Saw Spirited Away tonight, and I loved it. Unequivocally. I haven’t seen much of Miyazaki’s stuff before, just Princess Mononoke, and the English dubbed version at that. I’m not ashamed to admit that I lost track of the plot in Mononoke fairly early on and by the end was just appreciating it for the animation, and I sort of expected the same result with Spirited Away.

Happily, I enjoyed Spirited Away completely, no disclaimers. Miyazaki creates a wonderfully imagined and realized fantasy world that’s just amazing to visit. It’s the story of Chichiro, a young girl who becomes trapped in a fantasy world at a spa for the supernatural and must rescue her parents and escape. Every scene is an absolute joy to behold, from the animated balls of ash working the boiler room to the flight of paper dolls doing battle with Haku the wolf-dragon, there’s a vibrancy and – for wont of a better word – spirit that permeates every cell of this film. And while there is a fair bit of CGI in the film for special effect sequences, it is still very much a hand-drawn traditionally-animated film, and I think it’s telling that it was more breathtaking to me than any computer-generated animation I’ve seen yet. All the computer processing in the world still can’t measure up to someone with pencil, paper and vision.

Ironically, Ian and Vic walked out of there claiming to have found it incomprehensible. This astonishes me – this had the most coherent, albeit simple, plot of any anime I’ve ever seen. Savages.

So yeah, if you’re partial at all to anime, fairy tales or just great fantasy films, go find a theatre screening this film and watch it. It’s just terrific.

np – Stereolab / Emperor Tomato Ketchup

A discussion about the power of the Corey’s in the 80s with Kyle yields this little nugget. Wow. Don’t be a Corey.

Going to catch Spirited Away tonight. It’s hauling in some serious cinema awards hardware. I still bet you $5 that by 2/3 of the way through, I have no idea what’s going on.

“I screwed her

And she screwed me

But we never once had sex”

— Doug Martsch, “Joyride”

np – Built To Spill / The Normal Years

Pitchfork turns their critical sights on the domestic issuance of the Ride best-of today. They basically dismiss Smile, exult Nowhere and Going Blank Again and savage Carnival Of Light and Tarantula. While it pains me to read a harsh word about my four fey boys from Oxford, it’s difficult to defend those last couple albums. They were pretty dreck, Tarantula more than COL. But I will fight anyone who dares say an unkind word about GBA.

There is a new Jonathan Carroll novel out, title White Apples. I don’t remember what the last novel of his I read was… but surfing his bibliography it seems I’ve missed more than a few. I’ve always liked his stuff, the way he dresses up horror and fantasy as straight contemporary fiction. Sleeping In Flame was one of my favorites. I will have to hit the library.

Definitely downshifting into pre-holiday mode. Yesterday really wiped me out. One week to go…

np – Sparklehorse / It’s A Wonderful Life

For no particular reason, I am going to declare how much I love Yo La Tengo.

I love Yo La Tengo thiiiiiiiiiiis much. Georgia’s voice is like a big warm blanket you can wrap around you and curl up to sleep in at night.

Listening to I Can Hear The Heart Beating As One was one of the few things today that got me through the interminable drive from downtown to the northeast end of Mississauga – a drive that shouldn’t take longer than 30-35 minutes. Took me an hour fifteen. As always, the snowfall makes people go stupid and drive like little old ladies. It was good in a way, reminding me just why I never leave the city.

Getting there was only half the fun… spending the next eight hours in a boardroom being taught how to use the Microsoft CMS was the rest. And boy oh boy was it fun. Actually, it wasn’t that bad and it was definitely a meeting I needed to attend so as to address some project-related issues with the team from Washington state, but still. It was a looong day.

I think my eye is telling me that these disposable contacts are done…

np – Built To Spill / Perfect From Now On

Pitchfork has updated their release dates page. They’ve got some dates I hadn’t seen reported before:

Loose Fur / Loose Fur – Jan 28

Wilco / Kamera EP – Feb 11

Ryan Adams / Love Is Hell – Mar 25

Portishead / Alien – Mar 25

Radiohead / TBA – Mar 25

I would only pencil these in though, because there’s some info on the page that’s contrary to more official sources, like for the new Bettie Serveert, Minus Five and the Wilco DVD.

I get to spend all day on-site in Mississauga doing training on Microsoft’s CMS system. And if that’s half as much fun as it sounds, I’ll be lucky.