A McGuffin

The master of suspense, Alfred Hitchcock built some his most suspense filled movies around a key concept called a McGuffin. Many famous films of his like Notorious, North by Northwest and Psycho were triumphs of this aspect of story telling. What exactly is a McGuffin?

Grave of the Fireflies (Hotaru Na Haka), is a 1988 animated film written and directed by Isao Takahata. It is often hailed as the most powerful anti war movie ever made.

I was lucky to run into this very good discussion about the movie by Roger Ebert. It about nine minutes long and discusses a unique aspect of the story telling technique used in the movie called a pillow shot.