The Toronto International Film Festival TIFF Bell Lightbox is presenting a wonderful series entitled "Spirited Away: The Films of Studio Ghibli" until April 13. Junior Cub Reporter, 11-year-old Julia Klymkiw is filling in for her Dad today with a review of the Academy Award winning animated feature film, "Spirited Away".
"Spirited Away" is showing at Sunday March 25 at 7:00 PM, Sunday April 1 at 7:00 PM and Saturday April 7 at 1:00 PM. Tickets can be purchased online HERE.
dir. Hayao Miyazaki
Review By Julia Klymkiw
The Film Corner's
Junior Cub Reporter
When I was lots younger I saw Spirited Away on DVD and I loved it. I loved it so much I watched it again and again.
Now that I’m older I had a chance to see it on film. I was amazed when I saw one of the most magical and beautiful movies I’ve ever seen on a big screen in a theatre. An actual real film, not a DVD. My Dad took me to see the movie at the Lightbox Theatre.
We sat in the back row and before the movie started. Dad showed me the projectors through the windows and I saw the big rolls of film. Dad says there are separate pictures called frames that move very quickly in front of the light bulb. The frames go so fast they make a picture that moves and it shows on the big screen down at the bottom of the room through the projector lens, which is kind of like a magnifying glass.
Spirited Away is an animated cartoon fairytale about a family moving to a new home. They drive onto the wrong road and find a tunnel that leads to a small strange town instead of their house. When the father smells food, he and his family walk towards it. The mother and father find the food, There is a whole bunch of it, like the Mandarin buffet, but nobody is around. The mother and father stuff their faces into the food like pigs, but the little girl is not so sure this is a good idea. After wandering around the town she comes back and is shocked to see that her parents are transformed into animals.
Running in fear she meets a boy, a very nice boy who will help her. Curled up and hiding near a bush, she realizes something very strange is happening to her, something just as scary as what happened to her Mom and Dad, but worse. That mysterious boy gives her a magic berry and she goes back to normal. Pulling her up, they run through the town and she sees spirits and ghosts wandering around and eating the same food her parents were eating. The boy sneaks her into a big building and gives her instructions where to go and what to do to survive in this weird world and to be able to save her Mom and Dad.
She goes to the place the boy told her about. She stares in terror at the steep stairs. She doesn’t want to go down, but soon she starts creeping down slowly, one more step at a time until she slips and tumbles so far down we think she will die. Luckily, she slams into a wall and is okay.
As great as all this sounds, this is just the beginning, the beginning of a great adventure, the beginning of Spirited Away.
Things get crazier and scarier. There are huge ghosts and slimy monsters and a nasty old lady who looks like a witch. To save her parents is going to be very difficult and dangerous.
Will the little girl succeed? You have to see the movie to find out.
It sure is cool seeing the movie for real in a theatre. The colours are way nicer than at home and this is the first time I watched the movie in Japanese. When I saw it on DVD, it was in English. I didn't know the movie was made in Japan the first time. Later on I did because my Dad told me that it was a movie made from this guy in Japan who is like Walt Disney. Even when I was little the movie wasn't like a lot of the other movies I watched. Seeing it in Japanese, now I know why.
It's okay if you can't speak Japanese. There are titles at the bottom to tell you what the people are saying. Even if you have seen this movie like I did on DVD, it is way cooler to see it in a real movie theatre in the language of the country it is from.
