The Glassworker

amazing film

I love Studio Ghibli, and it's obvious where Usman Riaz is drawing his inspiration from for this film. A couple of shots in The Glassworker felt like they were taken straight out of Howl's Moving Castle.

Of course there are a lot of perils with wearing your Ghibli influences on your sleeve like this, because you'll be drawing comparisons. Both Miyazaki and Takahata have worked with the best animators in Japan, a place with a robust 2D animation business. They were both perfectionists and had a lot of directorial experience before the formation of Studio Ghibli.

Director Usman Riaz had to learn everything from scratch, and build an animation studio in a place without an industry, effectively turning his studio into a kind of animation school to train animators through lots of trial and error.

I am beyond impressed by this effort. The behind the scenes documentary included goes into this. The other bonus feature is a full storyboard gallery of the entire film. Riaz chose to use a format similar storyboard format to those used on Japanese productions, so there are a lot of director notes in the boards themselves that I'm sure would be interesting to pour over.

The blu-ray transfer is nice, I did not check the bitrate, but it looks good. I wish the disc included the Urdu dub, but people should be aware that English is the original language version of the film.

Overall, this is a good movie, but it is quite flawed and suffers from some writing issues. However, Riaz is an…

Great animated film from Pakistan. Beautifully animated and the story was wonderfully told. Presentation is flawless. Image is sharp and clear. Sound is amazing with a lot of OOMPF when needed. Highly recommended.

Great slipcover & edition. Nice features and interesting animation.

very crisp and colorful animation with a great soundtrack, overall a terrific presentation. if you like Studio Ghibli type of films, this film definitely scratches that itch.