uncontested masters of animation. Takahata, long-time creative partner of Hayao Miyazaki and co-founder of Studio Ghibli, created some of the most striking, memorable anime there is. Together with guest Patrick Martignoni, Eric and Matt discuss Takahata and his thematic and aesthetic concerns, especially his idiosyncratic, experimental take on naturalism and how animation can be used to get to the essence of characters. In our discussion, we focus mainly on Grave of the Fireflies (1988), Only Yesterday (1991), Pom Poko (1994) and what is arguably Takahata’s magnum opus, The Tale of the Princess Kaguya (2013) – but we don’t forget to look in on his TV career, as all three of us were raised on Heidi, Girl of the Alps. Join us as we remember the great, idiosyncratic and surprising storytelling of Isao Takahata!

Continue reading →