Family movie nights used to mean sitting around the television set waiting for a scheduled film and enduring annoying commercial breaks. Such nights tend to look a little different these days, with streaming services such as Netflix and on demand television dominating the market and allowing us to watch films whenever and wherever we want, uninterrupted by advertising. Long gone are the days of running to the kitchen to grab a snack during an ad break and rushing back before the movie resumed.
A few weeks ago, however, Japanese film enthusiasts created a social media frenzy and turned back the clock to an era before streaming.
When Studio Ghibli’s “Castle in the Sky” was shown on television on the last Friday of August, social media blew up and the film quickly trended on Twitter. Fans took to social media to share photos of latte art and eggplant sculptures of the characters, celebrating the televised event. One simple tweet that admired the beauty of a scene featuring an animated egg on toast from the film attracted around 4,800 likes and was retweeted about 1,300 times.