Nov. 01, 2002 - 11:30 pm

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Sen to Chihiro no kamikakushi (2001)

a.k.a Spirited Away, a.k.a. The Spiriting Away of Sen and Chihiro. my friend Colin had long been wanting to see this film which just recently came to a wider release in the U.S. it's apparently the "Titanic" of Japan. this film grossed over $200 million before it was even released here. amazing stuff.

i just looked up the film references on the IMDb for this movie. two of those are Sunrise (1927) and The Seven Year Itch (1955). i find it ironic that those two movies are sitting on my floor waiting to be watched sometime this week.

this animated Japanese film is about a little girl who gets lost in a car ride with her parents and they end up in an abandoned theme park. while they're there her parents turn into pigs and she realizes that she is now in some sort of spirit world that is centered around a bathhouse where the spirits come to replenish themselves at. in order to get her parents back and return to the real world, she befriends a young man who sometimes appears to her as a dragon and she must also help to make the bathhouse successful with its strange customers.

i don't think i really enjoyed this film as much as Mononoke Hime (1997), the previous film directed by Miyazaki. this one has a lot of the same magic and beauty and emotion, but i like the more fantastical aspects of Princess Mononoke. it was like it took place in another time and on another planet almost. Spirited Away seems to be more taking place in the present, but just containing glimpses of the spirit world. still a wonderful film though and worth going to see.