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Spirited Away

Spirited Away

List Price: $29.99
Your Price: $22.49
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Rating: 2 stars
Summary: I don't understand
Review: I watched "Spirited Away", after reading so many reviews about how it was the greatest thing ever created. I saw so much creativity involved in the process, but the plot holes were so deep I couldn't pull myself into the movie. I'm glad so many people find this movie wonderful, and hopefully I will watch it again someday and see that I am wrong. But I doubt it.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Great movie.
Review: Even if you hate Disney, like I do, don't make it stop you from buying this. Miyazaki smartly said Disney can't do anything to it which means they couldn't make it into junk. So in the end it's still a wonderful movie to watch over and over again.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Not for the average Disney fan
Review: If you watch this movie expecting to see Lion King or Alice in Wonderland, then don't waste your time. For children AND adults with a taste for something new, different and even genuinely scary - sit back, dim the lights, and get ready to take a journey the likes of which Disney animated features never quite reach.

This is not a typical Western-oriented story. It is, almost literally, the work of one man. Miyazaki is a Master of storytelling, and injects a sense of realism in this fantastical world that makes it all the more entertaining and even more memorable than some "classics".

Over two hours long, there is much more story development and true scariness than many young children can stand, so take heed. Even for those who are fed up with the steady stream of anime, this is nothing like what is bombarding the airwaves. There are real characters here - some good and some bad - but no one to hate. Also, some characters that are quite scary, yet turn out to be not so bad after all. Morality even children can appreciate.

Japanese animation has come far in 40 years, when "Alakazam" was first Westernized for American viewing. Whomever ordered that the Disney studios were not permitted to change a single frame of this movie deserves a great deal of gratitude. This is truly a classic to enjoy over and over.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: A lot of hype, but it fails to produce......
Review: OK, I read a lot of reviews before buying it last week, and I thought this was going to be one the best animated movies in my collection. The story seemed intriguing and the animation looked pretty good. Whoever made the trailer for this movie deserves a raise, 'cause the movie sure as hell did not live up to all the hype. It started out pretty good, but it all went down hill from there. The movie seems to wander around and gets a little boring at times. I have a lot of other Disney/non Disney animated movies which are FAR superior to this one. Its an OK movie and I would recommend to rent it, NOT buy it. The idea behind that a little girl gets stranded in a spirit world is actually a very good one but it was never brought to its full potential.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: It will spirit you away
Review: This is Miyazaki's newest masterpiece. I think this movie is second only to Princess Mononoke. It is about Chichiro and Haku. Chichiro and her family are on a driving trip when they stumble into an abandoned old town. Haku saves her and tells her to get a job there or she will be found out and killed. Yubaba the witch doesn't want her to keep her name and steals it. A lot of interesting things happen but if I told you that would spoil the movie. It is a must see. Anime to the extreme and a story that will warm the heart and touch the soul.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: excellent output from Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli
Review: I've been a fan of Miyazaki films long before I became a fan of Japanese animation. Miyazaki always seems to be able to tap into the themes we all recognize and while weaving into it surprise and the sense of the fantastic, grounds it firmly in the way life really works.

When Mononoke Hime (Princess Mononoke) came out in 2000 and blew me away, it seemed to be the culmination of all the excellent work Studio Ghibli had come out with over the years, such as My Neighbor Totoro, and Nausicaa, Valley of the Wind, seamlessly merging new technology with traditional animation methods and of course, a wonderful, haunting soundtrack. I was wondering how long it would be til the next Miyazaki masterpiece came out, and how it would up the ante again on animated features and storytelling.

This year Miyazaki pulls through again with his gift of adding truth to fiction in the way he really cares about how little girls really behave, and gives many of his characters unique subtle mannerisms that round them out and make them much more real to us. However he also breaks the Ghibli heroine's mold with 10-year old Chihiro, who is pouty, whiny, scared and having difficulty adjusting to moving to a new place. Not a tough, self-sufficient girl like Nausicaa, or San from Mononoke Hime, nor is she sweet or pretty like Sheeta in Castle in the Sky.

However. Miyazaki proves to us that even snub-nosed, spoiled 10-year old girls can grow up to be rather likeable people, and Chihiro, despite the odds, manages to wade through her fears and selfishness to come out much wiser and a little less selfish and afraid in the end. While it seems nothing else has changed and life goes on, Chihiro keeps for herself the gifts she gets from the experience, even if no one else knows about Yubaba, the bath house, or Haku.

I believe it's worth getting the DVD because apart from the merits of the film itself, the DVD allows us to look into the work that went into the creation of Spirited Away inside both Disney and Studio Ghibli, from the English Dubbing to the sleepless nights the animation crew worked through to meet their deadline, to the creation of the soundtrack. Disney did a good job dubbing this film in English but I am particularly grateful for the fact that they added in the option to watch the film in the original Japanese track with English subtitles.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: A Wonderful Movie
Review: I'm not usualy a huge fan of cartoon movies, but this movie made me into a cartoon fanatic. It is wonderful in its fanciful nature and overall heartwarming feel. I absolutely loved it, bought it, and I'm still not sick of it. The movie was originally in Japanese subtitles and I was a bit skeptical about the translation to the English version, thinking something would be lost. But suprisingly it is just as good as the original, the characters voices fit in perfectly as if it had been in English all along. All in all an excellent movie that I can't say enough about.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Spirited Away is like a cup of tea!
Review: Spirited Away is about this lazy spoiled ten year old Chihiro and how she copes with good and evil in a spirit world different from ours. Her family for some reason decide to move, as they drive to their new home her dad ends up taking a short cut!Opps! Chihiro and her parents end up finding an abandon amusment park as they explore this world Chihiro's parents are turned into pigs because they ate food that was for the gods of the spirit world. Haku, a mysterious boy helps Chihiro to find work at the bath house the only place that Chihiro can find safety from the selfish witch Yu-Baba. I have watch this DVD like 3 times and havn't gotten sick of it, the characters Miyazaki creates are just so lovable and fun! My favorite is Haku and Chihiro. The graphics and background art is too cool and it really catches your eyes! Okay even though the voices are a little too disney for some I like them, they did good anyway. Spirited Away is PG meaning your child, for this particular movie might want to be 9 or older since the scary moments are tense and graphic. Alright I'll say since no one else did. Parents Spirited away is a Japanese anime, a type of advance cartoon with cpmlex events, plots and characters. These are different from disney movies in many ways... Spirited Away does have animated blood and gross moments but these all happen fairly qickly I'm saying this since I don't want other parents to hack or chop this film up just because it scared their kid. PG now adays just isn't the same maybe they would pefer Kiki's Delivery service(My personal fave.) or Castle in the sky if you still want to introduce them into anime. Anyway great movie for those that are going to be 10 and those who use to be 10.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Would have given if 5 if it weren't for the terrible US dub
Review: I really enjoyed this movie. I won't go into the story or plot as others here have done it so well.

With the exception of Princess Mononoke this is the best animated movie I've ever seen. Aside from the most beautifully drawn animation and a great imagination, this movie is free of the schmaltz, sentimentality and ram down your throat morality that most US animated movies have. The morality is there in buckets but it's so subtle that it sneaks up on you from behind. There are no good or evil characters in this movie. Most have a good and bad side to them. To me this is a far better way of explaining to kids the real world out there than the black & white mentality that most US movies portray. Most kids' movies I've seen talk down to kids. Miyazaki's movies tell stories that kids understand at their own level, whether they're 10, 15, 25 or 80.

Whilst I'm in total praise of the Japanese movie, the US DVD does have its faults. The American dubbing is truly awful to my English ears and I can only watch it in its Japanese/English subtitled version. They tried far too hard to make it sound 'natural' to American kids but everything about the movie screams 'Japanese' so why bother to go to all that effort! Another minus was that I had two copies of the DVD version seriously skip on two different players.

If I were giving stars for the original Japanese movie, I have to give it 5. The DVD however could have been a lot better. The US dubbed version knocks at least a star off it and two dodgy DVD's out of three isn't good for the physical media.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: wonderful
Review: "Spirited Away" is a vibrant, colorful, lively, thought-provoking work of art. I encourage everyone to discard their notions of the appropriate theme and scope of animated film, and watch this movie. The characters are finely drawn (in both the literal and metaphorical sense), the setting is magical, and the themes are moving and universal. Despite the beauty and sheer imaginative reach of this film, I think the representation of what it truly means, and costs, to move from childhood into the adult world is the aspect that makes this one a real classic.

This is a true work of imagination, as opposed to the mere projection of power - be it sexual, financial, or purely physical (i.e. violent) - that passes for imagination in most films today.

I haven't yet watched the bonus features that are packaged in the two-disc DVD release, but the film alone is certainly worth the price.


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