Auteur Hiromasa Yonebayashi paints solitary spirit
By Yuri Kageyama
TOKYO (AP) --The coming-of-age story is familiar: A shy girl has problems fitting in and concocts an imaginary friend. The originality of the Oscar-nominated "When Marnie Was There" comes from how its hand-drawn images express the girl's inner torment.
Luscious hand-drawn animation is the trademark of Japan's renowned Studio Ghibli, where the film's director, Hiromasa Yonebayashi, worked for years.
He says the ways his artists have carefully depicted cloudy skies and rippling waves express the soul of the main character, Anna, who nurses a scar in her heart because she is adopted.
"It's a challenge to convey internal emotions visually such as through her facial expressions and the landscape," he said quietly in an interview with The Associated Press at Studio Ghibli's picturesque office in Tokyo. "The wind is cold, but there is warmth in an embrace."
Anna's foster mother is so worried about how Anna has closed up within herself she sends her to spend her summer vacation to seaside Hokkaido, northern Japan, to be with relatives living in a quaint cottage next to a marshy lake and green hills.
That is where she meets Marnie, who obviously is out-of-this-world, even without her long blond hair, and is more fitting of Anna's attention and friendship than the boring, loud, crass girls in her everyday life.
The tear-jerker ending involves a separation that's inevitable, but with a twist that leaves the heroine more at peace with herself, while teaching how some important connections endure.
"She learns she is actually loved by those around her," said Yonebayashi of Anna. "It is a small step for an individual. But it's also a big step, and that's what is being expressed in this film. And I feel that hasn't been done before."
The style of "When Marnie Was There" lacks the exaggeration common in animated works by Ghibli and others. Yonebayashi chose to make the images of the surroundings and movements of the characters more realistic, to accentuate the dream-like quality of the scenes with Marnie, he said.
Yonebayashi recently left Ghibli to pursue his own projects but worked on its earlier films, such as "Princess Mononoke" and "Ponyo," directed by studio founder Hayao Miyazaki, who won an Oscar in 2003 for "Spirited Away" and an honorary Academy Award in 2014.
When asked what he had learned from Miyazaki about the art of animation, Yonebayashi contemplated for more than half a minute.
"It's everything," he said at last.
"Movement, the way to think when drawing a picture, how to draw a line, everything," he added slowly. "They all became part of me."
Miyazaki has announced his retirement, and it is unclear what the next Ghibli work may be. Yonebayashi declined to give details of his next project, but said it might be a Ghibli work. And his close ties with the studio were clear. Ghibli provided the tuxedo he will be wearing to the Oscars ceremony on Feb. 28.
"I feel extremely honored. The legacy and the trust that Studio Ghibli built over the years and the works we have created with members of our team won a positive evaluation," said Yonebayashi.
The studio was founded in 1985 by Miyazaki with Isao Takahata, whose "The Tale of The Princess Kaguya" was nominated last year for an Oscar.
Over the years, it has stuck to the labor-intensive method of drawing by hand, steering away from computer graphics and other technology increasingly the standard these days.
Going with less can convey the feelings of the creator, and drawing by hand can feel new, Yonebayashi said.
"A foreigner once told me we do things in a traditional style, and I was reminded that's how it must appear," he said with a smile. "But it's not that 3-D is superior to 2-D. A picture is a picture."
Google Opens Its Defense In Antitrust Case Alleging Monopoly Over Online Ad Technology
Google opened its defense against allegations that it holds an illegal monopoly on online advertising technology Friday with witness testimony saying the industry is vastly more complex and competitive than portrayed by the federal government.
"The industry has been exceptionally fluid over the last 18 years," said Scott Sheffer, a vice president for global partnerships at Google, the company's first witness at its antitrust trial in federal court in Alexandria.
The Justice Department and a coalition of states contend that Google built and maintained an illegal monopoly over the technology that facilitates the buying and selling of online ads seen by consumers.
Google counters that the government's case improperly focuses on a narrow type of online ads — essentially the rectangular ones that appear on the top and on the right-hand side of a webpage. In its opening statement, Google's lawyers said the Supreme Court has warned judges against taking action when dealing with rapidly emerging technology like what Sheffer described because of the risk of error or unintended consequences.
Google says defining the market so narrowly ignores the competition it faces from social media companies, Amazon, streaming TV providers and others who offer advertisers the means to reach online consumers.
Justice Department lawyers called witnesses to testify for two weeks before resting their case Friday afternoon, detailing the ways that automated ad exchanges conduct auctions in a matter of milliseconds to determine which ads are placed in front of which consumers and how much they cost.
The department contends the auctions are finessed in subtle ways that benefit Google to the exclusion of would-be competitors and in ways that prevent... Read More