Well... I think the rest of the civilised world is far luckier on this subject, but it seems that spain remains is still not worthy of beeing declared culturised. I am not speaking of the average spaniard, nor making an open and wide analysis and statement of the cultural level in this country of mine. I speak of an experience, of a bad experience.

Not so long ago (a few years) my sister and I were one of the very few to see "Princess Monoke" release here in spain. Only one cinema had it, and it didn't last very long. However, even back then, I was deeply moved by the story and impressed by the film, and even though many might not consider it Miyazaki's best work, and probably rigthly so, it will remain very special for me.

Later on, Spirited away (El viaje de Chihiro), was nominated for the oscar (and won, hollywood proved that very excepcionally it could show some taste, besides self-promoting its own movies.) and finally was realeased in spain. almost a year after than in the rest of the world. I saw Howl's moving castle on belgian cinema's a year and 6 months before its release in spain. With this third film, my sister and I had decided that this director was well worth looking into, so we started to look for his older work. We are still looking. It remains a test of will to keep looking in our country, where disappointment seems to await around every try. So far, we are still questing for his older work. We still haven't found one piece of it. We admit we are only looking in big shops (Fnac, El Corte Ingles...), and still refuse to order it. But it would seems that his works, even though world-wide recognised, and repeatedly re-edited, here, it is not considered to be worthy of exposing it to the general public.

Of course, nowadays nothing like this is impossible to come by. And specially not with unlimmited access on the internet. But I'd still love to find his work for sale and not pirated, in any more or less normal kultur kaufhaus as Fnac should be. So far, we have not resisted to download and chek out "my nieghbour totoro" but as we were watching Nausicaa, I decided to stop. A part of the film was missing, and even though we could guess what had happened I was growing sick of indignation. The film is far better than most trash we are spoon-fed as "good movies" (it evens has a lame american copy not worth naming). I want to see it for good. Good quality, original sound-track. Enjoy its flowing animation and its story. I have now discovered that the movie is based on his manga of the same title, far more complex, far more develloped, over 10 milllion copies sold in Japan alone. Only published too in USA/Canada and Brasil (<--- WTF! how come they can have it and not us!!!).
We also want to check out "Laputa: Castle in the Sky" but I ain't got my hopes high on finding it... maybe we'll have to end up buying it in amazon as we feared... On one side, thank goodness for globalization, on the other, how come the trash gets out first?