and happy all hallow's eve to the dead amongs us.
How many verifiable reports of strangers tampering with Halloween candy have there been since 1958?
(Don't send me your answers. This is just a little way to expand your horizons. Honest.)
A few years ago Darin went to Japan and returned with a whole bunch of Japanese laserdiscs--primarily the work of one director, Hayao Miyazaki, whose work was either not available in this country or just not available on laserdisc. Darin had seen some of his work and really loved it, so he picked up Kiki's Delivery Service, Laputa, My Neighbor Totoro, Nausicaa, and Porco Rosso. I know Kiki and Laputa (renamed Castle in the Sky) and possibly Totoro are now available here from Disney on home video, but they weren't then.
So we sat down to watch them and they were really pretty good. Exceptionally good, if you remember that these are the Japanese discs and therefore did not have English tracks. We watched them in Japanese and managed, I think, to get the gist of what was going on. In fact, I know we've watched Laputa more than once; I know we put on Totoro for Brent's daughter Ellie and she seemed to enjoy it just fine. (That Totoro--so cute.)
We were really excited to hear that Disney was going to release Mononoke Hime here in the US with an English-languge script by Neil Gaiman and a really great cast of voices and, of course, Miyazaki's trademark grand, sweeping vision.
I knew it opened on Friday the 29th, so when Harry and Brent came over on Friday to have lunch with Darin, we decided to go to the Laemmle Sunset and catch Princess Mononoke on opening day.
This movie has gotten amazing reviews. Glowing, ecstatic, orgasmic reviews. It is quite possible that professional reviewers know something I do not, that they get something out of the experience of watching a film that I do not.
I am now about to reveal that I am a Philistine.
I was kinda bored. When I found myself wondering if it would be better in the original Japanese (where I could just make up what was being said), I knew I was in trouble. I've heard that many of the themes in this movie have to do with ancient Japanese legends, and that could be one source of my disinterest in this film.
Miyazaki hits many of his favorite themes in this film--primarily, man versus nature, or more specifically technology versus nature, and guess which one's absolutely bad--and it's glorious to look at. This is not Disney's "let the computer do it" animation; this is animation-as-vision-on-the-world. His films have a giant scope and take you to worlds of imagination, from Irontown (where the people are burning down the forests to get at the iron ore, angering the ancient forest gods) to the heart of the forest, where the Forest Spirit lives, to confrontations between the Boar God and the Wolf God.
But, as with many of Miyazaki's films, the story is incoherent. Okay, you say, you don't go to Miyazaki's films for the story. Well, fine: you'll be happy as a camper then. There were too many elements in this that kept turning on my Storyometer.
For instance, Prince Ashitaka gets cursed by the Boar Demon in the opening scene (which is amazing to watch) and the upshot of this curse is...it gives him the powers of a god. Oh bummer. And his whole quest is about getting the curse lifted...and that kinda gets resolved and kinda doesn't. There are a few more examples of stuff like this--questions raised that are never answered--that just leave me feeling frustrated. Again, maybe it's my lack of knowledge of Japanese lore, and that stuff isn't in there because everyone knows how it turns out. But I felt the lack.
And...why is it called Princess Mononoke? That's the one I couldn't figure out. She isn't central to any of the action--Prince Ashitaka is the main character, and the main conflict is over the Forest Spirit. Another reason not to name it Princess Mononoke: it's not a movie for little kids, because it's too violent, with arrows ripping off heads and arms quite graphically.
Harry, Brent, and Darin seemed to like it better than I did, although Brent agreed that Ellie shouldn't go see it. But we didn't discuss it at all after leaving the theater, which is a bad sign for me movie-wise.
The other day, Darin and I went to lunch at JoJo's on Ventura, and as we left I said, "Peter Strauss was sitting by the window." He asked me why I hadn't told him when we were at the restaurant, and I said I couldn't think of a way to tell him without being obvious about it.
On Friday, before going to the movie, we went into the Virgin Megastore and Darin waited patiently at the upstairs counter while the guy tried to ring up his purchases and eventually failed. So he had to go downstairs to buy his game. When we went into the theater, I asked if he'd seen who was standing next to him at the upstairs checkout counter. He said no.
"Nicolas Cage," I said.
Total exasperation. "Why don't you tell me?" he asked.
"He was standing right next to you!"
Cage did notice I was looking at him: while waiting for Darin to come back upstairs I lurked near the doors a bit, and Cage turned around and stared directly at me, like, "Stop looking at me, dammit." He looks pretty much like he does in the movie, except his hair was a lighter brown than I'd expect. And he was shorter than Darin, but most guys are, so that wasn't that surprising.
I think I've used up my celebrity sighting quotient for the year.
The answer to Thursday's question: reports came out that said Coca-Cola had developed a new soft-drink machine that would change the price of the soda depending on the temperature outside. Katy Mulvey wrote me with a link to this article, which claims that Coca-Cola has done no such thing and those damn news reports were wrong.
But...do you believe them?
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Copyright 1999 Diane Patterson
Send comments and questions to diane@spies.com