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Castle in the Sky Director: Hayao Miyazaki Number of Items: 2 Picture Format: Anamorphic Widescreen Format: Animated, Color, Closed-captioned, Widescreen, Dolby Audience Rating: Unrated Running Time: 125 minutes Studio: Walt Disney Home Video Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1 Region Code: 1 Product Group: DVD Release Date: 2003-04-15 Buy from Amazon

Customer Reviews: Total numer of reviews: 168 Average rating: 4.5 "An anime work high up in the firmament" Laputa, Miyazaki's greatest work, simply soars higher and higher. It's both a cautionary tale and a knockout epic, both charmingly innocent and deeply romantic. Pasu and Sheeta, the two children heroes of Laputa, rival the greatest romantic pairs in cinema. What makes Laputa so memorable is Miyazaki's careful development of story, the stunning action sequences, and the elevation of movie in terms of suspense, expectation, moral issues, and literally in reaching for the sky. Some of the action sequences are literally out of this world, as mindblowing as ever imagined or attempted. Miyazaki has in abundance what few directors can even grasp; sense of epic proportion. No other director is better at presenting man standing at the precipe of the grand unknown, a realm both alluring and terrifying. Laputa's message is it's human to dream but when man tries to cage that dream within his ego, seeking godlike power, he--and often rest of mankind--is doomed, and deserve, to fail. Parents should be warned that Laputa is violent and has scenes of destruction and mayhem that are on a Wagnerian scale, but Miyazaki makes us--kids and adult--confront, thru exultation and shocked realization, the aspect in our psyche that's forever fixated on the notion of power. "An anime work high up in the firmament" Laputa, Miyazaki's greatest work, simply soars higher and higher. It's both a cautionary tale and a knockout epic, both charmingly innocent and deeply romantic. Pasu and Sheeta, the two children heroes of Laputa, rival the greatest romantic pairs in cinema. What makes Laputa so memorable is Miyazaki's careful development of story, the stunning action sequences, and the elevation of movie in terms of suspense, expectation, moral issues, and literally in reaching for the sky. Some of the action sequences are literally out of this world, as mindblowing as ever imagined or attempted. Miyazaki has in abundance what few directors can even grasp; sense of epic proportion. No other director is better at presenting man standing at the precipe of the grand unknown, a realm both alluring and terrifying. Laputa's message is it's human to dream but when man tries to cage that dream within his ego, seeking godlike power, he--and often rest of mankind--is doomed, and deserve, to fail. Parents should be warned that Laputa is violent and has scenes of destruction and mayhem that are on a Wagnerian scale, but Miyazaki makes us--kids and adult--confront, thru exultation and shocked realization, the aspect in our psyche that's forever fixated on the notion of power. "Horrible Movie" Not only is this movie childish and predictable, it's also very boring. The characters are unrealistic. The girl had some sort of weird accent. It was like a mix of Britain and U.S. accents. Very annoying. The two main characters had little depth, and I didn't care what happened to them in the end. The graphics weren't very good either. I don't like the way the people were drawn, and the colors in most of the movie were dull and gray. I didn't like how Dola and Pops looked and sounded like chararacters from Spirited Away. Some of the same music was used too. Spirited Away is a much better movie, though. I would highly recommend that you buy Spirited Away instead of Castle in the Sky. "Terrific Movie, But Not His Best" This movie is better than the vast majority of anime films made, but by Miyazaki's brilliant standard it's one of his lesser works. Science fiction either is science or fantasy. To do both simultaniously leads to a weak logical framework filled with details that don't really work. Basically this is a story about an (sky) aircraft carrier floating aimlessly in a 19th century (sky) sailing-ship world. Well, that doesn't correspond to either the past or the future.. It's an impossible mix of old and new.. I know I'm nitpicking, but there are a dozen similar flaws. Other plot points and themes, - evil villain - beautiful nature etc. were done already by Miyazaki elsewhere. The boy is a minor peasant-nuisance that overcomes his snooty adversary - see Castle of Caliostro.. The work feels tired here under the shadow of his other masterworks. This is not to say I disliked the film. All the characters are warm and very likeable - you have to love Miyazaki for that. He's probably the greatest master of his chosen artform in history, but some of his other works come together better. This one feels like a tweener to keep the studio running between great ideas. "Great Film, but the disc..." Ok, great film, wonderful animation, Miyazaki is God, we all know this(or at least I hope we do.) I'd give the movie itself about 3 1/2 to 4 stars. However I give this DVD 2 stars because it was clearly just thrown together at the last minute .. Let's start with... THE ENGLISH DUB I wasn't so much offended by Sheeta's British accent like most because I know it wasn't fake. Anna Paquin(Fly Away Home) played her English voice. Although her line delieveries were questionable it wasn't that bad and it made you believe that she was from far away. Pazu being played by James Van Der Beek didn't bother me either because I was surprised at how good he portrayed Pazu's youthfulness and spunk. Infact, none of the voices bothered me except maybe the Pirates. The problem wasn't so much the voices, it was the way they talked. They had an endless amount of additional dilogue that wasn't in the Japanes version and they sounded kind of gay. I'm no homophobic but isn't it bad enough that they have to wear pink pants? THE AUDIO MIX The Japanese and French audio mixes were fine. The English mix however was awful. Disney went through all of this trouble to update the sound effects and you can barely hear them. If fact, in some of the scenes it was if there were no sound effects at all. Let's kick the SFX up a noch guys!! Also may I mention that Disney got the original music composer to come in and update the music. It sounds great and not much was changed accept now there are is no synth music and there is more music than before. The only problem is that like I mentioned, it's too loud compared to the sound effects and the diologue is too loud too. I really wish they would do a second pressing and fix this. Hey, they did it with Macross Plus and Evangelion vol. 1. THE MENU The menu features transision that go a bit too long. There is hope though, just hit the skip forward button and it goes straight to the menu you just chose. FINALLY, THE EXTRAS This being the great film it is, I was expecting a bit more from the extras. Most of the extras are on Disc One which makes no sense since all Disc Two offers you the movie storyboarded with English or Japanese audio. And of course they for some reason took out the ability to switch from the actual film to the storyboards like they had on the Japanese DVD. Other extras include the original trailers(always cool) and a yet another five minute, uninformative featurette.(Is there a reason they didn't interview Anna Paquin) Overall the DVD is quite a dissappointment, but the film is one anyone with an open mind can enjoy. Recomended.