Coming soon to a black market near you

The Studio Ghibli anime production of Tales from Earthsea seems to be going great guns in Japan. See also this article .

Further clarification for those of us in the U.S. may have to wait a good long while. Although Locus states that "the strong opening in Japan means that US distribution could happen relatively quickly", the LA Times reporter states that "the film screened at the Venice Film Festival in Italy on Sunday but cannot have a release in the U.S. until an American TV series' copyright expires in 2009." I suspect that the reporter is confused about terminology. Any existing copyright will last effectively in perpetuity, thanks to our Congress's slavish obedience to its Hollywood masters. Perhaps this is a confused reference to some kind of contract giving a certain company the exclusive right to distribute broadcast productions of LeGuin's stories in the US for a specified length of time?

Wikipedia's current entry on the film suggests that this is, indeed, the case. So until 2009, unless our neofeudal Copyright Barons resolve their feud amicably, keep an eye on those black- and grey-market DVD sources if you want to see this one.