Japanese Film Mother

Kyoto, My Mother's Place - by Nagisa Oshima (1991)

Commissioned by BBC Scotland, Kyoto, My Mother’s Place is a lovely, achingly personal portrait of Oshima’s mother and the world in which she came to live when she arrived in Kyoto as a young woman…

Bored with her school life, a 16-year-old student leaves home to take a trip along the Pacific Ocean. After meeting with a theatre group she falls sick and is rescued by a fisherman with who she shares her life with.

The most commercially successful pop group of the 1970s, the origins of the Swedish superstars ABBA dated back to 1966, when keyboardist and vocalist Benny Andersson, a onetime member of the popular beat outfit the Hep Stars, first teamed with guitarist and vocalist Bjorn Ulvaeus, the leader of the folk-rock unit the Hootenanny Singers…

"…What's most interesting about this music is its uncanny ability to blend very Japanese musical ideas with very western influenced musical instruments. Totoro is a very Japanese film, and many of the central ideas found in the film—the tie between humans and nature, the acceptance of magic and spirits, the inherent power of inanimate objects—show up in the music. Piercing electronic stabs, like gigantic raindrops, echo in and around soft, whispering strings in the wonderful "Drenched Spirit." The fluttering evanescence of the soot sprites is echoed in the plucking of a synth keyboard and a swirling orchestral exclamation. In short, the soundtrack is filled with musical echoes of the creatures that populate this film—human, spirit, or natural. The fact that Hisaishi uses predominantly western-influenced instruments (including many electronic ones) suggests that these creatures and their attendant sounds are just as comfortable in the west as they are in the east.

The soundtrack to My Neighbor Totoro isn't as good as the movie, but there's virtually nothing as good as this film. Taken on its own terms, this soundtrack is worth checking out. There are more wonderful, engaging, surprising, and flat-out delightful moments in this soundtrack to entertain anyone for days (I can attest to that). All the emotions found in the film—the joys and the fears, the laughter and the confusion—are vividly echoed in this disk's twenty tracks, making this a very mature and compelling listen by any account. In a world of ignorance, fear, hate, and idiotic leaders, it's good to know that works like these are around to remind us that life is more interesting and magical than it appears on TV."

- Michael Heumann, stylusmagazine.com. 2003

Harry Nilsson worked at a bank and wrote songs on the side, mostly jingles and pop tunes in the mid-1960s. Under contract with RCA, his first record was a flop, but it yielded hits for The Monkees and Three Dog Night. In the late 1960s Nilsson was everywhere: pal to the Beatles (especially John and Ringo); singer of "Everybody's Talkin'," the theme to the movie Midnight Cowboy (1969); singer of the theme to the TV show The Courtship of Eddie's Father; composer of the soundtrack to the animated movie The Point (with its hit single "Me and My Arrow"); and singer of the number one hit, "Without You." …