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Tales from Earthsea, a review by dfmorgan

Title: Tales from Earthsea
Original Title: Gedo Senki
Year: 2006
Director: Goro Miyazaki
Rating: PG
Length: 111 Min.
Video: Anamorphic Widescreen 1.85:1
Audio: English: Dolby Digital: 5.1, English: Dolby Digital: 2-Channel Stereo, Japanese: Dolby Digital: 5.1, Japanese: Dolby Digital: 2-Channel Stereo
Subtitles: English

Stars:
Junichi Okada
Aoi Teshima
Yuko Tanaka
Teruyuki Kagawa
Jun Fubuki

Plot:
Goro Miyazaki's debut feature as director, Tales From Earthsea is an epic adventure, adapted from the much-loved series of novels by Ursula K. Le Guin.

It tells the story of Ged (voiced in English by Timothy Dalton), the most powerful wizard in Earthsea, and his attempts to protect Prince Arren (Matt Levin) from the evil machinations of rival wizard Cob (Willem Dafoe). Together with Therru, a young girl he rescued from slave takers,Arren must unite with Ged to defeat Cob and return balance to their world.

Beautifully animated, Tales From Earthsea will enchant viewers of all ages and once again shows Studio Ghibli at the height of its powers.

Extras:
Scene Access
Feature Trailers
Featurettes
Interviews
Storyboard Comparisons



Studio Ghibli  , Miyazaki  , Goro Miyazaki  . A Miyazaki film but this time it's Goro, the son of Hayao Miyazaki. Hayao Miyazaki was involved in this film during its initial development and storywriting but had to pass when he commenced work on Howl's Moving Castle. Studio Ghibli, still looking for future talent, put Goro in charge.

People are noticing that the balance of the world is out of kilter and the King asks his advisers to try to find the cause. However the young Prince Arren kills his father and runs away. On his journey he meets Sparrowhawk (Ged), the Archmage, who takes him under his wing. Together they discover that a rival is behind the problems.

The film is based on the Earthsea books by Ursula K. Le Guin. Disney had problems with the release of this film in America as the film/TV/video rights to Earthsea were held by The Sci-Fi Channel. However these rights lapsed in 2009 and Disney finally released this film to cinemas in August 2010 with a video release apparently due before Christmas. The rest of the world didn't have these problems so they released the film and videos in 2007 and 2008 and where necessary the Disney dubbing was used. A couple of minor gripes I have with this release from Optimum Releasing, who used the Madman Australia authored DVD, is that they used the same print for both the English language and the Japanese language versions. So all you get is the English opening and closing credits whereas the R1 Disney DVDs for the other titles had the Japanese opening and closing credits for the Japanese language. Also they only used one set of English subtitles which, conveniently, were for the Japanese soundtrack whereas again Disney previously had English HoH subtitles for the English soundtrack.

A film that I did enjoy but not as much as other Studio Ghibli films. For me this is only a

edited for a couple of typos

(From dfmorgan's Studio Ghibli Marathon on August 21st, 2010)

K-PAX, a review by RossRoy

Original Title: K-PAX Year: 2001 Country: United States Director: Iain Softley Rating: PG Length: 120 Min. Video: Anamorphic Widescreen 2.35:1 Audio: English: Dolby Digital 5.1, English: DTS 5.1, French: Dolby Digital 5.1, Commentary: Dolby Digital Surround Subtitles: English, Spanish

What they sayMy Thoughts
I found this to be a nice little mystery story. Kevin spacey plays the role well, and the story develops at a decent enough pace to keep things interesting, while not revealing too much. I also like the ending. Without telling too much about it, let's just say it may leave you scratching your head as to what really happened. And I like that. Make the viewer question the events. Make the viewer think. And this movie does it well. Nothing too fancy, but it's effective.

One thing I'd like to know though: How did Kevin Spacey manage to eat an unpeeled banana without flinching.

Rating:

(From RossRoy's Random Viewings on November 12th, 2008)

Tom's Random Reviews, a review by Tom

Title: Full Metal Panic? FUMOFFU
Year: 2003
Length: 300 Min.
Video: Full Frame 1.33:1
Audio: English: Dolby Digital 5.1 , Japanese: Dolby Digital Stereo
Subtitles: English

Plot:
This is a hilarious spin-off series to "Full Metal Panic". FMP is based on a series of novels which tell the main story and a collection of comedic short stories. The first anime series "Full Metal Panic" is a mixture of the first few novels and some of the short stories. The series "Full Metal Panic? FUMOFFU" solely uses the fun short stories as its source. No mecha action in this series. But a lot of fun nonetheless! As a time-filler I just wanted to show my brother and a friend one or two episodes, but we ended up watching all 12 episodes in one go until 2 in the morning 
Both of them never have seen an episode of either FMP or FUMOFFU. That tells me, that one can enjoy this spin-off without having seen the original FMP.

Rating: 

http://youtube.com/watch?v=c1bAVLCL50o

(From Tom's Random Reviews on February 24th, 2008)