Tales from Earthsea Website Up
English Site in Place for Goro Miyazaki Movie
Check out the British website for Goro Miyazaki's Tales from Earthsea (Gedo Senki in Japan) plus an English-language trailer.
Shortly before Goro Miyazaki's film Tales from Earthsea opens in the United Kingdom, Studio Ghibli's distributor has the English website up and running.
The site doesn't have a vast amount of content (unlike the overloaded sites for Hollywood flicks like Shrek the Third and The Simpsons Movie): there's a trailer right off the top, and an image gallery at the bottom. Pretty basic, but it gets the point across.
The trailer doesn't get into the story all that much: it presents the movie as a visual spectacle and even the quoted reviews praise the artwork and the set design. Not surprising, as the story was considered by many to be one of the weakest element in the flick. However, the artwork is classic Ghibli, and that is always a good thing.
It's interesting to note that the website also pushes the Miyazaki connection as hard as it can. "From the award-winning creators of (Hayao Miyazaki's) Spirited Away and Howl's Moving Castle" says the line at the very top of the site, and it's the first spoken line in the trailer. Although Ghibli would be fools not to associate this flick with some of their most successful product, it does make one wonder how long Goro Miyazaki will have to live in his father's extremely long shadow.
In similar news, Nausicaa.net managed to snag some names for the the English voice cast. The film will feature Timothy Dalton (The Living Daylights, Hot Fuzz) as Sparrowhawk aka Ged. Willem Dafoe (Shadow of the Vampire) will voice Cob, Matt Levin (Blades of Glory) takes on Arren, Cheech Marin (Cars) voices Hare, and Blaire Restaneo (The Legend of Sasquatch) voices Therru.
Keep in mind that copyright issues will keep Tales from Earthsea out of North American theatres until 2009 at the very earliest. The Sci-Fi Channel did a live-action made-for-cable movie in 2004, that author Le Guin absolutely despised, and no one else can mess with the property until five years after that flick's release date.
Disney distributes Studio Ghibli's work in North America, and it would be very surprising, given how well Tales from Earthsea did in Japan, if they don't release it here.
You can check out the British Tales from Earthsea website over here. The movie opens in the U.K. on August 3rd.
Fun Fact: Tales from Earthsea was Japan's most successful movie of 2006, and its most reviled. Both the film and Goro Miyazaki "won" the Worst Movie and the Worst Director awards at the Bunshun Kiichigo Awards, the Japanese equivalent of the Golden Razzberries.
