gake no ue no ponyo, and other thoughts

Ponyo on a Cliff by the Sea was an interesting movie. I really, really couldn't like Ponyo as a character, because she was just exasperating for a lack of a better descriptor. I loved Sen/Chihiro in Spirited Away because she was still aware of what she was doing, even though she was a child, and Ponyo seemed more like a spoilt brat that just got everything she wanted because she was the daughter of the sea king and had magic. And she just ...I don't know, I think I wanted her to have the self-same awareness and still honest awe/admiration at the upper non-sea world, and she didn't. But....she was still charming anyways : like, she just crashed her way into Sosuke's world / heart and....was just undeniably strong-willed and well, while she's a spoilt brat, there was always a little of said spoiled brat in all of us. I think. Or at least, maybe just me. And while she's not drowned in awe for the world around us, she's earnest in how she is, without pretensions, and it's kind of endearing. So it was still an enjoyable hour anyways, but I don't really think it was a movie needed to be seen in theaters. Possibly still a movie to be seen, though.

On other notes, I miss reading legit literature. Someone was getting Octavian Nothing for some reason or another (which I had been planning on reading for a long, long time) and the first line of that - "I was raised in a gaunt house with a garden; my earliest recollections are of floating lights in the apple trees." is just pretty. Its writing as if words that are more than just words, infused with a meaning other than for plot and to further the reader along, with at least some thought to what they sound like together - almost lyrical, maybe. Or Of Mice and Men - I picked it up when it was just sitting on the table and didn't want to put it down after just the first paragraph - mainly for the image of the water of the Salinas River, and how it "slipped twinkling over the yellow sands in the sunlight before reaching the narrow pool." Maybe I really haven't been reading much writing these days - then again, I'm still in in my escapism books, the ones that construct words as just plot-delivery devices and not much else. Well, no, Jacqueline Carey still writes pretty darn well. But it's either escapist fantasy om nom or non-fiction up the wazoo or looking at gardens and architectural lighting. Which is dumb, but well, I don't think I'm quite perfectly ready yet to smash my brain silly with lingustic literary gloriousness, I think. Not quite back to that level of smart or critical thinking or patience, even really (which I never had, but then again, a few years back I was still okay with being pretentious to read and ..well, I'd still enjoy the books, but now I'm not, and I'd rather wait until I'm okay devouring those books. In the mean-time, non-fiction to edumacate my brain! And which I still find completely interesting without trying to posture myself as smrt smrt, so it's not like I'm completely off on the deep end of bad scifi and chick lit...)

And oh man, architectural lighting. I love good architecture and elegant design....but architectural lighting...mmm, how to describe it. It's not something that you need for a good building, but it can change a mediocre room into a place you'd want to spend forever and a nap at. It's just a pet love of mine - I guess some things never change, and well, lighting design done right still is one of the most awe-inspiring things ever. (e.g. SPRING AWAKENING'S LIGHTING) And as does the fact that the jingle ponyo, ponyo, ponyo, ponyo by the sea is still stuck in my mind.