was browsing the studio ghibli website, checking if i in fact have all the acclaimed animated film outfit's main titles in a 19-CD boxed set i got last year. was pleasantly surprised that studio ghibli made an animated adaptation just last year of ursula k. le guin's Tales from Earthsea, which came after the nebula award-winning writer's earthsea trilogy. of course, i don't have it yet.
many anime fans would often sum up studio ghibli's success to that of a single man: its most renowned director, Hayao Miyazaki, who directed such unforgettable titles as "Howl's Moving Castle," "My Neighbor Totoro," "Princess Mononoke," "Porco Rosso," and "Spirited Away," the first ever Japanese animated feature to win an Oscar.
interestingly, Tales From Earthsea was directed by Miyasaki's son, Gorō. this is the son's first work and the father said something to the effect of having finally "accepted Gorō" after previewing the film. how japanese (but heck, what do i know). hmmm....i'm intrigued by the movie. hirap lang n'yan would be the necessary and unavoidable comparison to the father's works. wasak. teka...nyay! eto na si Yevaud!
Sea Grapes
That sail which leans on light,
tired of islands,
a schooner beating up the Caribbean
for home, could be Odysseus,
home-bound on the Aegean;
that father and husband's
longing, under gnarled sour grapes, is
like the adulterer hearing Nausicaa's name
in every gull's outcry.
This brings nobody peace. The ancient war
between obsession and responsibility
will never finish and has been the same
for the sea-wanderer or the one on shore
now wriggling on his sandals to walk home,
since Troy sighed its last flame,
and the blind giant's boulder heaved the trough
from whose groundswell the great hexameters come
to the conclusions of exhausted surf.
The classics can console. But not enough.
Derek Walcott
from Selected Poems by Derek Walcott
2007 Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
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and, in the PDI today, this wasak photo. find the sea grape and win a prize!
