somebody still has my copy of Earthsea, too

[freckles_and_doubt]

What is it about hen parties that even small, relatively well-conducted ones end up with most of the participants naked in the swimming pool playing Truth or Dare somewhere around 11pm? (Not me, I hasten to add, it needs to be broad daylight in an infernal heatwave before I'll swim, and the remnants of this chest infection were a lovely excuse). It is also humiliating to note that, if all the other participants were telling the truth, my personal life has been entirely and boringly vanilla. All-girl groups scare me on a fairly primal level, possibly as a result of my last four years of high school in an all-female private school (shudder), so I am pleased to note that it was a lovely evening and a good send-off for Vi.

In the Department of Random Cinematic Escapism, I recently acquired a copy of the Studio Ghibli Tales of Earthsea and finally got around to watching it the other night. I love the Studio Ghibli stuff and my devotion to Hayao Miyazaki is undying, so I had cautious but reasonable expectations of the film even though it was written and directed by Goro Miyazaki, Hayao's son. In fact I should have been more suspicious: the sequel is never as good as the original. Tales from Earthsea is a weird, half-baked, unformed, curiously naive little film with slightly puppy-dog good intentions unbacked by too much in the way of actual artistic merit; some lovely visuals, but even more which are somewhat arb. It kept on doing stupidly obvious things with swelling music over sequences of rolling fields, setting suns, what have you, and ye gods but those were seriously under-utilised and really badly animated dragons.

It's remotely possible I would have enjoyed the film more if I hadn't happened to be a drooling Le Guin fangirl who knows all five books of the Earthsea series rather more than moderately well, since I didn't think the script did them much justice. I have to give the writer props for going straight to the difficult bit, which is the whole life/death theme from Farthest Shore, but the Cobb plotline was fragmented and its logic lost. Apart from anything else, it was to the highest degree nitwittish to try and use that plot without including the cold, dry, downhill slope of the lands of the dead, which is quite one of the most haunting and beautifully constructed images in modern fantasy. The script ended up hashing together various themes from across all the novels, but without much underlying coherence, and they did truly horrible things to Prince Arren. Also, what was with the random and inexplicable magical sword? Phooey. Poor Earthsea seems doomed to be bastardised by varying degrees of hackery: this was a better film than the recent miniseries, but it still wasn't up to much.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

Hehe, part of the reason for stripping and jumping in the pool was to get out of the damn constume I'd been coerced into. My alter ego might occasionally enjoy the idea of a very short leather skirt, fishnet stockings, color, whip, italian lether boots and leopard furr bodice, but the rest of me was feeling somewhat stifled:) Also, I think that swimming naked under the stars is wonderful and having no men around makes that possible without any self consciousness. I had a fabulous evening, thanks to you and all the girls there:)

[extemporanea.livejournal.com]

Ah! all becomes clear. You looked alarmingly good in the costume, but I can understand the need to ditch it, it wasn't really you :>. Swimming naked under the stars is indeed wonderful, but not unless it's stinking hot, as far as I'm concerned. Call me wussy.

[wolverine-nun.livejournal.com]

Yeah, the Zim war, owls at the breakfast table and streaked hair due to mad redheads has always struck me as kinda meh.

[extemporanea.livejournal.com]

Not owls at the breakfast table, really. Goats on the tea table and owls in the kitchen. And in my mother's cupboard, nesting in her straw hat.

You have a point, except that I was using "personal life" as a euphemism for "mad sex life". My life is madly exciting only until you add "in bed" to any of it.