panapp

Since Albarn is my favorite British artist, I would have bought it anyway, even without your final curse! ;)

Hi korgull, welcome to DeBaser! Emiliana Torrini is a talented artist; you can tell she's Icelandic and she has a beautiful voice as well. I haven't listened to this new album yet, but I'll give it a 3 on trust. If you like her voice, try listening to Ilaria Graziano; it could be an equally nice discovery (I'm neither a relative nor her manager).

But don’t spout nonsense! Bugo is a great songwriter; if you don’t like him or don’t understand him, just don’t review him, right? This one you’ve chosen is perhaps the least successful of his albums, but it still contains more material and more ideas than 75% of the other Italian artists put together. Maybe you had a jarring encounter with this musician: try going back to some of his earlier albums, perhaps you’ll grasp the themes and the poetics.

The issue is complex: Disney bought the distribution rights for Studio Ghibli films (which, for those who don't know, is the studio where Miyazaki works, but not only him); when they were exported, Disney obviously tried to place them in the American market targeting the typical demographic for this media, namely those under 20. The first film they proposed was "Kiki's Delivery Service": the Disney version softened some dialogues (already mild since it's a children's film), added background music where there was none in the original, and made other changes, all of which were approved by Miyazaki himself who realized that a different audience = a (thoughtfully) different version; in any case, only a few films were ceded to Disney. The controversies with the West Miyazaki had long before when a I-don't-remember-which distribution company brought "Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind" to the USA with huge cuts, plot modifications, and very heavy dialogue changes; Miyazaki got furious and when years later Miramax wanted to distribute "Princess Mononoke" and proposed various cuts because it wasn't suitable for children, Studio Ghibli categorically refused. With Disney, Miyazaki found himself not in the best situation, but still okay. @ KindOfBlue: "excuse me"?!? What are you talking about! ;)

@ trellheim: everyone knows it, there was a lawsuit, it's over, period. The Japanese are fully aware that they didn’t invent either comics or animation, and that 75% of what you still see today came out of Disney Studios. In fact, Disney movies are highly appreciated in Japan.

A great film from a great director. Be careful, though, when you say that the drawings are always meticulously crafted: Studio Ghibli, on the contrary, always uses very simple and iconic designs so that one can easily identify with the characters and easily remember them. Regarding the disagreements with Disney: what exactly are you referring to? @ KindOfBlue: "Paprika" is not by Miyazaki, it's by Kon.

Very technical review (I guess you study cinema or something like that) and a huge film, the very emblem of the word "cinema." Forget the insults, they're clearly unfounded.

@ holdsworth: "I'm sorry, but in my opinion, classical music is superior to any other musical genre" is a phrase that makes no sense because the so-called "classical" music is NOT a genre! It's a completely misleading collective term that indiscriminately applies to 500 years of music. If in the last 50 years dozens of completely different genres have emerged, you can understand that perhaps grouping 500 years of music under a single name is somewhat reductive, right? Moreover, in the past, music had the same identical purposes and themes as today and the same identical target audience; for example, the celebrated masterpiece by Mozart "The Magic Flute" was written for the common people, who appreciated it greatly, and none of them were experts in music theory! In the past, music was written to be more "simple" or more "complex" just like it is now.

Congratulations on the subject of the review. You did well to introduce the discussion by highlighting the fundamental concepts that music from the past is on the same level as contemporary music and that if certain music has survived for centuries, there must be a reason! Honestly, Symphony No. 9 is one of the parts of Schubert that I like the least (in my opinion, his peak is the famous quartet "Death and the Maiden"), but of course that's purely a personal judgment, and I still appreciate its greatness.

Maybe it's my fondness for Santacroce, I don't know, but I really liked this album. I agree with much of what you say, especially highlighting the "experimental" aspect compared to the rest of Nannini's discography.