(no subject)
Tuesday, March 28th, 2006 08:37 pmSpring melancholy. The 20-somethings squeeing over Peter and Harriet make me feel old. I too squeed once. Then I reread the books twenty years later and thought 'what an odious unlikable pair.' Nothing comes as it came before, and everything looks worse second time around...
( But is for others undiminished somewhere. )
Everything looks worse second time around except for Miyazaki maybe. I finally watched Howl in a decent copy, not pirated with crappy sound and surrreal subtitles. Followed it with a reread of the book. I like the Miyazaki better than before, naturally, but I'm surprised to find it edging the book out as well. Miyazaki's WTF interpolations- the war, the bird, that disconcertingly story-book disguised prince- who gave me the creeps BTW- are on balance no more WTF than Jones' own trademark and casual WTFs- like the dog man who's actually two people, that I still can't figure out precisely what happened to him where, and what was going on between Howl and the Witch and why, and all that stuff in the last quarter of the book that's just there, deal with it. There's a lot of thready loose-endedness in Jones, which is doubtless a change from the common run with every last blessed detail explicated into the dust, but it does annoy the tidy-minded, like me.
And of course Miyazaki has his landscapes, straight out of 1920's children's books with the colours intact. This is no fair because he's a master of landscapes and wins with them over just about anyone I can think of.
( But is for others undiminished somewhere. )
Everything looks worse second time around except for Miyazaki maybe. I finally watched Howl in a decent copy, not pirated with crappy sound and surrreal subtitles. Followed it with a reread of the book. I like the Miyazaki better than before, naturally, but I'm surprised to find it edging the book out as well. Miyazaki's WTF interpolations- the war, the bird, that disconcertingly story-book disguised prince- who gave me the creeps BTW- are on balance no more WTF than Jones' own trademark and casual WTFs- like the dog man who's actually two people, that I still can't figure out precisely what happened to him where, and what was going on between Howl and the Witch and why, and all that stuff in the last quarter of the book that's just there, deal with it. There's a lot of thready loose-endedness in Jones, which is doubtless a change from the common run with every last blessed detail explicated into the dust, but it does annoy the tidy-minded, like me.
And of course Miyazaki has his landscapes, straight out of 1920's children's books with the colours intact. This is no fair because he's a master of landscapes and wins with them over just about anyone I can think of.
