The incredible animated Millennium Actress comes to DVD

Coming to DVD on 26th September 2005 courtesy of Manga Entertainment is MILLENNIUM ACTRESS, director Satoshi Kon's long-awaited follow-up to his international smash-hit animated feature, Perfect Blue. The DVD represents the first UK release of MILLENNIUM ACTRESS in any form and comes complete with the film's original Japanese 5.1 audio dub and an all-new, exclusive UK-produced English dub.

Winner of both the Best Animation Film Award and the Ground-Breaker Award at North America's premier genre film festival, Montreal's Fantasia Festival, MILLENNIUM ACTRESS is a visually sumptuous and emotionally affecting animated tribute to the wonder of cinema from the visionary and award-winning director of Tokyo Godfathers and the acclaimed anime series, Paranoia Agent.

 

Having secured an interview for a film they are working on, documentary filmmaker, Genya Tachibana, and his cameraman, Kyoji Ida, visit the home of Chiyoko Fujiwara, a legendary but reclusive Japanese screen goddess who, thirty years earlier, suddenly and dramatically disappeared from the screen and from public view. At the start of the interview, Tachibana, one of Chiyoko's greatest admirers, presents the actress with a small key, triggering an outpouring of vivid memories of her past. As Chiyoko begins telling her amazing life story, the boundaries between reality and the films she made during her career become increasingly blurred. Incredibly, Tachabana and Ida become physical witnesses to key events in Chiyoko's life, both on screen and off, from the Great Tokyo Earthquake of 1923, back hundreds of years to Japan's Warring States Period and the Shogun-ruled Edo Period, and forward again to the country's pre- and post-World War II era. Throughout the historic millennium of Chiyoko's tale, her only wish is to once again lay eyes on her first and one true love, an injured artist she had helped escape from the government authorities when she was a small girl and the man who had once given her a small, all-important key.

 

Kon's typically cinematic production of MILLENNIUM ACTRESS is a compelling, moving and intelligent animated film with tremendous crossover potential that is likely to appeal to fans of live-action films such as Raise The Red Lantern and Hero as much as to already-established anime fans. A visual and narrative masterpiece, the film is evidence, if it were still needed, that Satoshi Kon ranks alongside Hayao Miyazaki (Spirited Away; Howl's Moving Castle) and Katsuhiro Ôtomo (Steamboy; Akira) as one of the greatest animators working in cinema today.

 

MILLENNIUM ACTRESS (cert. tbc) will be released on DVD (£16.99) by Manga Entertainment on 26th September 2005. Special Features include anamorphic widescreen presentation (1.78:1), "Making of Millennium Actress" featurette including interviews with and commentary by Satoshi Kon, bonus US theatrical trailer, exclusive UK slipcase, insert booklet and poster, Japanese 5.1 Dolby Digital Surround Sound, Japanese Stereo 2.0, English subtitles and Manga trailers.

 

'MIllennuim Actress' is out to own now and available via Amazon and for pre-order via AmazonUK.
 
You can read more about the DVD in our database.