Tag: baker

Kiki’s Delivery Service
(Majo no Takkyubin,
魔女の宅急便)

Post author By Jeremy Clarke
Post date August 28 2026
No Comments on Kiki’s Delivery Service
(Majo no Takkyubin,
魔女の宅急便)

Kiki’s Delivery Service (Majo no Takkyubin, 魔女の宅急便)

Director – Hayao Miyazaki – 1989 – Japan – Cert. U – 103m

*****

A young witch sets up her own small business and must learn to make her way in the world – out in a 4K remaster in regular UK and Ireland cinemas from Friday, August 28th following last week’s exclusive presentation in IMAX cinemas

Having reached the age of 13, young Kiki (voice/1989 Japanese dub: Minami Takiyama; 1998 Disney dub: Kirsten Dunst) must leave home to do a year’s apprenticeship as a witch in a location where there isn’t one already. Loaned at the insistence of her mother (voice/1989 Japanese dub: Mieko Nobusawa; 1998 Disney dub: Cath Soucie) the latter’s tried and tested broomstick, and accompanied by her talking black cat Jiji (voice/1989 Japanese dub: Rei Sakuma; 1998 Disney dub: Phil Hartman), she flies out on a night of the full moon. An encounter with a somewhat snooty witch who has just completed her year out reminds Kiki that she needs to develop her own special skill: at this stage, she has no idea as to exactly what this skill might be.

Resting overnight in an in transit railway cattle truck, she takes off again and arrives in Koriko, a bustling city much bigger than the tiny, provincial town where she grew up.… Read the rest

Tags 13 year old, 4K, aerodynamics, airship, apprenticeship, artist, attic room, aviation, baker, bakery, bicycle, black cat, broomstick, cabin, Cath Souci, cattle truck, children of all ages, city and provincial town, crash, crow, delivery, Eiko Kodono, fading ability, feminine intuition, flight trial, flying machine, from girlhood into adulthood, full moon, geese flying in formation, Hayao Miyazaki, IMAX, industrial component, Janeane Garofalo, Japan, Joe Hisaishi, Julia Fletcher, Kappei Yamaguchi; Matthew Lawrence, Keiko Toda; Tress MacNeille, Kiki’s Delivery Service, Kikuo Inoue, Kirsten Dunst, landscape, losing her powers, make her way in the world, miaow, Mieko Nobusawa, Minami Takayama, Minami Takiyama, motivation, near-accident, neighbour, nerd, orders, Pamela Adlon, Phil Hartman), powers of flight, propeller, railway, recovery, Rei Sakuma, rescue, responsibility, romance, sky, small business, soul mates, special skill, Studio Ghibli, stuffed cat, technology, time out, traffic, traffic cop, vertical take off, wind current, witch, Yuriko Fuchizaki

Animation Dance Features Live Action Movies Music

Coppelia

Directors – Jeff Tudor, Steven de Beul, Ben Tesseur – 2021 – Netherlands, Germany, Belgium – Cert. U – 82m

****

People in an idyllic town must thwart the nefarious plans of a mad scientist in this extraordinary amalgam of dance, live action performers and animation – out in cinemas in the UK on Friday, April 1st

This isn’t the first movie to combine live action with animation nor will it be the last and while it has numerous echoes of movies intentional or otherwise, it’s very much its own vision. First and foremost a dance piece but far from mere ‘filmed dance’, it will appeal as much to admirers of the twin arts of cinema and animation as to devotees of dance. Being entirely devoid of verbal language, it’ll attract lovers of silent cinema too. (One can imagine the film shown mute with a live orchestra playing the score.)

The lack of verbal language means that the characters are never named (just like in a ballet where you’d refer to a cast list in an accompanying programme) although tags for a number of them are obvious – several shop owners include a bicycle repair man (Daniel Camargo), a florist, a hairdresser (Jan Kooijman) and a baker of bread and cakes (Irek Mukhamedov) while a dance studio hosts a ballet teacher (Igoné de Jongh) and her child student troupe.… Read the rest

Features Live Action Movies

First Cow

Director – Kelly Reichardt – 2019 – US – Cert. N/C 15+ – 122m

***1/2

Western (set in Oregon!) in which a drifter and an immigrant join forces to surreptitiously milk a rich man’s first cow and better their lot – in UK cinemas from Friday, May 28th

A woman with a dog (Alia Shawcat) discovers two human corpses in the present day Oregon woods. Flashback to the nineteenth century. Cookie (John Magaro), a drifter, is the cook attached to a party of trappers travelling through the woodlands. He’s a poor scavenger for food and as a result, they are starving – with much acrimony directed towards him. As soon as they find a small settlement, he departs company and lets the trappers go on their way without him. He watches a rich local take delivery of his first cow with plans for buying a mate and breeding a herd later on.

Cookie falls in with Chinese immigrant King-Lu (Orion Lee) who has a hut nearby. They bond over a bottle of wine at King-Lu’s shack in the woods and become friends. Finding the cow wandering near their dwelling, they hatch a plan to milk it secretly at night (cookie milks while King-Lu keeps watch from a nearby tree) and use the milk as an ingredient in oily cakes, which they start selling at the settlement and which become a huge success overnight.… Read the rest