Tag: window sill

Categories
Animation Features Movies

Arrietty
(US: The Secret World
of Arrietty)
(Karigurashi no Arietti,
借りぐらしのアリエッティ,
lit. Arrietty the Borrower)

Arrietty

(US: The Secret World of Arrietty)

(Karigurashi no Arietti,

借りぐらしのアリエッティ,

lit. Arrietty the Borrower)

Director – Hiromasa Yonebayashi – 2010 – Japan – Cert. U – 94m

*****

A teenage girl under a foot high is found by a kindly boy with a heart condition who has come to his aunt’s home on the city’s outskirts to convalesce – back out in a 4K remaster in UK IMAX cinemas on Wednesday, October 14th, then in regular UK cinemas on Friday, October 16th through Sunday, October 18th

His Aunt Sadako (voice / 2010 Japanese dub: Keiko Takashita; 2010 StudioCanal UK English dub: Phillida Law) drives (voice / 2010 Japanese dub: Ryonosuke Kamiki; 2010 StudioCanal UK English dub: Tom Holland) to the house on the city’s outskirts he is visiting. On arrival, he sees a crow having a spat with the cat, which in turn is taking an interest in a group of plants in which he spots a teenage girl less than a foot high. After he’s been called inside the house, the girl, Arrietty (voice / 2010 Japanese dub: Mirai Shida; 2010 StudioCanal UK English dub: Saoirse Ronan) escapes the cat through the grille into the basement, where she outruns grasshoppers to enter her family’s cosy, miniature cottage accessible by a small flight of steps.… Read the rest

Categories
Animation Movies Shorts

The Hand
(Ruka)

The Hand (Ruka)

Director – Jiří Trnka – 1965 – Czechoslovakia – Cert. PG – 18m

*****

A potter’s quiet life is interrupted by a giant hand which wants him to remake his pots in its image – on the Blu-ray Jiří Trnka: Puppet Master, released in the UK on Monday, August 10th

He sleeps peacefully on his simple bed in his room. We hear footsteps as we move around the room – is someone watching him? If so, he’s blissfully unaware of the fact. In the centre of the room is a potter’s wheel. On either side of the door are numerous pots. In the corner, a mirror; below it, a watering can on a little table. Moving towards his bed, we pass a window with a flower in a pot on the window’s interior sill.

He gets up, does some basic exercises, checks his tongue in the mirror, waters the plant on the window sill. Birds can be heard singing. The he gets down to the business of the day: making pots on his wheel. He is absorbed. But, an interruption. A knock at the door. Nothing there.

Eventually, a giant hand pushes its way through the shuttered window, the impact knocking the plant to the floor and shattering its pot.… Read the rest