January 2004

January 19, 2004 "Spirited Away" BAFTA Nomination
Spirited Away is competing in the "Film not in the English Language" catagory of the British Academy Film Awards against five other films. A win ensures another bullet point on the film's resume.

Winners will be annouced on February 15.

Thanks to Zach Borden and Samantha Easton for the news.

January 6, 2004 Hidden Bonus on R1 "Castle in the Sky" DVD
Carlos Hasan discovered (and informed the MML) an unused video clip buried on the R1 "Castle in the Sky" DVD titled "Tankuu no Shiro Rapyuta Promotion". It exists in accessible form on the R2 DVD. The clip is about 20 minutes long with Japanese audio and no English subtitles. It's believed that it may have been scheduled for translation as a bonus feature but that Buena Vista either ran out of time or interest.

The exact file is VTS_06_1.VOB in the VIDEO_TS directory of the DVD.

Macintosh instructions:

1. Get the free program VLC: http://www.videolan.org/vlc/download-macosx.html

2. Insert the DVD. If DVD Player launches, quit it. Launch VLC instead.

3. Choose "Play Disc" from VLC's File menu.

4. Uncheck "Use DVD menus", and choose Title 13, Chapter 1. Press Play.

5. Using the position slider, move to after the Japanese trailers (about 3 min. 30 seconds into the file). If you play from the beginning, the clip will divert to another file after the trailers are finished.