I’m so glad you are here and participating in our weekly link-up of family-friendly, fun, educational, interesting, crafty, fashionable, and whatever else posts. I hope you’ll tell your followers about our post (feel free to copy and paste the graphic) and visit the blogs in the link-up.
Now it is your turn to link up your favorite posts. They can be fashion, lifestyle, DIY, food, etc. All we ask is that they be family friendly. You can link up posts from last week or even from years ago. You can share up to three links each week.
We are always looking for additional hosts so let us know if you want to help out and we are also looking for more links from fashion bloggers so let your fashion bloggers know!
Also, please take the time to visit the other blogs on the link-up and meet some new bloggers!
“Nothing has caused the human race so much trouble as intelligence .” – Stella from Rear Window
Erin from Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs and I are watching Comfy, Cozy movies this September and October and this week we watched Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window – or rewatched for me.
Rear Window is one of Hitchcock’s more well-known and praised movies because of the intricacy of the story, the attention to detail, and the masterful storytelling that makes the viewer as desperate as the main character to find out what happens.
Laid up with a broken leg, our main character, photojournalist Jeff Jefferies (Jimmy Stewart) is stuck in a two-room apartment looking out on all his neighbors on the other side of his apartment complex.
It’s like he has a bunch of TV channels in each window to watch. There’s always something on. He uses a pair of binoculars to watch what they’re doing part of the time and part of the time he can see them with the naked eye.
There is a newlywed couple who are – ahem – getting to know each other; a couple who appear to be arguing; a woman who lowers her dog down to do his business in the little yard below each day; an athletic dancer who likes to stretch in front of her window; a lonely woman who eats her dinners alone; and many other characters for Jeff to watch.
One night he wakes up in his wheelchair, where he has been sitting for the whole movie, because he hears a scream and breaking class. He can’t figure out where the sounds came from and drifts back to sleep but later, when he wakes up again, he notices the one neighbor – the jewelry salesman who argued with his wife — acting very mysterious.
The neighbor in question, Lars Thorwald, (Raymond Burr) starts going in and out of his apartment with a suitcase. It’s around 2 a.m. when this starts at it’s pouring out. Jeff can’t figure out what that’s all about and struggles to stay awake to watch the man but finally succumbs to exhaustion.
I should mention that Jeff has a girlfriend, Lisa, (Grace Kelly) who is absolutely perfect, but he is making all kinds of excuses not to marry her and one of those excuses is that she won’t enjoy traveling with a journalist.
He tells his nurse (Thelma Ritter) and Lisa about it on their separate visits, but both seem to think he just has a bad case of cabin fever.
As he continues to ponder it all and notices that the man’s wife is no longer in the apartment, Jeff pulls out the zoom lens of his camera and watches the man cutting something up, putting it in bags, and carrying it out. Now he’s starting to really get antsy about what he’s witnessed. It isn’t until Lisa is over one night and he’s telling her what he thinks that she begins to get a little interest as well. What piques both their interest is how the man is tying up a trunk and removing the mattress from the room.
Soon the nurse, Stella, is also pulled in, and all three of them begin to speculate what really happened.
Before long Jeff has Stella and Lisa acting as willing spies for him to find out what really happened.
If you want suspense then this the right movie for you. It is one of Hitchcock’s most suspenseful and nail biting movies.
The movie is based on a short story by Cornell Woolrich. I read an essay online (the author of which I couldn’t find, but it did say it wasn’t AI) that said this movie didn’t attempt to copy the story but instead recreated the plot based on the idea of it.
I did find a summary of the story and the ending is different in some ways to the movie, but with the final outcome being the same.
This writer, as other critics, point out that one aspect of this film that makes it so brilliant is that the viewer knows as much as Jeff does during the movie. We, the viewer, are watching it all unfold as he is and are seeing it from his same vantage point. We aren’t taken into apartments where he isn’t or into scenes that he isn’t looking at from his window. We are a participant in the film, so to speak.
Rear Window was filmed on a budget of $1 million but pulled in $36 million and became the top grossing film of 1954.
According to the site, All The Right Movies, the original story was based on a high-profile murder case in 1924 in Sussex England where a man named Patrick Mahon — committed a crime – well, I won’t tell you what happened in case you haven’t seen Rear Window.
Stewart had already been in one Hitchcock movie before this one (Rope) and would film two others afterward – Vertigo and The Man Who Knew Too Much.
For this film he was anxious to work with Hitchcock and said he wouldn’t take a salary but would take part of the film’s profits, which I think worked out very well for him. While the two got along, there were also times they spoke very little to each other, according to other actors who worked with them.
Wendell Corey, who played Detective Doyle in the movie, said, “Jimmy and Hitch would communicate in unspoken glances, and Jimmy would give him a steely look if Hitch said something he didn’t like. The only direction I ever saw Jimmy take was ‘the scene feels tired’ – there was steel under all that mushiness.”
Corey wasn’t a fan of Stewart in some ways. He was a nice guy, he said, but claimed he was also very arrogant on the set of Rear Window.
Others didn’t apparently didn’t hold this assessment and to me I think it was Corey who had the arrogance issue.
I thought it was interesting that Stewart’s wife asked to be on set during the filming of this movie because of Grace Kelly. According to trivia on All The Right Movies, “Grace Kelly may have been a little too friendly for some people, though – especially James Stewart’s wife. In 1954, Kelly had a reputation for having affairs with her leading men and, after she told a magazine she thought Stewart was one of the most attractive men she’d ever met, Stewart’s wife, Gloria, insisted on being on the set every day to keep an eye on things.”
Rear Window was Stewart’s favorite film of those he worked on Hitchcock with.
“The wonderful thing about Rear Window is that so much of it is visual,” he said in an interview. “You really have to keep your eyes open in the film, because it’s a complicated thing. This was my favorite film to make with Hitch.”
One more piece of trivia that had me snickering was that Hitchcock made the bad guy in this film (Again, I’ll keep it quiet on who the real bad guy is) look and act like David Selznick who produced Rebecca with Hitchcock. Hitchcock said Selznick interfered so much on that film he disowned it. In Rear Window he got his revenge by making the guilty party look like the producer he couldn’t stand.
I love the trivia behind the making of movies, as you know if you’ve read any of my previous posts, so I could go on and on about it. I won’t though. Instead, I’ll point you over to Erin’s blog for her views on it:
Keeping with the Hitchcock and Grace Kelly movies, we will be switching up our movie lineup next week and watching Dial M For Murder. To explain why we are choosing to watch this instead of Murder by Death, I’ll refer to Erin’s well-written explanation, which she also shares on her blog today: https://crackercrumblife.com/2024/10/17/comfy-cozy-cinema-rear-window/
“We were originally going to watch a movie I chose, Murder by Death. I chose it because I read that it was funny and because it has Maggie Smith in it but I didn’t do much research on it other than that.
However, after doing some reading it looks like it could be considered problematic so we are going to scrap that one and trade it for Dial M for Murder instead. It is probably not a bad movie, but a movie that didn’t meet the goal of what was trying to be achieved – it was actually trying to shine a light on racism and homophobia, and no one mentions the ableism but I think I read that is in there too, that was prevalent in Hollywood and the world, but instead just looks like it is in fact all of those things itself.
Anyway, we decided to watch Dial M for Murder for Comfy Cozy Cinema, since we are trying to be cozy and snug with this fun movie watching challenge. I think both of us plan on watching Murder by Death at some point though, whether it is together or just on our own.”
Here is the rest of the full list of movies we are watching or have watched.
I’m also including a link to my blog posts up from this year’s Comfy, Cozy Cinema, at the top of the page under the heading Movie Impressions.
Before I close out for today, I wanted to mention that we did pick a winner for our Comfy, Cozy Giveaway – Yvonne – and she has been notified! Thank you to all of you who entered the giveaway, followed our blogs, Etsy and Substack and I hope you will stick around and have some fun with us as we write about books, movies, and our lives.
If you end up writing about Rear Window or any of the other movies we are watching, please feel free to link up with our linky. You can add a link to the link if it is open, even if it is for a different movie.
My 10-year-old daughter picked out a hardcover copy of Move Your Blooming Corpse by D.E. Ireland for me at a used bookstore about a month ago.
As soon as I saw that cover, I had a gut feeling I was going to like it. Luckily my gut was not wrong. As soon as I saw that cover and title I wanted to know if it would feature the characters from My Fair Lady since I knew the title was alluding to the famous line Eliza Doolittle yells out in the movie. If you haven’t seen the movie, you’ll have to look it up.
When I read the title of the series on the front (An Eliza Doolittle and Henry Higgins Mystery), I was giddy with delight to know that it was based on the same characters.
This was a delightful, fun, and engaging mystery that takes place – as the inside cover says – in the Edwardian racing world. It is a very fast-paced story with very few slow scenes.
The book starts with Eliza Doolittle and Professor Henry Higgins at a horse race to cheer on Eliza’s father’s horse, which he co-owns with a group of about 10 other people.
When a murder occurs after the race it seems to be an isolated incident but future developments show that someone is after the members of the horse-owning syndicate. The question is – why?
Woven into the murder mystery is an underlying story of women’s suffrage as women fight for their right to vote in England.
The main characters – Eliza, Henry, Arthur (Eliza’s father), and Freddy (Eliza’s “boyfriend”) are very likable and fun, much like the characters in My Fair Lady. I will say that Henry Higgins was much more likable in this book than the film since I only wanted to throttle him a few times in the book instead of almost the entire time in the movie.
I loved the quick wit of the characters and how closely they mirrored the wit and charm of the characters in the movie. The movie is based on the 1957 Broadway Musical, which was based on the 1914 play, Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw.
The back-and-forth, quick-paced conversations between the characters, the complex mystery, and the well-developed side characters made this one a very fun read for me.
I was very excited to see there are four other books in the series. This was the second book in the series but I didn’t feel like I’d missed something by not reading the first. I also liked how the plot and outcome of the first book weren’t given away in this book, which means you don’t have to read the series in order to understand what is going on in each book.
For those who are not fans of romance in books, there is very little in this one, and the romance that is there is so minor and secondary that it’s barely a blip on the romance meter. For those who are not fans of swearing, there is, I think, only one or two minor swear words. For those who are not a fan of graphic descriptions, this book will also work for you because there are no graphic descriptions of any of the crimes.
As a side note – the cover art for the Kindle version of this book is hideous and amateur-looking to me. The cover on the hardcover/library version that I bought is – dare I say it? Delightful. So if you go to look for the Kindle edition, please don’t run away. I promise the book is much better than the cover that is shown.
Have you read this book or any of the others in the series?
This week’s theme is: Books I Was Assigned to Read in School (These can be books you loved or hated. Or just tolerated. Bonus points if you give us a tiny review of your thoughts!)
While I was looking up books to jog my memory on some of the books I read (I remembered many of them but was trying to get the list to ten), I found a post by a teacher on a forum lamenting the fact that students no longer want to read novels and are pretty much only interested in getting the grade, not learning. They don’t want to take the time to read the novels and learn from them and that is heartbreaking to me. Sure, some of these books were torture for me to push through, but the lessons in them were important and if a teacher hadn’t said to me, “You’re reading this or you won’t pass this class,” then I might have avoided them. That would have been a shame.
I’m glad I’ve exposed my kids to some classic books, even if they’ve whined quite a bit about it. Anyhow, I’ll step off my soapbox now and just list those books I was assigned in school.
Hiroshima by John Hersey – about the atom bomb being dropped on Hiroshima, Japan to end World War II. For a AP English course. Horrific, nauseating, and horrifyingly eye-opening for me.
The Awakening by Kate Chopin for AP English. Hated it but may suffer through it one day again to see if I hated it as much as I think I did. I probably will.
1984 by George Orwell – for AP English. Scared the living daylights out of me. Scares me more even now as I watch it unfold around me.
Lord of the Flies by William Golding. For 9th or 10th grade English. Disturbed me. Disturbed me worse when I read it two years ago with my son for his high school English.
To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee. I read this in sixth or seventh grade and then was assigned it in eighth grade and when the teacher found out I’d already read it she was surprised. I couldn’t get into it until my mom started to read it to me in her Southern accent. It became my favorite book. Read it again with my son two years ago for English. It impacted me even more the second time. So much so that I sobbed through half of it. It’s still my favorite book.
Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck – I don’t remember a ton about this book except it was sad and I didn’t like it.
A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickins. I don’t think we actually read this entire book. What we did read was okay for me but when I tried it again for eleventh grade English with my son we both ended up avoiding it and switched gears.
Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare. I’m not sure this counts as a book because it is a play but I had to read it and with the help of translation by my teacher, I ended up liking it quite a bit. I also liked Taming of the Shrew.
Silas Marner by George Elliot. My son and I read this for his English class so I am going to count it for school, even though it wasn’t my school. I ended up like it much more than I thought I would.
The Year of Miss Agnes by Kirkpatrick Hill. This is another one I didn’t have to read but was assigned reading for my daughter for her history curriculum last year. We both really enjoyed and – yet again – I cried through part of it.
This is a blog link-up where we not only allow you to share your past posts but we encourage it. So share away!
Remember when I was all like, “I can’t wait for fall weather! I want to cozy under my blankets and read a book!”
Yeah, well, fall weather is one thing. Winter-like weather in October is another. This past week our temps dropped close to the 30s and I was a bit shellshocked by it. Luckily I did have a warm blanket and a book to survive it and didn’t have to leave the house too much for any appointments or other events.
How is the weather where you are?
We had some great links this week for our link up. Did you get to check some of them out?
I’m so glad you are here and participating in our weekly link-up of family-friendly, fun, educational, interesting, crafty, fashionable, and whatever else posts. I hope you’ll tell your followers about our post (feel free to copy and paste the graphic) and visit the blogs in the link-up.
Now it is your turn to link up your favorite posts. They can be fashion, lifestyle, DIY, food, etc. All we ask is that they be family friendly. You can link up posts from last week or even from years ago. You can share up to three links each week.
We are always looking for additional hosts so let us know if you want to help out and we are also looking for more links from fashion bloggers so let your fashion bloggers know!
Also, please take the time to visit the other blogs on the link-up and meet some new bloggers!
Erin from Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs came up with an awesome idea to offer a giveaway with our Comfy, Cozy Cinema this year and that giveaway is open! You have until Tuesday, Oct. 15 to enter it and the chance to win the items pictured here and a few more we are tossing in at the last minute!
Erin and I both have included books in the giveaway – a poetry collection put together by her and the first book in my cozy mystery series – Gladwynn Grant Gets Her Footing – from me.
We also have a journal in there, stickers, an autumn-themed mug, chocolate pumpkins (so cute!), tea, a booklight to read your cozy books with, and I’ll also be adding a cozy blanket for you to curl up under and these cute little corner bookmarks for you to mark the page of whatever book you are reading.
To enter you can follow this link (the embed feature won’t work on WordPress for some reason).
We’re asking you to follow our blogs, our Instagram, my Substack, and Erin’s Etsy to gain entries.
We are not going to use your email addresses for anything other than confirming you followed, etc. so don’t worry that you’re being added to a mailing list. You are not. The addresses will not be kept in any way on our end.
We are so excited to offer this comfort package so please take a chance to win it! This giveaway is for U.S. residents 18 years of age or older. It is in no way associated with WordPress or Meta or any of their affiliates.
This week Little Miss turned 10 and that’s pretty surreal for me.
It truly does seem like this time with her has gone by so incredibly fast.
It seems like just yesterday – or at least only a year ago – she was pulling herself up to a standing position on her little chair at 9 months old, ready to walk so she could follow her older brother.
She didn’t crawl.
She only rolled over once.
She didn’t even Army crawl.
All she wanted to do was walk and she did – very early and very fast.
She was very short, like her mom, so there were many people who couldn’t believe what they were seeing. How could she already be walking?
I don’t know either but Little Miss has always been a very determined little girl who knows what she wants and how to get it.
We celebrated her on her actual birthday with a trip to an area restaurant because she likes to go to restaurants. The food at the place is very good but The Husband and I had only visited there as a couple and hadn’t taken the kids yet. This was their first experience and they really enjoyed themselves. It was a rainy, misty, chilly day and most of the businesses in the small town we drove to were closed so we stopped by a free little library and then kept going home.
Thursday we all had dinner at my parents’ where we also played charades because Little Miss loves to do that.
Yesterday Little Miss had a sleepover with a friend. Remember when I said we weren’t doing any more sleepovers? Well, it was the only thing she’d asked for for her birthday and it was only with one friend.
We also took them roller skating, which my parents paid for as her gift because she likes to go skating, but we just don’t get around to take her to the roller rinks near us like we should. That is probably because there are three roller rinks in our area and they are all an hour away in one direction or the other. I am glad that my mom prompted us to do this because it really was a lot of fun for the kids.
I haven’t visited the rink we ended up going to for more than 25 years, so I wasn’t sure what to expect but the place really looked great. It is located along a lakeside campground, and it has been there for years and year and years. I don’t know how many because it didn’t say on their site, but I know it’s been a very long time because I was probably about Little Miss’s age when I first visited it.
I would definitely say that they have renovated over the years based on how great the skating rink floor looks, but some of it feels the same – the big round table-like seats where you sit to put your skates on, the booths where you can sit to eat, the garbage food they served (microwaved pizza, microwaved nachos and cheese, candy and sodas).
The music they were playing was from the 90s and early 2000s so it felt even more like my teen years.
My friend – the mom of Little Miss’s friend — was there as well (she brought another one of her kids with her), and we were both chuckling at some of the music and our memories wrapped around them.
When I was a kid, we visited a different skating rink (now closed) with our church a couple of times, and my dad remembers how one night one of the ladies from the church sprained her ankle, my brother broke his thumb, and someone else was injured too, but we can’t remember how. What Dad can remember is that a lot of people came into church the next morning limping and groaning.
There was a roller rink in the town we used to live in that was over 100 years old. It is still going and still owned by the same family. I think we might try to visit that one again sometime this year, but the kids who visit that rink are a little rougher around the edges – shall we say. I visited it for one of the night skates with my nieces one year many years ago and there were these little cliques and gangs in various corners of the rink. It was like the social hub for the area teenagers in many ways. There was the cool kids group and the not-so-cool kids and then the kids who didn’t care about any of that – they just wanted to skate.
My nieces wanted snacks and I think they were flirting with some of the boys and I didn’t know what was going to go down so I finally pulled them away and took them home. It was all a bit overwhelming but it was the main place for kids to hang out in the town and the owners are good people who would keep them safe.
I love that we still have these old roller rinks around here. They are just good, clean fun for kids and gets them out of the house and doing activity that isn’t too strenuous but isn’t too boring either.
These two roller rinks near us still host the skating games they used to do back in the old days – limbo, four corners, and other games. Little Miss won the game of limbo and earned a free pass for another night of skating, so we hope to visit the rink again sometime in the future. They offer daytime skates in the winter so we plan to do that since this rink is located in the middle of nowhere where there are plenty of deer to it at night.
When we first left to drive there – at 6 I laughed and said, “I usually have my pajamas on at this time and am cozying up for the night.”
The Husband and I have always been homebodies and rarely go to events after 5 pm. Part of the reason I prefer not to drive at night is because I have horrible night vision. I can’t see well and our car’s headlights aren’t great. It makes me very nervous. Another reason I don’t like to go out after 5 or really socialize much at all is I had my fill when I worked 50-70 hours a week at small town newspapers covering every event imaginable.
As a natural introvert I had to force myself to be social to get the story and I forced myself so often I think I broke something in me. Now that I’ve been gone from newspapers for so long, even going to a store and having to talk to the clerk stresses me out.
The Husband doesn’t like to go out on his days off because he socializes constantly all week long in his job as a small town newspaper editor and reporter.
When we got back to the house after skating, I thought the girls might just fall right to sleep. They had spent the entire day playing outside (the trampoline, riding scooters, jumping in leaves, and then two hours of skating). They lasted a little longer and then fell asleep so hard that Little Miss’s friend didn’t even change positions for five hours.
We all slept downstairs – them on an air mattress and me on the couch. In our area there are a few ways to tell it is getting cold. One is that you start to see people around town wearing light, but still warm, jackets. Two, you’ll start to smell woodsmoke as people begin to light their fires. And three, family cats start to cuddle more.
Our cats are fairly aloof all summer but around anywhere from mid-September to the middle of October they will gradually begin to come inside earlier after being outside hunting, lurking, or harassing other neighborhood cats, all day. Once they are inside they will stare at one of the humans for a few second or minutes – usually me – and then pounce – running up onto the body of said human and laying on their stomach or chest, expecting the chosen one to be honored and in awe that they have been chosen.
They will then kneed, curl up, purr, rub their faces and body all over the chosen one and attempt to make the chosen one their bed for the next few hours, whether the chosen one wants it or not.
Our youngest cat (Scout) is the one who curls up on me the most but last night she picked The Husband as the chosen one before bed. About 5 a.m. Scout woke me up by crawling onto my chest and anytime I get woke up my brain tells me I have to go to the bathroom so I did that and came back to the couch which is when Scout made my hip her bed. Two hours later I was up again and had to move her for another bathroom break. At this point the older cat, Pixel, who normally hates to be anywhere near Scout and hisses at her for even existing, decided she’d put with Scout simply so she could now use my body as her bed.
At this point Scout was curled up on the couch by my knees and Pixel was using my hip as the bed. The couch isn’t very wide so this was a very uncomfortable position to be in but it is also a very rare occurrence for them to be so close to each other without Pixel smacking Scout repeatedly in the head, so I did my best not to move and upset the experience.
My hips, back, neck, and – well – my entire body paid for that the rest of the day but I think it was worth it.
Little Miss’s friend has gone home now and we will all be in our own beds tonight. I am truly looking forward to that because if the cats do curl up on or next to me, at least I’ll have more room – in theory anyhow.
How was your week last week? Do anything exciting or interesting? Let me know in the comments.
I’m so glad you are here and participating in our weekly link-up of family-friendly, fun, educational, interesting, crafty, fashionable, and whatever else posts. I hope you’ll tell your followers about our post (feel free to copy and paste the graphic) and visit the blogs in the link-up.
Now it is your turn to link up your favorite posts. They can be fashion, lifestyle, DIY, food, etc. All we ask is that they be family-friendly. You can link up posts from last week or even from years ago. You can share up to three links each week.
We are always looking for additional hosts so let us know if you want to help out and we are also looking for more links from fashion bloggers so let your fashion bloggers know!
Also, please take the time to visit the other blogs on the link-up and meet some new bloggers!
Erin from Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs and I are watching Comfy, Cozy movies this September and October and this week we watched Kiki’s Delivery Service, a Studio Ghibli animated movie.
We are also announcing a very fun and exciting giveaway for a comfy, cozy gift basket which you can enter to win at the giveaway link at the bottom of this post!
Kiki’s Delivery Service was released in 1989 in Japan by Hayao Miyazaki, a Japanese animator and filmmaker, and was based on a book called Witches Express Delivery Service.
The movie was animated by Studio Ghibli (which Miyazaki was a founder of) for Tokuma Shoten, Yamato Transport, and the Nippon Television Network.
According to information online, “The English dub was produced by Streamline Pictures for Japan Airlines international flights in 1989. Walt Disney Pictures produced an English dub in 1997, which became the first film under a deal between Tokuma and Disney to be released in English. It was released to home media in 1998.”
This was a very sweet movie with little action but a lot of heart.
First the background – Kiki is a witch and the tradition is that witches leave home at the age of 13 and travel away from their family for a year to learn what their skill in life is.
Kiki’s mother insists she take her old, reliable broomstick so Kiki flies off into the night with her all black cat JiJi and finds a small town to settle in. She ends up living with a baker and starts a delivery service – delivering packages with the use of her broom.
The bakery is owned by Osono and her husband, Fukuo, who are expecting a child.
Kiki also meets a friend – a boy named Tombo who wants to be her friend more than she wants to be his for most of the movie. Tombo likes to invent things – especially things with the potential to fly. At one point he invites Kiki to his aviation club but Kiki gets wrapped up in deliveries and gets caught in a rainstorm. This causes her to become very sick but Osono nurses her back to health and then pretends to have a delivery sent to Tombo so Kiki can see him and apologize.
During her first delivery, Kiki loses the toy she’s supposed to deliver and then she and her cat – who talks by the way – work to find a way to get it back to the child it belongs to.
Much of the movie is like this – just little stories or adventures that aren’t very exciting in some ways, but are calming and sweet.
It isn’t until more than halfway through the movie that more conflict arises because Kiki seems to be losing her powers, which she first notices when she can no longer understand JiJi.
Studio Ghibli is the design studio for many Japanese animated movies. Later many of these movies are dubbed into English and sometimes feature well-known American actors. In the one I watched (which was the Disney dubbed one from 1997) Kiki was voiced by Kiersten Dunst and the cat was voiced by Phil Hartman.
Kiki’s Delivery Service focuses on themes of independence and finding your place in this world.
It was the first Studio Ghibli film to find commercial success soon after being released – earning $31 million.
I wasn’t as swept up in this one as in previous Studio Ghibli films but as it continued it grew on me. It was a very quiet film and some of the Studio Ghibli films have a little more action so I wasn’t ready for it to be so toned down. Once I got into the story, though, I enjoyed it. The scenery and art, as in all Studio Ghibli films, was really beautiful.
I was rooting for Kiki – especially once she lost her powers and seemed confused about her next step.
While the makers of the movie and critics said the movie focuses on themes of maturity and independence, I also saw a strong theme of friendship, family, and trust.
Coming up next week will be the 1945 version of Blithe Spirit.
Feel free to link up your own impressions of the movies at our link-ups. The links close at the end of the week but feel free to leave your blog post on future link-ups, even if it is for another movie.
Also, Erin and I are announcing our Comfy, Cozy Gift Basket Giveaway today.
I’m just going to copy what Erin wrote to share here because I am lazy *wink*: “We have some fun little goodies to be sent off to one winner, with more surprises to be added as well! We want to celebrate the season and this is just one way we would like to do that this year.
You can enter anytime between today and October 15th, and the winner will be announced on our blogs on Thursday, October 17th. Please enter via Rafflecopter and it is only open to those 18 or older living in the US.” You can enter here: https://www.rafflecopter.com/rafl/display/3614a4fa2/?
