'Enter a wonderfully dark and dangerous world where nothing is quite as it seems. Expect the unexpected with tales of sinister landladies, sweet revenge and gambling with the highest of stakes.'
Jeremy Dyson and Naomi Wilkinson have adapted and created a wonderful interpretation of Roald Dahl's short stories: The Landlady, William and Mary, Mrs Bixby and the Colonel 's Coat, Man from the South, and chilling 'Galloping Foxley' The fluent and imaginative set design by Naomi Wilkinson was the highlight. The entire stage could rotate. The Narrator (a young boy) and a train that moved from upstage to downstage and occasionally split in half, made each short story flow smoothly from one to the other. In The Landlady, it was the gauzy faint wallpaper drop that created a sense of a space, a room. In William and Mary, I particularly enjoyed the projected eye on a screen, not only did it help build upon the humour of the story, but it also involved the audience- as it reacted to Mary smoking her cigarette by dilating the audience laughed. In Mrs Bixby, the comical pawn broker traveling across stage using her feet behind the desk as Mrs Bixby moved around her again emphasised a sense of space and moving around it. It also became very comical to watch.
Coincidentally, I had been reading the short stories and seeing some of them come alive on stage was fantastic.
So, I wrote a letter to Oh comely magazine in the hope they might feature it in their postcard and letters section and to let them know how much I appreciate their magazine's existence in this truly material and celebrity obsessed world. I included with it a poem I wrote- Lyla in the Sky.
So , I happened to come across this magazine several editions ago....
My eyes were bored looking over the usual drab that covers any Newsagent shelf. and beholdddd this little charmer of a magazine stood out with a white-ish glow and made me smile and so I took it off the shelf and gave it a quick scan. Its all about people, quirks, passions, creativity, illustration, photography. Its a magazine to enjoy over a nice chai latte in one of those artsy type cafe's in old bohemian areas of wherever you happen to be located!
I've never come across a magazine I want more of.. its a delight to read or just to look at and its not ridiculously priced!
Name: Hayao Miyazaki Profession: Japanese Manga artist/ film director/ animator
quote wikipedia.."Miyazaki began his career at Toei Animation as an in-between artist for Gulliver's Travels Beyond the Moon where he pitched his own ideas that eventually became the movie's ending. He continued to work in various roles in the animation industry over the decade until he was able to direct his first feature film Lupin III: The Castle of Cagliostro which was published in 1979. After the success of his next film, Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, he co-founded Studio Ghibli where he continued to produce many feature films until Princess Mononoke whereafter he temporarily retired. After taking a short break, Miyazaki returned to direct Spirited Away and has continued to direct several films since then.
While Miyazaki's films have long enjoyed both commercial and critical success in Japan, he remained largely unknown to the West untilMiramax released his 1997 film, Princess Mononoke. Princess Mononoke was the highest-grossing film in Japan—until it was eclipsed by another 1997 film, Titanic—and the first animated film to win Picture of the Year at the Japanese Academy Awards. His next film, Spirited Away, topped Titanic's sales at the Japanese box office, also won Picture of the Year at the Japanese Academy Awards and was the first anime film to win an American Academy Award. Many of his other films have won or been nominated for many awards.
Miyazaki's films often incorporate recurrent themes, such as humanity's relationship to nature and technology, and the difficulty of maintaining a pacifist ethic. Reflecting Miyazaki's feminism, the protagonists of his films are often strong, independent girls or young women. While two of his films, The Castle of Cagliostro and Castle in the Sky, involve traditional villains, his other films such as Nausicaaor Princess Mononoke present morally ambiguous antagonists with redeeming qualities".
