ne(one)piphany

Had correspondents on the search for Ginger Altoids all day yesterday, with absolutely no success. Am beginning to wonder whether this is all an elaborately constructed hoax, but no: I certainly held a tin in my hands on Friday, and even sampled a mint. Suggestions were helpfully offered but sadly misleading… We struck out at Trader Joe’s, where some on the web had reported success, and an enthusiastic tip that the Mercer Larry’s had them as of 4 p.m. on Saturday seems to have been in error (Eggy: “The lady there looked at me as if she had never heard of them” — like Keyser Soze, gone without a trace).

Have a few more yuppie market prospects to check out before I’ll be willing to concede defeat; alternately, if anyone has a lead on where they might be ordered online, that just might do as well. At this point, any word merely corroborating their existence would be a comfort!

DVD news, in short: Disney will be releasing Miyazaki’s Spirited Away, Kiki’s Delivery Service and Castle in the Sky Laputa in one- and two-disc special editions, all in April. Both original and dubbed soundtracks will be included, as well as as-yet-unspecified special features. More than I had hoped for! Also, Dreamworks will release the original Japanese version of Ring on the same day that last year’s American remake arrives on DVD.

Hear that? That’s the sound of a lot of tense movie fans sighing in relief.

• via The Seattle Times, six sushi restaurants in the Seattle area for sushi lovers. I’ve only been to Shiki, which tops the list and was sublime. No doubt the rest will be attacked in short order!
• from jimfl, via comments, Kitty-chan sausages.
• Adorable! Obviously, the web needs more baby pictures.

Saw Miyazaki’s Spirited Away this afternoon, and it was just incredible. It was big, beautiful, weird, dark, whimsical… that last one, especially, a Miyazaki trademark I thought sorely lacking in Mononoke Hime and a big reason why I haven’t ever thought of that film (despite its wide acclaim) as one of his better works.

Truthfully, I’ve never really been able to rank Miyazaki’s output; each one is so different that at various times, any of his pictures have had special resonance with me. Totoro and Kiki talk directly to earlier versions of me, Porco Rosso to my hopelessly romantic core (and I suspect, something more complex as I get older), Laputa to my sense of adventure and wonder. Mononoke is the exception, because in many respects it’s a reinvention of his earlier Kaze no tani no Nausicaa rather than its own distinct work. It remains to be seen where Sen will stand; I suspect many more viewings will be necessary before I know for sure.

Hopefully Disney will market it well. I think it would appeal to kids hopped up on Harry Potter or Roald Dahl books.

Last night was Battle Royale, a film from Japan dealing with a class of high schoolers who are left on an island with weapons and explosive collars around their necks. Their task: only one can remain alive after the third day, or everyone dies. I would say Lord of the Flies on speed, but I haven’t read (or seen) it yet.

Can’t say I was a real fan of this film, but a lot of the recent hyper-violent Japanese movies that have been getting popular over here in the last few years (for example, about a billion pictures by Takashi Miike) haven’t done much for me, either. Come to think of it, this applies even to more introspective films, such as Shunji Iwai’s Lily Chou-Chou no subete. I think there’s something about the modern Japanese youth experience that I just can’t relate to, and that’s affecting my ability to enjoy these pictures.

Of course there’s something about lots of anime youth titles that I click with instantly, stuff like Kareshi kanojo no jijo. But most of what I like is at least four years old now and the live action films I talked about are all from the last two years. There’s also probably a noticeable age gap between the folks who made the anime and these new, hotshot directors.

Is this just a way of saying I feel old? I guess so.

Oddly enough, I’ve very much been enjoying youth-oriented Korean films from the same timeframe. Something else to wonder about?