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Looking For Quacks In The Pavement

  • The completed TMTT at last

    At long last, Tenchi Muyo Thumbnail Theater is complete. Not only that, but the email links work. (Whoops.) The only thing left to do is to hunt down some missing thumbnails, like for the Jurai Royal Family. It’ll keep…

    What’s keeping you, EK? *smirk*

  • Spirited Away

    Let me get right to the meat of the review: Spirited Away is an absolutely gorgeous piece of animation. It looks beautiful from start to finish. The action is fluid and dynamic. The design of scenery and characters is imaginative and detailed.

    A coworker pointed out that she favored “Princess Mononoke” over this film. My reply was that “Mononoke” is to “Nausicaa of the Valley of Wind” as this film is to “My Neighbor Totoro.” This is a child’s film, albeit a wonderfully detailed and imaginative one.

    The story is that of a young girl, Chihiro, trapped in a world of spirits and monsters. She starts out weak and afraid, but spurred by the desire to rescue her parents she finds an inner determination and generous nature that see her through an amazing series of challenges. Showing the value of determination, politeness and caring seems to be the driving principle of the movie.

    Not everything is sweetness and light. Yu-Baaba, the matron of the bathhouse, is quite the intimidating and dangerous woman. Genuinely scary things happen to and around Chihiro. There’s even a rather disgusting sequence involving regurgitation. You’ve been warned.

    I’ll briefly touch on the quality of the dub. Disney did right by this work, harnessing superb voices to a talented voice director and a quite decent script. Names were mostly unchanged, and the occasional instances of off-camera speaking used to explain certain cross-cultural elements weren’t jarring. I admit that I’m dub-agnostic when it comes to anime, so your mileage may vary. The zealots in the crowd will likely disagree with me, but the zealots probably aren’t reading this review.

    So is the movie perfect? Perhaps not, but the downsides are subjective. Chihiro’s transformation from incapable to indomitable seems a bit sudden in some ways, though there are key events that spur this transformation. There are a couple of “huh?” moments in the movie, but those could be explained by an incomplete grasp of cultural cues. Maybe. Little things, subjective things, are all that keep this movie from being a perfect 10. Yes, it’s really that good.

    “Spirited Away” is only in town through Thursday the 17th of October. As of this writing, that’s three more nights’ worth of chances to see this film in the theater. It is absolutely worth it. This is a splendid film.
    Spirited Away at Nausicaa.net

  • Random Monday Bloggage

    First off, my buddy John Taylor’s first major commissioned website project is now online. Check out the Posterman site if you’re into classic movie posters.

    Mari may have slacked a bit on the Friday Five action over the past month or so, but that’s okay. She’s a busy woman. Her Friday Fives are all caught up now, though!

    Last and possibly least, we have… this. I can’t think of anything truly clever to say about it, though. I’m counting on my faithful readers to make up for it in the quackbacks, okay?

  • Christmas List Items

    I’ve posted wishlists before, but usually just for media items. This time I want some hardware:

    I rely on music to balance my soul and maintain what semblance of sanity I possess. When my current set of cans finally give up the ghost, I want to replace them with a pair of these. Oh yeah.

    I love taking pictures, but my 35mm camera doesn’t get much mileage. I admit it: I’m cheap and lazy, so buying rolls of film, getting them developed and scanning the results into the computer is just not my thing. I want a decent digital camera. Something like, say, the Olympus D150-Z or the Kodak LS420 or the Canon Powershot Digital Elph S230… a decent entry-level sub-$300 digital camera. (I’m open to suggestions, actually. All the websites in the world can’t really tell me exactly what to get.) Thank you, dpreview.com.

    I’d ask for a portable music device, but so far none of them support Ogg Vorbis. Maybe next year…

  • Friday Five By The Numbers

    • If you could only choose 1 cd to ever listen to again, what would it be? – One? Only ONE? Ack! I live and die by my music. Okay, okay, if that’s how you want it. The special edition ‘Toy Matinee.’ There’s not one bad song on the original version, and one of the bonus tracks (Blank Page) quite eloquently states my own artistic frustration. Kevin Gilbert, we hardly knew ye. People, you must buy ‘Toy Matinee’ and Kevin’s solo work, ‘Thud.’ Do it now. I’ll wait. Go on.
    • If you could only choose 2 movies to watch ever again, what would they be? – This is a tougher question. In this fantasy scenario, I’d say that one film would be Miyazaki’s ‘Nausicaa of the Valley of Wind’ in some sort of complete, uncut and either well-subbed or well-dubbed form. (Let’s assume I have a DVD player and can have it both ways.) The botched dub of ‘Nausicaa’ known as ‘Warriors of the Wind’ was my first exposure to feature-length anime, and I still treasure it most highly. I’m not sure what the other film would be. You could set me up with one out of a number of other Miyazaki films (‘My Neighbor Totoro’ or ‘Princess Mononoke’ or even ‘Kiki’s Delivery Service’) and I’d be quite content. I can’t imagine which live-action film I could stand to be limited to, I’m afraid.
    • If you could only choose 3 books to read ever again, what would they be? – Most of the books I read are parts of series. I’m going to bend the question and count each series as one work. So there, nyah nyah. 1: Anne McCaffrey’s “harper hall” trilogy. 2: The Eddings’ “Belgariad”. 3: Stephen Donaldson’s “Mordant’s Need” double-book set. If I really wanted to abuse the question, I’d take McCaffrey’s entire Pern set and all of the Eddings’ Belgarath-centric works, but that would be greedy. Oh wait, I am…
    • If you could only choose 4 things to eat or drink ever again, what would they be? – French bread pizzas, those Stouffer’s things. Orange juice. Vegetable-beef soup w/ crackers. Hot cocoa.
    • If you could only choose 5 people to ever be/talk/associate/whatever with ever again, who would they be? – Let’s see, who would I be willing share my cocoa with? And how do I answer this question without pissing off everyone I leave out? Sheesh. What a mean question. If I take Wendi and the kids, that leaves only two slots. If I’m allowed to discount my family, I could select: Mari Toshimitsu, Benjamin Studtmann, Heather Dvorak, Steve McMullen and, say, some random really cool famous person. And yes, I know I haven’t talked to Steve in years. And also, yes, there are online friends I didn’t name, but most of those I haven’t really met so I wouldn’t (yet!) feel comfortable adding them to my list. See how hard it is to do this without slighting large numbers of people? The Friday Five folks should be ashamed of themselves. Sheesh.

    Friday Five

  • Spirited Away

    On a whim, I checked nausicaa.net to see if any Portland OR showtimes had been added for the latest Miyazaki film to reach the USA. Imagine my surprise when I see that it’s playing the Regal Fox Tower 10 (downtown Portland, right next to Pioneer Courthouse Square) starting this very day!

    (And payday isn’t until Tuesday. Grrr.)

    Go see this film. I insist. Even better, hook up with me mid-week for a big group viewing. Yeah! “Spirited Away.” A couple of hours filled with joyous Miyazaki anime goodness. You know you want to.

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