I love me some Disney but, please, if you're going to hoist their banner alongside yours, give Studio Ghibli the treatment their works deserve! While I'm ecstatic that visually gorgeous though plot-muddled Tales from Earthsea gets a slick, English-dubbed (featuring Willem Dafoe, no less) U.S. release today (on DVD/Blu-ray), it comes with the sinking feeling that some of the works included in the famed Disney-Tokuma (Ghibli's parent company Tokuma Shoten Publications) deal struck in the mid-80's will never see the light of the silver screen stateside. [*sigh*]

However, Tales from Earthsea, originally released in Japan in 2007 and the directorial debut of Goro Miyazaki --- son of acclaimed Ghibli auteur Hayao Miyazaki, is a tepid mess of thrilling animation that could take the edge off the recent disappointing news that Disney will be delaying the U.S. theatrical release of Arrietty the Borrower (Studio Ghibli's most recent work, currently enjoying top billing in France with DVD release expected soon in Japan, Europe and elsewhere) until February 2012 --- that is, if Disney decides to release it here at all. What an incredible understanding these two studios have! 

Still this magical fantasy about the once-embattled relationship between humans and dragons and wizardfolk, whether clad in humble Gandalf garb (the good) or androgynous drag (the bad and the ugly), should leave fans of DreamWorks' How To Train Your Dragon feeling pants'd, in a good way. I've always felt that when comparing Disney and Studio Ghibli the difference is as much in the impression as it is in the message received; watching Disney reminds me of how rotten it used to feel when grown-ups talked down to me as a child, whereas watching Ghibli makes me recall those childhood instances when I was as excited as I was afraid of "growing up." Disney makes me want to stay in, but watching a great Ghibli film, and Tales from Earthsea is nowhere near the greatest, yet still pretty good, makes me want to go out afterwards and drink in the sweetness of existence. And not even the culture-washing power of Disney, what with their sometimes sub-sub-par English translations that carry over in to the dubbing and subtitles and wonky promotional trailers (see below), can bleed the beast of Studio Ghibli dry. In any case, if you're dying to get your Ghibli fix ASAP, you can bet your bottom-self "Chinatown special" that Amoeba will likely have bargain Arrietty the Borrower DVDs on sale soon after the rest of the world does, just like we did with Tales from Earthsea three years ago. In your face, Magic Kingdom!

Gary Weis' 1979 film 80 Blocks From Tiffany's, which was just released on DVD, offers a rare and intimate glimpse into a gritty bygone era in New York City's history. This was a time when street gangs (or "clubs," as their members called them) like the notorious Savage Skulls and the Savage Nomads ruled the tough South Bronx section of NYC. 

The engaging documentary may only date back 32 years but, in terms of cultural differences, it seems like an eternity ago -- back when the Bronx was, as Weis told me in a recent telephone interview, "A whole different time and place. It was kind of like Dresden when I filmed there."

Indeed, the South Bronx captured in 80 Blocks is the rubble-strewn, bombed out looking, New York City that ranked as one of the poorest areas in the nation back in '79. In fact, it was such a rundown, destitute place that both Presidents Carter and Reagan traveled there for photo ops to exemplify the most striking symbol they could find of urban decay in America. It was also the time and place when the subways were covered in graffiti and when a new music and culture called hip-hop was taking root in the "Boogie Down" Bronx, with hip-hop offering an alternative to gang culture to many in those formative years of the culture.

And it is this aspect of the film that has attracted so many to 80 Blocks From Tiffany's, since the film contains rare footage that has been reused in countless other films about that same period in NYC history such as Shan Nicholson's Rubble Kings and Travis Senger's White Lines and The Fever: The Death of DJ Junebug. "80 Blocks is the best documentation of the Bronx during the late 70's right before the gang culture started to fade away," Senger told me via email. He says the film acted as both an influence and a key source of content for his own film about the early days of a Bronx hip-hop club.

I have really fallen in love with the Blu-ray. I tried to resist for a long time but I have given in! I am not proud of it. I often give myself a couple of years before I succumb to a new format. I was still buying cassettes in 1993 -- I didn't really trust the whole CD thing! I loved my late 80s and early 90s cassettes and wasn't really ready to jump to compact discs yet. I couldn't really afford it, really. I had spent years putting together my collection of cassettes, and I owned every Depeche Mode album on tape, as well as every Cure album and every album by The Smiths and Morrissey. I did finally switch over in 1993, long after most of my friends had moved on to CDs. One of them got me Staring at the Sea by The Cure as a gift, my first CD. I was, of course, hooked now. I loved that you didn't have to flip over the cassette! Most exciting was that you could skip to whatever track you wanted. And it did sound amazing. No more hissing of my old cassettes! This was still a while before digital music so I was still making tons of mix tapes, but it was now so much easier to make mix tapes from CDs. I remember how it was always hard to get the cassette to the right spot for each song when making a mix tape. I could now even program my CD player to play certain songs or play at random and I loved my new CD player! The same thing happened with DVDs. I was a big fan of VHS -- I still actually really like it. I grew up on VHS! Most of my first time viewing of some of my favorite movies was on VHS. I loved going to rent movies from various rental stores in all the different places I lived. I even worked at a VHS rental shop in San Francisco in the 90s. I loved buying cheap VHS from swap meets and thrift stores. I am a collector of my favorite things; I like to glance at my bookshelf and see all my favorite books alphabetized in front of me. The same goes for my VHS, cassettes, and vinyl. I never really gave up on these old formats. I just added the new format to the list of one of the things that I collected.

John Woo, the director of both Hollywood blockbusters (Mission Impossible II, Face/Off, etc) and Hong Kong action films (Hard Boiled, The Killer, etc), was honored at the Venice Film Festival the other day when the 64 year old Chinese film director was given a Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement. The festival also screened Woo's new martial arts tour de force, Reign of Assassins.

Reign of Assassins (see trailer below), which was filmed in China and is set during the Ming Dynasty, is unique in that it is the first time that Woo has had a woman as a protagonist and it is also the first time that a Chinese film has had a real female hero. Michelle Yeoh plays the martial arts expert who is an assassin falling in love with the son of a man killed by her gang.

At the Venice Film Festival on Friday, the clearly pleased Woo told the press, "I want to make movies that will incorporate the good things from the West and the East." Reign of Assassins is the 35th film that Woo has directed in an impressive career that began back in 1968. Check out the DVD section of Amoeba for Woo's work and also check out these websites: God Among Directors.com, Media Circus, YahooMovies/JohnWoo, IMDb and Cinema of China.