Favorite movie of the summer 2011

 This summer I watched numbers of movies and the one I liked the most is "From up on poppy hill". This movie was created by Goro Miyazaki, the son of famous movie maker Hayao Miyazaki. His previous movie "ゲド戦記(Gedo-senki)", which is created based on the novel series "The Earthsea Trilogy" by Ursula K. Le Guin, was criticized so badly for its rough illustrations and poor development of plot. Part of the reason why he met harsh criticism was that he is the son of Hayao Miyazaki, who is one of the leading Japanese film makers. His film company "Gibli" has produced numbers of successful animation movies such as "Nausicca" and "Princess Mononoke" and the company and its films are beloved by most of the Japanese from different generations. Therefore, it is not difficult to imagine how high the expectation for Mr.Goro and his first film was, and also the disappointment of the people after watching the movie. Before the release of his second movie "From up on poppy hill", there were numbers of interviews set on different magazines with Mr.Goro. In these interviews he talked how difficult it was for him to endure the pressure of being the son of Hayao Miyazaki and to create a film by his own hands. I was very surprised to know that he knew nothing about film making before he made the first film and he had actually had no intention to become a film maker before got a sudden request to create a movie.
 I will not go into the precise details of the movie, but I really liked the movie for several reasons. First, the story takes Yokohama city, which is my hometown, in the 1960s. In the movie there are many places I know and it was fun to see how the places looked like in the past. The second reason was that the story takes place in the actual world and not in a fantasy world. Gibli movies usually take place in fantasy world and that is something I really like about the movies, but it is also interesting to see how Mr.Goro tries to discover different approach of film making. He said in an interview that his uniqueness is his ordinary viewpoint and I think he presented his view point really well with greatly depicting personalities and emotions of characters. I really want Mr.Goro to produce more and more movies with his style and be the next leading figure of Japanese film industry.  I also want people not to just listen to what critiques say about his film and quit watching his movies. If you are interested in the movie, I really recommend you to watch it !!