Hayao Miyazaki

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RobertB
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Re: Hayao Miyazaki

#51 Post by RobertB » Mon Sep 27, 2021 12:42 pm

DelMonico Books and Academy Museum of Motion Pictures have published a book about Miyazaki with lots of artwork. Amazon has it in stock. It's not cheap. Has anybody bought any books from DelMonico before? I would like to know how much text vs pictures I can expect and if it's good quality binding/paper.
https://delmonicobooks.com/book/hayao-miyazaki/

beamish14
Joined: Fri May 18, 2018 3:07 pm

Re: Hayao Miyazaki

#52 Post by beamish14 » Mon Sep 27, 2021 1:21 pm

RobertB wrote:
Mon Sep 27, 2021 12:42 pm
DelMonico Books and Academy Museum of Motion Pictures have published a book about Miyazaki with lots of artwork. Amazon has it in stock. It's not cheap. Has anybody bought any books from DelMonico before? I would like to know how much text vs pictures I can expect and if it's good quality binding/paper.
https://delmonicobooks.com/book/hayao-miyazaki/

I pre-ordered it from the Academy Museum a few months ago, and it already arrived. Just gorgeous. I'd buy it directly from their bookshop.

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The Elegant Dandy Fop
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Re: Hayao Miyazaki

#53 Post by The Elegant Dandy Fop » Mon Sep 27, 2021 2:31 pm

beamish14 wrote:
Mon Sep 27, 2021 1:21 pm
RobertB wrote:
Mon Sep 27, 2021 12:42 pm
DelMonico Books and Academy Museum of Motion Pictures have published a book about Miyazaki with lots of artwork. Amazon has it in stock. It's not cheap. Has anybody bought any books from DelMonico before? I would like to know how much text vs pictures I can expect and if it's good quality binding/paper.
https://delmonicobooks.com/book/hayao-miyazaki/

I pre-ordered it from the Academy Museum a few months ago, and it already arrived. Just gorgeous. I'd buy it directly from their bookshop.
Miyazaki is a filmmaker whose work is so well documented with numerous books. I know it's a silly question, but is there anything about this that makes it extra special and worth owning? I have a few colleagues over at the Academy Museum and have been excited about seeing this show finally open too.

beamish14
Joined: Fri May 18, 2018 3:07 pm

Re: Hayao Miyazaki

#54 Post by beamish14 » Mon Sep 27, 2021 3:11 pm

The Elegant Dandy Fop wrote:
Mon Sep 27, 2021 2:31 pm
beamish14 wrote:
Mon Sep 27, 2021 1:21 pm
RobertB wrote:
Mon Sep 27, 2021 12:42 pm
DelMonico Books and Academy Museum of Motion Pictures have published a book about Miyazaki with lots of artwork. Amazon has it in stock. It's not cheap. Has anybody bought any books from DelMonico before? I would like to know how much text vs pictures I can expect and if it's good quality binding/paper.
https://delmonicobooks.com/book/hayao-miyazaki/

I pre-ordered it from the Academy Museum a few months ago, and it already arrived. Just gorgeous. I'd buy it directly from their bookshop.
Miyazaki is a filmmaker whose work is so well documented with numerous books. I know it's a silly question, but is there anything about this that makes it extra special and worth owning? I have a few colleagues over at the Academy Museum and have been excited about seeing this show finally open too.

There is certainly material that hasn't been published in any of the making-of artbooks for his films, and it's printed on incredibly nice paper stock.

It's not as mindblowingly comprehensive or elaborate as the Tim Burton art book which accompanied his touring retrospective, but it's definitely worth investing in.

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yoloswegmaster
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Re: Hayao Miyazaki

#55 Post by yoloswegmaster » Tue Dec 13, 2022 12:06 pm

Image

Synopsis for the new Miyazaki film, which comes out on July 14 in Japan:
HOW DO YOU LIVE? begins with fifteen-year-old Copper, who has recently suffered the loss of his father, gazing out over his hometown of Tokyo, watching the thousands of people below, and beginning to ponder life's big questions. How many people are in the world? What do their lives look like? Are humans really made of molecules? The book moves between Copper's story and his uncle's journal entries, in which he gives advice and helps Copper learn pivotal truths about the way the world works. Over the course of a year in his life, Copper, like his namesake Copernicus, embarks on a journey of philosophical enlightenment, and uses his discoveries about the heavens, earth and human nature to determine the best way to live. Yoshino perfectly captures the beauty and strangeness of pre-war Japan – the changing of the seasons, the fried tofu and taiyaki stands, and the lush landscapes, as Copper explores the city on his bike and learns from friends and family what really matters most in life.

beamish14
Joined: Fri May 18, 2018 3:07 pm

Re: Hayao Miyazaki

#56 Post by beamish14 » Tue Dec 13, 2022 12:36 pm

yoloswegmaster wrote:
Tue Dec 13, 2022 12:06 pm
Image

Synopsis for the new Miyazaki film, which comes out on July 14 in Japan:
HOW DO YOU LIVE? begins with fifteen-year-old Copper, who has recently suffered the loss of his father, gazing out over his hometown of Tokyo, watching the thousands of people below, and beginning to ponder life's big questions. How many people are in the world? What do their lives look like? Are humans really made of molecules? The book moves between Copper's story and his uncle's journal entries, in which he gives advice and helps Copper learn pivotal truths about the way the world works. Over the course of a year in his life, Copper, like his namesake Copernicus, embarks on a journey of philosophical enlightenment, and uses his discoveries about the heavens, earth and human nature to determine the best way to live. Yoshino perfectly captures the beauty and strangeness of pre-war Japan – the changing of the seasons, the fried tofu and taiyaki stands, and the lush landscapes, as Copper explores the city on his bike and learns from friends and family what really matters most in life.

Given the rate at which this was being completed, I’m amazed to see that it’s coming out next year. Then again, Ghibli might need a hit badly and is possibly strapped for money

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Mr Sausage
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Re: Hayao Miyazaki

#57 Post by Mr Sausage » Tue Dec 13, 2022 4:49 pm

Miyazaki’s been on a downward slide since Spirited Away, with his last two in particular being awful. I’m sure the animation will look lovely, but the synopsis is full of the kind of things that typically bring out Miyazaki’s worst instincts.

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hearthesilence
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Re: Hayao Miyazaki

#58 Post by hearthesilence » Tue Dec 13, 2022 5:06 pm

I thought Howl's Moving Castle was one of his best films, on par with Spirited Away if not better.

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Mr Sausage
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Re: Hayao Miyazaki

#59 Post by Mr Sausage » Tue Dec 13, 2022 5:20 pm

hearthesilence wrote:I thought Howl's Moving Castle was one of his best films, on par with Spirited Away if not better.
I had some issues with it, but enjoyed it overall. I probably liked it better than golden period stuff like Kiki or Nausicaa. Probably unfair to lump it into an artistic “slide” just because the two after it were so bad. It’s decent mid-tier Miyazaki I guess.

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hearthesilence
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Re: Hayao Miyazaki

#60 Post by hearthesilence » Tue Dec 13, 2022 5:27 pm

I know it's one you didn't like, but what was your take on The Wind Rises? I haven't seen it yet, and I recall people being really taken with the animation, etc. However, I also remember some like Jim Hoberman taking issue with its problematic view of history (WWII Japan). Is it still worth checking out?

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knives
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Re: Hayao Miyazaki

#61 Post by knives » Tue Dec 13, 2022 5:51 pm

I like it a lot, though I have no belief in a downward slide believing Ponyo to be one of the all time great small children films.

I find Wind to be appropriately complex given its lead character. It’s not an anti war screed, but rather an expression of what being an artist means to Miyazaki. It’s probably his most personal film since Totoro, although the score and sound design are the real stars.

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therewillbeblus
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Re: Hayao Miyazaki

#62 Post by therewillbeblus » Tue Dec 13, 2022 6:21 pm

I really liked it too- really curious on Mr Sausage's issues with these two. Everyone's favorite critic David Ehrlich put The Wind Rises on his S&S ballot!

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Michael Kerpan
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Re: Hayao Miyazaki

#63 Post by Michael Kerpan » Tue Dec 13, 2022 6:41 pm

I'm with Mr. Sausage on this. I haven't liked anything he's done since Spirited Away unreservedly -- and I find very little other than purely visual pleasure in either Ponyo or Wind Rises. I dislike the "story-telling" in both -- albeit for different reasons. Ponyo, as a children's film, fares pretty poorly compared to Takahata's Panda kopanda (except in purely technical respects). And Wind Rises struck me as a confused and confusing mess.

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knives
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Re: Hayao Miyazaki

#64 Post by knives » Tue Dec 13, 2022 6:51 pm

I’ll definitely co-sign the praise to Panda Kopanda.

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Mr Sausage
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Hayao Miyazaki

#65 Post by Mr Sausage » Tue Dec 13, 2022 7:00 pm

The Wind Rises is an utter bore. It’s the worst kind of hagiography, the kind so intent on making its subject a paragon of goodness that it scrubs them of all humanity. Jiro doesn’t say, or do, or think a single interesting thing. He’s not a real human being; he’s a totem for Miyazaki’s banal and shopworn notions of artistry. There are interesting characters around, like Jiro’s sister, who has spunk and fire in her and seems to’ve lived an interesting life. But the movie is uninterested in them. Speaking of the sister, the movie trots her out on occasion to voice this or that criticism of Jiro, but you can tell the film takes nothing she says seriously. She’ll land a stinging rebuke, and it just bounces off Jiro; he gives no reaction; and the film moves on like it never happened, having no interest in exploring any flaws, divisions, or negative sides to its character. Nothing detracts from the wooden doll at the movie’s centre. He doesn’t get mad, he doesn’t get sad, he’s never impatient, he’s never anxious, he’s never frustrated. He instinctually does whatever is the right thing in the moment. He’s a caricature, an emblem of what it means to be a good person, but not a person at all. A set of ideals centred on a common name and stuck into history. If I were the real Jiro, I’d be pretty embarrassed to’ve been handed down to posterity as an empty idealization of a human being.

The best example is when they go to Germany to see the planes. Jiro and his friend walk a couple metres away to examine a plane, and some angry official marches up and rudely proclaims it off limits for no good reason. Jiro’s friend is rightly affronted, but not Jiro. He barely reacts, like always, and then with perfect, unruffled poise intones some quiet words whose justness is so undeniable that it prompts some German bigwig to come over and set everything right. It’s so lame.

I guess it’s appropriate that Jiro’s wife is an empty caricature, this time of the self-sacrificing martyr, a long-standing cliche in Japanese cinema (but by no means exclusive to Japanese cinema). She too has no real opinions or thoughts or ideas. She’s just there to lend the story some sentimental beats that Miyazaki can never resist.

The most telling detail is that, while the film is (gently) critical of imperial Japan, it is careful to never place any political opinions in Jiro’s mouth. It’s always from the mouths of others, including some random German based seemingly on Thomas Mann and named after the hero of Mann’s The Magic Mountain. He makes plenty of critical comments about the war and the Axis powers, but Jiro, empty as always, listens respectfully and says nothing.

A boring movie that says little and risks nothing.

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MitchPerrywinkle
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Re: Hayao Miyazaki

#66 Post by MitchPerrywinkle » Tue Dec 13, 2022 7:50 pm

It's been long enough since I saw The Wind Rises that I would like to give it a rewatch, though my impressions of it weren't nearly as harsh as Mr Sausage's.

I do remember Ponyo being one of his very weakest and fairly baffled as to how that garnered more critical praise at the time than Howl's Moving Castle, which although a flawed film was a far more engaging and inventive film.

But I would agree that everything Miyazaki's done the last twenty years has paled in comparison to Spirited Away, if only because that film has the distinction of being the supreme fantasy film of the new millennium. It was and remains his masterpiece and one of the significant films that got me into arthouse and international cinema as an impressionable 10-year old cinephile.

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Mr Sausage
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Hayao Miyazaki

#67 Post by Mr Sausage » Tue Dec 13, 2022 8:03 pm

Oh yeah, Ponyo. It’s insufferably cutesy, a collection of Miyazaki’s worst sentimental fixations: animals, children, and the elderly. The thing’s a mess. It never really bothers to explain its world and it can’t seem to figure out who its characters are. Take the kid’s mother. I thought she was his sister at first for her juvenile reaction to her husband being unable to get shore leave. But then later she’s shown to be a responsible, loving caregiver. But then even later she’s shown to be irrational and reckless when driving her son home, risking both their lives for no apparent reason. But after that, she’s suddenly a noble hero, going off into the storm because the old people might need her (tho’ the film seems unaware this involves abandoning two young children to their own devices during an ecological disaster). But then at the end, she’s stoic and wise while discussing the fate of her kid with an all-powerful Nereid. The movie’s a mess. Pretty looking, but a mess.

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The Narrator Returns
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Re: Hayao Miyazaki

#68 Post by The Narrator Returns » Tue Dec 13, 2022 8:51 pm

I watched all the Miyazakis for the first time three years ago and came out with some unorthodox takes on his filmography, namely that Ponyo is far and away my favorite and Spirited Away is far and away my least favorite. I struggle with the more epic Miyazakis that are weighted down by dense mythology (I love Howl's until the mythology takes it over in the final third) and Spirited Away struck me as the nadir of that approach, where I was just collecting information about its setting much more than I was emotionally investing in it. But I adore Miyazaki when he's working simpler and more unassuming, it does show him more sentimental and much goofier but I love how those tendencies mesh with his visual splendor (rather than his po-faced explanations taking over that splendor), and I don't think he's made another movie that wowed me as much on a visual level as Ponyo did. I'll keep an open mind that I'll come back to Spirited Away sometime and finally "get it", but I'd much rather revisit Ponyo or Kiki's or even Castle of Cagliostro in the meantime.

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Mr Sausage
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Re: Hayao Miyazaki

#69 Post by Mr Sausage » Tue Dec 13, 2022 9:27 pm

I guess my taste in Miyazaki is pretty conventional. I like Spirited Away, Castle in the Sky, and Princess Mononoke, in that order. But then again,Nausicaa did nothing for me, which seems an outlying opinion among Miyazaki fans.

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Re: Hayao Miyazaki

#70 Post by therewillbeblus » Tue Dec 13, 2022 9:44 pm

I thought Ponyo was handedly his worst too on my first run-through, but I'm optimistic that if I go in again with adjusted expectations, and see it as Miyazaki attempting to relax his flux of creative juices to produce a simple, 'fine' children's movie, that I'll appreciate it more. I more or less like everything else I've seen of his to some degree, and the ones that are mediocre (which, on first watches, were most) usually improve upon revisits. But yeah, I love Spirited Away and Princess Mononoke, and My Neighbor Totoro (though less for being cute or entertaining or dramatic, and more as an intellectual appreciation for the way it approaches grief in a minimalist form, demonstrating the power of small gestures- all the way down to the simple creature and their world formulated through restraint, and not some magic palace that overwhelms with creativity sitting fat-odds with the realist narrative); and the next strong tier is Porco Rosso, Castle in the Sky, and Lupin the Third - but that was the last one I revisited and it shot up drastically in my esteem, so I feel like others might follow a similar pattern

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Mr Sausage
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Re: Hayao Miyazaki

#71 Post by Mr Sausage » Tue Dec 13, 2022 10:15 pm

What the hell, here's my Miyazaki ranking. It's a strict ranking: the higher the film, the more I like it.

Top Tier

-Spirited Away
-Castle in the Sky
-Princess Mononoke

Mid Tier

-Porco Rosso
-My Neighbour Totoro
-Howl's Moving Castle
-Castle of Cagliostro

Bottom Tier

-Nausicaa
-Kiki's Delivery Service
-Ponyo
-The Wind Rises

beamish14
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Re: Hayao Miyazaki

#72 Post by beamish14 » Tue Dec 13, 2022 10:17 pm

I’ve always preferred Isao Takahata’s films. His ability to change aesthetic palettes so readily between films was incredible. My Neighbors the Yamadas can sit alongside Ozu’s Good Morning as one of the funniest and most wry depictions of domestic life in Japan, and Only Yesterday is simply one of the greatest coming-of-age films ever.

My first exposure to Totoro was Fox’s 1992 release of it in North America. I’m fearful of listening to Disney’s dub, as their horrific one for Spirited Away definitely dampened my enjoyment of it upon initial release. I still think it’s a flawed film and a marked step down from Mononoke.

Cagliostro is very fun, but I don’t enjoy it as much as The Legend of the Gold of Babylon, which Seijun Suzuki (!) co-directed

I fear that no clear direction for the future and relatively free reign for the amazingly incompetent Goro Miyazaki will limit Ghibli’s viability
Last edited by beamish14 on Tue Dec 13, 2022 10:26 pm, edited 1 time in total.

beamish14
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Re: Hayao Miyazaki

#73 Post by beamish14 » Tue Dec 13, 2022 10:23 pm

Mr Sausage wrote:
Tue Dec 13, 2022 7:00 pm
The Wind Rises is an utter bore. It’s the worst kind of hagiography, the kind so intent in making its subject a paragon of goodness that it scrubs them of all humanity. Jiro doesn’t say, or do, or think a single interesting thing. He’s not a real human being; he’s a totem for Miyazaki’s banal and shopworn notions of artistry. There are interesting characters around, like Jiro’s sister, who has spunk and fire in her and seems to’ve lived an interesting life. But the movie is uninterested in them. Speaking of the sister, the movie trots her out on occasion to voice this or that criticism of Jiro, but you can tell the film takes nothing she says seriously. She’ll land a stinging rebuke, and it just bounces off Jiro; he gives no reaction; and the film moves on like it never happened, having no interest in exploring any flaws, divisions, or negative sides to its character. Nothing detracts from the wooden doll at the movie’s centre. He doesn’t get mad, he doesn’t get sad, he’s never impatient, he’s never anxious, he’s never frustrated. He instinctually does whatever is the right thing in the moment. He’s a caricature, an emblem of what it means to be a good person, but not a person at all. A set of ideals centred on a common name and stuck into history. If I were the real Jiro, I’d be pretty embarrassed to’ve been handed down to posterity as an empty idealization of a human being.

The best example is when they go to Germany to see the planes. Jiro and his friend walk a couple metres away to examine a plane, and some angry official marches up and rudely proclaims it off limits for no good reason. Jiro’s friend is rightly affronted, but not Jiro. He barely reacts, like always, and then with perfect, unruffled poise intones some quiet words whose justness is so undeniable that it prompts some German bigwig to come over and set everything right. It’s so lame.

I guess it’s appropriate that Jiro’s wife is an empty caricature, this time of the self-sacrificing martyr, a long-standing cliche in Japanese cinema (but by no means exclusive to Japanese cinema). She too has no real opinions or thoughts or ideas. She’s just there to lend the story some sentimental beats that Miyazaki can never resist.

The most telling detail is that, while the film is (gently) critical of imperial Japan, it is careful to never place any political opinions in Jiro’s mouth. It’s always from the mouths of others, including some random German based seemingly on Thomas Mann and named after the hero of Mann’s The Magic Mountain. He makes plenty of critical comments about the war and the Axis powers, but Jiro, empty as always, listens respectfully and says nothing.

A boring movie that says little and risks nothing.

I remember reading Helen McCarthy’s appraisal of Kiki’s Delivery Service, which touches upon the film being apparently set in a Western Europe that was untouched by a Second World War which never occurred. I don’t know much about Miyazaki’s politics beyond his environmental concerns, but I do think it would be a very interesting avenue to explore

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Michael Kerpan
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Re: Hayao Miyazaki

#74 Post by Michael Kerpan » Tue Dec 13, 2022 10:32 pm

beamish -- I agree. I am a huge fan of all of Takahata's work, but only a moderate fan of Miyazaki's work in general (despite loving a few of his films -- esp. Nausicaa, Totoro, Princess Mononoke and Spirited Away).

I am not too worried about the waning of Studio Ghibli, because I think far more interesting work is coming from many other sources (both as movies and as series).

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Mr Sausage
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Re: Hayao Miyazaki

#75 Post by Mr Sausage » Tue Dec 13, 2022 10:40 pm

I think Miyazaki's films show an evident distaste for fascism, especially Porco Rosso and The Wind Rises (the scenes of Porco and Jiro being forced to avoid capricious arrest by their respective secret polices are standouts). But Miyazaki himself also has an evident distaste for troubling anyone, being bothersome, making waves, whatever. So he'll make overt, generalized anti-war statements, but he'll mute criticism toward the specific underlying political systems and ideologies that bring about war. Overt criticisms of Japan, even imperial Japan, are rarely made, and when they are, they're put in the mouths of outsiders, as in The Wind Rises. This is why so many of his movies tip over into sentimentality: when it comes to politics, Miyazaki shows an abundance of emotion without allowing his movies to be clear-sighted about what's causing it.

Probably his most politically complex movie is Princess Mononoke because it refuses easy good/bad dichotomies. There is no side that isn't corrupted or divided in some way, whose best qualities don't also fuel their worst actions, and none of whom can be done without even tho' all sides together contribute to a horrifying situation. This is symbolized in the Deer God, who is both bringer of life and bringer of death.

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