True Grit

If you want to annoy Satoshi Kon, ask him why he makes cartoons. Suggest that instead of toiling away in his smoky studio drawing mundane Tokyo street scenes, he might be better off investing in a movie camera and just filming the city in all its quotidian banality. Kon's response will start before you finish your sentence. His eyes will narrow, his lips will curl into a sneer, and with a quiet menace he'll recite the line that has become his mantra through countless interviews and film-festival question-and-answer sessions: "I'm an anim director. I don't do anything else. People can take...