Deriba

In part 1 of The Asian Invasion on BBC4 last night Jonathan Ross interviewed seminal anime director Mamoru Oshii, creator of the Ghost in the Shell films. They touched on the rather interesting concept of deriba, a storyline-static part of the action that Oshii locates at the centre of his films, which serves to stall the forward motion of the plot so that the world the characters inhabit can be better explored. You can't help thinking that Star Wars prequels might have benefitted from a bit of deriba. Since the arrival of Spielberg the relentless pace of Hollywood productions has been all too well established.