film: Tales from Earthsea (Goro Miyazaki)

[L2R]

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0495596/

I was fortunate enough to catch this at an extremely limited release (2 weeks in australia in one theatre).
The premiere film from the son of legendary filmmaker hayao miyazaki comes across as a bit of a hit n miss. Whilst he takes on themes, designs and scopes his father explores with gusto, and somewhat maintains the innocense of studio ghibli, he hasn't found his storytelling shoes fitting properly yet.
Many story elements from this tale are left undeveloped, and as a result, it is left with an overly polarised and simplified story
It's good but not great.

This director's future is very hard to see. He may learn from his disparity from his father's work and improve, or work harder to be an individual at the cost of everything that made studio ghibli so great. I sincerely hope the former.

3/5

 

[Benefit]

Unfortunately, the Sci-Fi Channel owns the rights to Earthsea in the US so it won't see release here until 2009.

 

[fasteddie]

Is this based on Ursula K. McGuin's books?

She's the best living sci-fi writer, you ask me.

 

[alasdairm]

rate this movie

alasdair

 

[physix]

She's the best living sci-fi writer, you ask me.

she definitely is one of them, if not the.


here's her response to this film (so, to answer your question: yes)

http://www.ursulakleguin.com/GedoSenkiResponse.html

so apparently, its as shite as the Sci Fi nonsense.

Director Goro's directorial blog is translated here.
it's lengthy... but interesting. even the translation footnotes are rather interesting.

This actually should be a lesson to film-makers.

some things are best absorbed thru books.
others, through more visual medium.

not everything with dragons and magic and villainy can translate onto the screen. Earthsea, in my opinion, is one of them. and, dear god, i fear the attempt anyone has of doing any of the books from the latter part of the series (esp. sci-fi channel)

 

[Benefit]

This movie sucks.

The end.

 

[Jamshyd]

Its ok, and just that.

I only watched it (till the end) because a friend asked me to. Otherwise, there is absolutely nothing original or particularly interesting about it - kinda like a mass-market paperback. Oh, wait...

I've never been big on ghibli anyway.

 

[JerryBlunted]

princess mononoke is one of the greatest animations of all time, IMHO. the storyline that flips the traditional idea of good versus evil on its head is something every kid in the world ought to see and think about.