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I totally agree, Cole! I’d dare to say - as I am hard consumer of oriental cinema/tv/written and drawn literature - that the hyper logical occidental narrative has (almost) killed the magic of storytelling.

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Jul 30, 2023Liked by Cole Haddon

Also - sadly this is only on MAX but if you look at the Ghibli films tab there you can find a repeating loop of all those nature and quiet moments from all their movies strung together. It's kind of amazing to just put in the background while writing or reading.

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Interesting. I live in Australia and MAX doesn't exist here, so I'm going to look this up in case it exists on another streamer locally.

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Jul 30, 2023Liked by Cole Haddon

I would bet that Miyazaki thinks of those moments as saying something about the characters and the world, but I agree. Writing rules in general are often misunderstood or clung to too tightly. "Show don't tell" unless you're Wes Anderson or Wong Kar Wai or Hitchcock or any number of great filmmakers who often show and tell or just tell while showing something else. But you still hear it from writers sometimes, as if it means anything.

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Absolutely. I have a bugbear about many writing rules, which, in Hollywood, I like to blame on screenwriting guides. https://colehaddon.substack.com/p/how-do-you-like-them-apples-or-why

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