25th April
Posted in General, Cinema at 7:00 am by Visez
I was quietly looking around a bookstore in Atsugi for something new to read when I got struck by quite an unusual sight: piles and piles of The Earthsea Quartet dominating the shelves of the foreign section. For the record, The Earthsea Quartet, is a series of books, originally a trilogy - now a quartet (quadrilogy? tetralogy? who knows), written by Ursula K. LeGuin in the seventies. Ah, yes, and it’s also my favourite book of all time, a deep, imaginative fantasy masterpiece that I would put up there beyond Tolkien with the likes of His Dark Materials trilogy. The people who knew me in my late teens can probably still remember my obsession with this book.
Anyway, I’m not trying to write a review… I was just wondering why so many copies of such an old, unfashionable, untraslated book were on display. Eventually I found out that Hayao Miyazaki’s son, Goro, apart from being a six-limbed giant monster at the end of Mortal Kombat, is currently directing the newest anime production from Studio Ghibli (Princess Mononoke, Spirited away, My neighbour Totoro, Howl’s flying castle and so on) based on the third and fourth books of the Earthsea quartet: ゲド戦記 - Gedo Senki: Tales from Earthsea.
To me, it’s a relief. After having seen my favourite book being butchered to pieces by the infamous Sci-fi channel production The Legend of Earthsea that not even the presence of the beautiful Kristin Kreuk could redeem, I was waiting for something that would bring such a wonderful book to the general public and display on screen what so far could only live in my imagination.
There are, however, some concerns in the fan community. First of all, this is the first major piece of work directed by Goro, who could simply cock it all up. Fortunately, it seems that there has been a substantial input from Miyazaki sr. who hopefully helped to put everything on the right track. Secondly, due to the need of cutting cost and production times, Gedo Senki will be completed in half the usual time and replacing lots of manual work with computerised graphics. I have no idea of what the final result will be like, but I’m currently hosting the latest Gedo Senki trailer here. Download it freely and see for yourself.
The anime will be released here in Japan in July. This summer, men and dragons will be as one.
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1st December
Posted in General, Cinema at 6:54 am by Visez
There are some people that seem to be always right, no matter what the circumstances are. Even if sometimes it takes you one and a half years to realise it. So, after our talk, I followed your advice and I went to see Elizabethtown. Unsurprisingly, you were right again. Even after so long, even for something you knew nothing about, you came up so nonchalantly with the perfect answer. Apparently time doesn’t matter much for certain people and certain bonds. You know who you are.
Elizabethtown is a movie that could be easily mistaken for yet another Hollywood rom-com: sweet cute guy kinda lost in life, fortunate coincidence and he meets a pretty girl, they end up together and he’s happy again. This would be a very easy (and very unjust) dismissal of the movie. While the description above might fit countless other romantic comedies - Serendipity comes to mind - Elizabethtown is much more than that. In fact, I could almost say that the plot, the story itself, is completely irrelevant to the movie: Elizabethtown is not about the story at all, it is about the people in it: two people that fate brings together, two strangers that recognise each other, two souls that share the same private language. Only these two characters matter, everything else is just part of the canvas… Watching them during their dialogues is like seeing a play in a foreign language: their chemistry is so tangible that sometimes you think Orlando Bloom and Kirsten Dunst are not acting, but having their private jokes on screen. (And there is nothing better than writing something than you know only one other person will be able to fully understand, right? 
)
In an ocean of Hollywood cheese, it is nice to see that throughout the whole story, their chemistry is always rational. The “L” word is not mentioned once. They know their own nature and they know each other, and they realise they can’t (and shouldn’t) be together before the time is right. If they are meant to be, fate will bring them together again. This is not overly dramatised: Kirsten Dunst’s character says “I want you to get into the deep beautiful melancholy of everything that’s happened”. No rivers of tears, just an apparently contradictory mix of rationality and hope. Tragicalness confers beauty, and it is rare (especially among movies) to see something that is beautiful not BECAUSE it’s tragic. Some things can be beautiful and sad without these two qualities being related by causality, and should be treasured for this.
Apart from all this, it is a nice movie, with very good acting by everyone (apart from a Southern accent not always up to scratch by Kirsten Dunst), great portrayal of emotions, and a beautiful soundtrack. But then again, after Almost Famous, could we expect anything else from director Cameron Crowe?
If you like romantic comedies, and would like to see something more… real and introspective than usual, but certainly not less intense, you should go and watch this movie. Especially if all this sounds familiar to you…
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