WEBmikey: Millennium Actress : 5 of 5

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Millennium Actress : 5 of 5
7.24.2005 8:33 PM \| Link	It's always amazing to me to see truly beautiful and realistic anime that easily could have been a live-action movie. Of course, I absolutely love the animation and applaud it, and it lends a certain sense of mystery to the story. The first movie I saw of this type was Perfect Blue, and by coincidence, Millennium Actress has the same director (as well as other artists)! The story is fantastic - it follows a famous Japanese actress named Chiyoko through her entire life. When she's young, she meets a painter who gives her the key to "the most important thing", and she continually tries to find him to return his key. The story is told via an interviewer and cameraman who visit the old Chiyoko in present day, but as she tells the story, it intermixes with her movie roles, covering 1,000 years of Japanese history (hence the movie's title). The interviewer and camera man appear in all of these settings, sometimes as onlookers only, but other times as characters! Everything from Samurai to monster movies to science fiction is covered, but through it all the devotion of Chiyoko to her dream is what truly shines. This original story is just incredible, and carries such a wonderful message of holding onto a dream in which the chasing is more important than the obtaining. The DVD includes an excellent making-of documentary (all in Japanese), which is a fascinating look at the development process. Millennium Actress is simply spectacular! Labels: anime, dvds


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