Category Archives: Comparison

The whole crew on the bridge. Moscow Cassiopea (1974)

“Moscow: Cassiopea” (1974) and “Teens in the Universe” (1975)

Moscow: Cassiopea (Москва́ — Кассиопе́я) and Teens in the Universe (О́троки во Вселе́нной) are a duology of mid-1970s Soviet science-fiction comedy films, directed by Richard Viktorov (Ричард Викторов), and written by Isai Kuzentsov (Исай Кузнецов) and Avernir Zak (Авенир Григорьевич Зак). Originally intended to be a single film, a glut of footage enabled producers to split it into two eighty minute features.

The films are enduringly popular in the former Soviet Union, and were unavailable in any digital format until a 2007 DVD release, in 2016 both films were added to iTunes in high-definition, so I thought I’d take a look.

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Spirited Away - Blu-ray

Spirited Away – Japanese Blu-ray Review

Spirited Away, in my opinion at least, is Hayao Miyazaki’s magnum opus, and having only been released on Japanese Blu-ray a few months back, I decided to give it a quick review. ‘Spirited Away’ (千と千尋の神隠し ‘Sen to Chihiro no Kamikakushi’) was released in 2001 to universal critical and commercial success. A heroes-journey tale of a timid girl whose family is sucked into a magical world, where she must struggle to save both herself and her parents. The original Japanese (and other Asian-region) DVD releases had several issues most noticeably a strong red/pink tint, as well as window-boxing the image substantially on all four sides. The US DVD release largely addressed these issues, although the image was a little red.

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