Electric Shadow

Live-Action KIKI'S DELIVERY SERVICE is Real

Anime News Network reported this yesterday, and a bunch of sites including Kotaku and every movie blog in existence aren't attributing them. The Grudge's Takashi Shimizu, as was rumored, is directing, and the movie will star 16-year-old figure skater Fūka Koshiba. Studio Ghibli, who previously adapted the source material as the anime Kiki's Delivery Service has nothing to do with this, and the new movie is a new adaptation of the six-volume source.

Daily Grab 86: Fantastical Realism

I had not seen Studio Ghibli's Whisper of the Heart until I popped in last year's Blu-ray. I had seen its pseudo-sequel The Cat Returns, but not the much more grounded-in-reality original. Unlike what many people think of as the trademark, fantastical Ghibli style, Whisper is entirely grounded in the real world with its few fantasy sequences happening within dreams.

It's lovely, subdued, and one of the best animated transfers of last year.

Daily Grab 58: Last Moment First

I had avoided the Blu-ray of Studio Ghibli's saddest (and arguably best) movie ever, Grave of the Fireflies, due to not trusting its unknown-to-me American home video distributor, Sentai Filmworks. What an idiot I am. Don't mind the washed-out color of the cover art: the disc is gorgeous, and features a new English dib if you care about those.

This is a great film, and one of the greatest in the history of animation, but be forewarned that it is both beautiful and profoundly depressing. It opens revealing that the two kids you're going to fall in love with are already dead, and that the movie is about their struggle to survive WWII Japan. Even with that setup, it has my highest "what do you mean you haven't seen it?" recommendation.