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Saturday, February 18, 2012

The Secret World of Arrietty Cartoon Movie Animation





Arrietty, titled The Borrower Arrietty in Japan and The Secret World of Arrietty in North America, is a 2010 Japanese animated fantasy film directed by Hiromasa Yonebayashi and scripted by Hayao Miyazaki and Keiko Niwa. It is based on The Borrowers by Mary Norton, an English author of children's books, about a family of tiny people who live secretly in the walls and floors of a typical household, borrowing items from humans to survive. The film stars the voices of Mirai Shida, Ryunosuke Kamiki, Shinobu Otake, Keiko Takeshita, Tatsuya Fujiwara, Tomokazu Miura and Kirin Kiki, and tells the story of a young Borrower (Shida) befriending a human boy (Kamiki), while trying to avoid being detected by the other humans. Toshio Suzuki produced the film and Studio Ghibli provided the animation. Ghibli announced the film in late 2009 with Yonebayashi making his directorial debut as the youngest director of a Ghibli film. Miyazaki supervised the production as a developing planner. The voice actors were approached in April 2010, and Cécile Corbel wrote the film's score as well as its theme song.

Released in Japan on July 17, 2010, Arrietty received very positive reviews, all of which praised the animation and music. It also became the highest grossing Japanese film at the Japanese box office for the year 2010, and grossed over $145 million worldwide.[1] The film also won the Animation of the Year award at the 34th Japan Academy Prize award ceremony. Two English language versions of the film were produced, a British dub produced by Studio Canal which was released in the United Kingdom on July 29, 2011, and an American dub released by Walt Disney Pictures in North America on February 17, 2012.


The Japanese voice cast of the film was announced on April 13, 2010. Actress Mirai Shida was cast as the voice of Arrietty. Arrietty was Shida's first voice acting role. In addition, Ryunosuke Kamiki, who has voiced characters in other Studio Ghibli films like Spirited Away and Howl's Moving Castle, was cast as Sho. His most recent voice role was in the 2009 film Summer Wars. Kamiki said that he "was very happy to meet up with the staff" he previously knew when he worked on other Studio Ghibli films.

Besides them, the film’s cast includes Tomokazu Miura, Shinobu Otake, Keiko Takeshita, and Kirin Kiki. The four actors have previous voice acting experience, but none of them have been in a Studio Ghibli film before. Miura and Otake were respectively cast as Arrietty's parents Pod and Homily. In addition, Takeshita voiced Sho's aunt and Kiki voiced one of the helpers in the human family.

On January 8, 2011, actress and singer Bridgit Mendler was cast as Arrietty for the film's North American release. Besides Mendler, the cast included Will Arnett, Amy Poehler, Carol Burnett, and David Henrie. The film had a different voice cast for the United Kingdom release, making it the first Ghibli film to have different voice actors for each of its English-language releases. The cast included Saoirse Ronan, Tom Holland, Mark Strong, Olivia Colman, Phyllida Law, and Geraldine McEwan. Arrietty was adapted into a Japanese manga series. This manga adaptation was first published by Tokuma Shoten Publishing Co., Ltd. within Japan, and was released in four separate volumes.[52] Viz Media released the English version of this manga adaptation of the film within North America in January 2012.

Saturday, February 11, 2012

The Pirates Band of Misfits Cartoon Animation 3D Wallpaper











The Pirates! is a series of five comedy books following a group of pirates on their adventures. It is written by British author Gideon Defoe and was published starting in 2004 by Weidenfeld & Nicolson. The fifth book The Pirates! in an Adventure with the Romantics is coming in 2012, and will be published by Bloomsbury Publishing. he Pirate Captain is vain, self-deluded and mostly incompetent as a pirate and as a sea captain, but he's ultimately kind-hearted and very much respected by his crew. He doesn't appear to possess any of the stereotypical pirate accoutrements, though he dresses in the traditional manner, and much is made of his luxuriant beard. He is said to have a "pleasant, open face", though he is quite successful at terrifying non-pirates.

In The Pirates! Band of Misfits, the luxuriantly bearded Pirate Captain is joined by a rag-tag crew. With seemingly blind to the impossible odds stacked against him, the Captain has one dream: to beat his bitter rivals Black Bellamy and Cutlass Liz to the much coveted Pirate Of The Year Award. It's a quest that takes our heroes from the shores of exotic Blood Island to the foggy streets of Victorian London. Along the way they do battle with the pirate-hating Queen Victoria and team up with a young Charles Darwin, but never lose sight of what a pirate loves best.

I thought this film was great and I certainly would have no objection if it won for Best Animated Feature. It did take us a few times to get through this but as a whole I thought it was funny and of course the animation is pretty impressive.

The story is basic but it’s still interesting and it made me laugh on more than one occasion. It’s a very happy movie and it definitely put me in a good mood, which is always a plus for any movie. The Pirates! Band of Misfits three times because I fell asleep twice while watching it. It’s not like it takes that much to make me sleepy, but I’m usually relatively engaged in movies unless I’m already pretty sleepy. But while I found the animation incredibly impressive, I guess this movie just sort of . . . bored me? 

Which I don’t really like admitting, because it’s not a bad movie. It has cute humor, a pretty original story, and, again, the stop-motion animation is pretty amazing. But I guess it just wasn’t my cup of tea. It doesn’t help that the pirates’ pet dodo bird, Polly, sort of reminded me of my cat Charlie, and since Polly was in peril for most of the movie, it kind of freaked me out.
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