Ebbtide

[randy_byers]

I ended up feeling pretty wiped out this weekend. I don't know why. Might just be part of the emotional cycle I'm going through. I ended up bailing on the Rat City Rollergirls on Saturday, because I just didn't have the energy.

I did spend a few hours at Potlatch both Friday and Saturday nights. It was good to chew the fat with various folks such as calimac, voidampersand, spikeiowa (who sort of complained that all I write about here is movies), k6rfm, and n6tqs (sporting a lovely new tattoo, and very close, apparently, to qualifying as an able-bodied seaman), along with local friends such as juliebata, nisi_la, jackwilliambell (who stroked my hair, the pervert), mcjulie, janeehawkins, kate_schaefer (who brought glad tidings of Full Sail's Imperial Porter Aged in Bourbon Barrels being on tap at the hotel bar, mach schnell), and even one or two non-LJ friends such as my co-editors, Scott K, Victor G, Craig S, and Bryan Barrett, who is recovering from losing his foot recently to complications from diabetes. As zoned as I was feeling, it still seemed to me that the convention was going very well and that people were really enjoying themselves. The auction raised a fair amount of money for Clarion West, and when I left around midnight on Saturday I saw Ellen Klages being shorn of her hair, which she had auctioned off. Congrats to the concom for a successful convention.

Other than that, I worked on proofing the British fanthology that will be distributed at Corflu Cobalt. It's a corker, if I do say so myself. And last night I watched Miyazaki's Porco Rosso. I'm slowly getting caught up on Miyazaki, and this is one I'd never seen before. It's brilliant, just like everything of his I've seen so far. The setting is Italy after WWI, but it's a fantasy Italy of sky pirates and bounty hunters. Our hero is a bounty hunter who was once a handsome young military pilot but who is now a pig due to a spell cast on him. One of the things I love about Miyazaki is the deep sense of mystery in all his films. He doesn't explain everything about the background. It enhances the magical feel. And nobody does flying like Miyazaki. I'm not sure how he does it. Maybe it's the way he gets right down on the landscape, and gives us the sense of rushing across it. Oh, and to enhance the strangeness of it all, I listened to the French dub, which I've read somewhere that Miyazaki prefers to the Japanese dub. Italians speaking French in a Japanese anime? Magic!

(Sorry, Spike! But at least I didn't watch the Oscars. But hooray for Kathryn Bigelow!)

Comments

[replyhazy.livejournal.com]

Wanted to ask you for ideas about something.

Going through some old pictures I found some photos I took at Novacon back in... oh... geez. I don't really remember what year. Maybe 2000? They are a series of photos of a British fan (whose name I have forgotten) demonstrating the Astral Pole.

Seems like these ought to be good for SOMETHING though I do not know what. Any ideas/suggestions?

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

Are you looking for a home for them? There are various people hosting fannish photo sites. Fanac.org, for instance, and I think Bill Burns has some at efanzines.com. Is that the kind of thing you're looking for? It might be worth putting a feeler out on trufen just to see if anybody there is interested. Or fmzfen, if you're on that one.

[wrdnrd]

Ahhhh, the seduction of the stubbly head. When i started buzzing my hair i had one of my profs decide he wanted to give it pet. I had a lot of people who wanted to touch it -- friends, classmates ("It just looks so soft!!") -- but having one of my male profs want to touch it was the creepiest.

"Porco Rosso" is one of the very few Miyazakis i'm not in a hurry to watch again. "Ponyo" i found super disappointing. By contrast, i don't want to re-watch "Porco Rosso" any time soon because it was SO good -- i was sobbing by the end. When it was finished, i turned to Andy (who'd seen it already) and said, "That was HORRIBLY upsetting??? WHY DIDN'T YOU TELL ME?!"

What i especially love about Miyazaki's magic is that it's just there. I really like that he doesn't go to great lengths -- or, with "Porco Rosso," *any* lengths -- to explain things. And no one in "Porco Rosso" really questions it. So he has a pig's face? So what. These things happen in war.

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

Well, Jack keeps his hair buzzed short too, so he could stroke his own hair if the wanted the feel. In fact, Jack could well accuse me of stealing his look, except that I'm balder than he is.

And yeah, the ending of Porco Rosso. Utterly pitch perfect. I didn't find it upsetting, but perhaps I was just in the right mood for that kind of ending.

I haven't seen Ponyo yet, or Howl's Moving Castle. Also still to be seen are Nausicaa and Mononoke, which will probably come first.

[grytpype-thynne.livejournal.com]

" I ended up bailing on the Rat City Rollergirls on Saturday"

Just so we know: how many Rat City Rollergirls can you normally handle on a Saturday night?

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

Beats me. If you know what I mean. And I'm sure you do.

[daveon.livejournal.com]

We'll count for you when you come on the 10th ;)

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

Oh, the humiliation. Sounds like fun!

[surliminal.livejournal.com]

I've seen all those Miyazakis and pretty much lovedem all but am not sure I can remember anything distinct about any of them (the way I can , to compare, about Up and Ratastouille and The Incredibles. ) Not sure this is a criticism - you could probably say the same about Rohmer or Allen when they were good..

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

I can see what you mean, although to me each Miyazaki has felt like a different pocket universe with a different history and often a very different sense of scale: Totoro is a backyard, Porco Rosso a rural countryside, Laputa a baroque SF world, Spirited Away an alternate spiritual universe. On the other hand, several of them have felt Ruritanian, so there's that, and there's frequently an interest in machinery and flight. In general, however, I find his approach much more full of mystery, beauty, and human complexity than things like Up or Wall-E, which feel more feel-good formulaic to me. (I do love The Incredibles, haven't seen Ratatouille.) Maybe, as you imply in your comparison to Rohmer and Allen, it's that Miyazaki has worked out his own formula, which feels more individual, more personal. (Another comment you see frequently about Porco Rosso is that it's his most personal movie (he apparently likes to draw himself as a pig), although he has based bits of his other movies on his own life as well -- e.g., the sick mother in Totoro. Which again has that deep sense of mystery about it, because the children really don't understand what's going on with her, so we don't either.)