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REVIEW: Castle in the Sky Blu-Ray + DVD

The re-orchestrated musical score was vastly superior to the original synthesizer track.

Lord Dcast wrote:

This movie is amazing! It's deep and meaningful, with action, romance, amazing artwork and the list just goes on and on and on. The only thing I had as a problem was the dub of Sheeta. She sounded like a poor mix of British, Australian and New Zealander.

Anna Paquin speaks like this in real life. She was born in Canada and raised in New Zealand, and she has admitted that she does bounce between accents when talking to friends from NZ. Personally, I didn't mind the accent. Considering who Sheeta turns out to be, I think it's appropriate for her to have an accent.

I DO think she missed some of her lines in places, but that's my only quibble of her performance.

Jayhosh wrote:

The re-orchestrated musical score was vastly superior to the original synthesizer track.

I disagree. This is ultimately a matter of taste and expectances. I was mostly annoyed with the re-orchestrated version the first-time I heard it around 2003 because it was kind of noisier, especially in originally quiet scenes, and it sounded to me too much like an effort from the part of Hisaishi to make the score sound like an average movie score from Hollywood. Who cares if the original score has pieces that sound too minimalistic and "synthesizer-like"? After all, Hisaishi's background next to classical music is minimalist/synthesizer music. Therefore I'm surprised to hear that the japanese BluRay only includes the re-orchestrated version. It would have annoyed me as hell to find it out after buying the disc, so I'm grateful it has been mentioned in the review/comment section.

I remember the first time I watched this film, (a copy on VHS my Japanese-born language teacher gave me to watch around '87, without subtitles ) and was smitten by the film, especially the music. When I bought the 2003 Disney DVD, I was taken aback by how upfront the music was and how, at points, it drowned out the sound effects. One scene that disappointed me was the scene in the cave with the old man, I LOVED how the synthesizer started low and then grew as he told his story and when he lowered the light from the lantern the music became grander.

njprogfan wrote:

I remember the first time I watched this film, (a copy on VHS my Japanese-born language teacher gave me to watch around '87, without subtitles ) and was smitten by the film, especially the music. When I bought the 2003 Disney DVD, I was taken aback by how upfront the music was and how, at points, it drowned out the sound effects. One scene that disappointed me was the scene in the cave with the old man, I LOVED how the synthesizer started low and then grew as he told his story and when he lowered the light from the lantern the music became grander.

Myself, I had a fan-subtitled VHS as a kid in the early 90's because my father's college friends were apparently just that awesome (Had a sticker on the front saying, roughly, "please buy this if it becomes available in the US". Copied from a master tape by hand. I feel there had to be more TLC in fan-subbing back then)

Anyway. Of those Ghibli films we had and I was allowed to watch, Laputa was my favorite (I may have literally watched it a hundred times), and that scene was indeed one of the most magical, and the music had everything to do with it. And also, thinking about it, when they find the dragon's nest--and the synth music starts pulsing--that moment was absolutely hair-raising for me as a child. Also one of my favorites.

Perhaps the problem is that now that we are so far from the 80's, synth music has... different implications to people. I don't know if I would have gotten the same magic from it if I associated synth with general cheesiness.

I've got the Disney VHS of this movie, but I haven't watched it yet. The review makes it sound like my type of movie. Steampunk and fantastic airplanes? Hell yeah.

Still a fantastic film, though.