What do Peter Sagal, Totoro, and Derrida Have in Common?

They're all on the SF Chronicle's Sexiest Fictional/Dead/Alive Men List.

This actually made me look up Peter Sagal's picture. I was surprised. I expected a spry, sarcastic looking young man. Well, he's spry and sarcastic looking.

And Totoro? Do you really want to go there? Here's his entry:

Totoro (animated forest spirit, Hayao Miyazaki's "My Neighbor Totoro"): He's not really a man; he's more a giant, furry Blob of Cute, but he can fly. He belongs in the sky. We could belong to each other.

As for Derrida, not really my taste. Although I've always found this rendition of him hilarious:


Foucault, I think, was much hotter. In a Nosferatu sort of way. How could he be left out when Edward Said made the cut?

I Don't Want To Know (and you probably don't either)

It is always hard when you see the clay feet of your idols. In scanning for news of Studio Ghibli's Gedo Senki, I found the following quote from Goro Miyazaki - Hayao Miyazaki's son, and director of the new film (against his father's initial wishes):

. . . ever since I can remember, my father was often absent. . . I wanted him to look after me, and to play with me. But those opportunities almost never came. . . In this way, ever since I can remember, at the same time as enjoying them, I have been watching Hayao Miyazaki's works to understand my father. For me, Hayao Miyazaki gets zero marks as a father but full marks as a director of animated films.

This is the man who created My Neighbor Totoro? How is this possible?

But then I think of Christopher Milne, son of A. A. Milne, the creator of Winnie-the-Pooh, who wrote in his biography that he felt he was a "part time hobby" of his parents, that his father bought him stuffed animals so that they could provide writing material, and that he resented his father's work.

And then I hear that William Mayne, much celebrated children's author, was convicted in 2004 of sexual assualt of young girls.

This is a very depressing world at times. Is nothing sacred?

Geek, Not Greek

It's time I got truly geeked out again - and by truly geeked out I mean obsessing over things that will garner absolutely NO respect, probably a lot of ridicule, and get me no closer to any academic degree.

Here is the poster of Studio Ghibli's upcoming film, an adaptation of Ursula K. Le Guin's celebrated A Wizard of Earthsea:

Le Guin's trilogy was not my favorite...partly because "Ged" as the hero's name produced some complication when I read it aloud to M. Pronouncing it with a "guh" was weird, but as "Jed" it was even worse, like I should say, "Jed, whay doncha step out tuh the cow shed and pick me some cowcumbers." But, it will be "Geddo" in Japanese. Now that I think about it, the series seems especially amenable to Japanese adaptation, i.e. much of it makes no rational sense. I often get that feeling reading Japanese literature, like Banana Yamamoto's books: "This metaphor...makes no sense WHATSOEVER!"

You know what would be cool (this in my geekiest voice) is Studio Ghibli doing The Dark is Rising or Greenwitch - or The Grey King. While I'm at it, here is a list of my most beloved children's books that you MUST read now as an adult. I LOVE children's books, you know. I have been retroactively enriching M's childhood by reading these aloud to him (yes, I have read all these aloud to him*):

The Dark is Rising series
The Wind in the Willows
Anne of Green Gables series
Danny, the Champion of the World
The Long Secret
Fom the Mixed-up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler
A Cricket in Times Square series
A House with a Clock in Its Walls series

And then those most people class as children's books but aren't really:
Watership Down
The Lord of the Rings
Ender's Game
The Once and Future King

*No, we don't just read children's books. In case you're curious, I've also read M:
Middlemarch
The House of Mirth
Jane Eyre
etc. Yes, I do all the reading because I can't sit still listening.

Miyazaki's First Kiss

I've just returned from seeing Howl's Moving Castle (Hauru no Ugoku Shiro), Studio Ghibli's latest film (and that's the Ghibli Museum's ticket counter in the post below, in case you're wondering). I feel... a little sad. It was, of course, beautiful to look at. For example:



It's story was also lovelier than any American-made animation feature, in my opinion. But, compared to the jewels of Miyazaki's work, such as Totoro, Nausicaa, and even Princess Mononoke, something seemed missing from HMC. I was surprised not only by the repetition of themes and even art from Spirited Away but also, and even more so, by Miyazaki's growing sentimentality. This is the first film from Studio Ghibli that I find akin to Disney's Ariel-Pocohantas-Beauty type love stories, which saddens me. I may be wrong, but I think this is the studio's first film kiss, which seems such an American concept in animation features and so out of place for Miyazaki.* Restraint and subtlety have always marked the studio's love stories - witness Taeko and Toshio in Only Yesterday or Shizuku and Seiji in Whisper of the Heart, even given the dramatic conclusion. Granted, these are not Japanese characters, so cultural differences may be taken into account, but such was not the case with Porco or Lupin or any other "European" characters.

But this is not about kissing - it's the subtle change from films so different and unpredictable to something that seems so familiar, which makes it disappointing.

Regardless, see the film. It's beautiful and charming. See it subtitled, if you can. Somehow anime dubs all sound the same - the same cadence and acting, no matter the context. My theory is that the voice actors must always match the rhythm of mouth movements intended for Japanese, so English always sounds a bit wrong in the dub. Recognizing voices in dubs is also annoying - e.g. the kvetching of Billy Crystal, or Batman voicing Howl!

*Tanuki do NOT count.