White Bird in a Blizzard is an adaptation of Laura Kasischke’s mystery slash coming-of-age novel written and directed by Gregg Araki, and staring Shailene Woodley as a teenager (and unreliable narrator) whose mother suddenly disappears. Since iTunes has a very cool pre-theatrical exclusive rental available right-now I thought I’d give it a 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.