Friday, January 05, 2007

Kids Off the Couch

This cool Website was profiled in the LA Times yesterday. It provides parents with ideas for videos to show their kids, and then culturally-interesting locations in the LA area to take the rugrats that are related in some way to the film.

This pairing is after my own heart: Hayao Miyazaki's anime film "SPIRITED AWAY," and our favorite West LA Japanese neighborhood, on Sawtelle.

UPDATE:


This pairing, on the other hand, seems bizarre: showing the kids another Miyazaki movie, "PRINCESS MONONOKE" and then taking them for a forest hike. The Website does suggest that Mononoke not be shown to kids younger than nine; but frankly I wouldn't show it to anyone younger than a teenager. Mononoke is a morally-complex fantasy story that is the most violent film Miyazaki has created; it features beheadings, dismemberment, pools of blood pouring from freshly-opened wounds, etc. Plus, there's the character Lady Eboshi, a noblewoman who has created a workforce for her iron foundry/armorer business by buying the contracts of prostitutes from brothels and using the women to run her forges; and by hiring lepers to fabricate rifles. Try explaining all that to your nine-year-old -- and then taking her for a forest hike.

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