Over the weekend, I discovered that anime director Satoshi Kon died, succumbing to pancreatic cancer. I was shocked at the news, because of the director's relative young age of 46. I had great respect for the director's flair for merging fantasy and reality in films such as "Millennium Actress" and "Paprika."
Being Japanese, it was less likely to hear about his death as an American actor or director. But still, there was an obituary in this week's TIME magazine, which I read while in a waiting room. While some credit Kon's "Paprika" for partially inspiring Christopher Nolan's "Inception" and being an inspriation for other director such as Guillermo del Toro and Darren Aronofsky, I can not in certain terms agree with these remarks, because I don't know how influential he was.
I do know that he was a source of imagination and inspiration to myself. Each movie he made was different and unique from the one before it. Kon did not stick to a certain genre, and yet each movie still bears his trademark style.
Satoshi Kon was apparently working on a new film called "The Dream Machine," and I hope that it will be completed in his honor. I however am disheartened that it will be the last film I will see from the mind of Satoshi Kon.
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