Mike Newell’s Great Expectations. The phrase itself doesn’t conjure up images of bold departures from tradition or magical surprises. As Newell puts it, Great Expectations is “a very ploughed field”. But while version of Charles Dickens’ seminal text is perfectly sound (if nothing more), there were more surprises to be found at the press conference for the film.

With Jeremy Irvine, Holliday Grainger, Robbie Coltrane, Mike Newell and David Nicholls in attendance, interesting factoids and anecdotes spilled out every few minutes.

Here are the six things I learned from the Great Expectations press conference...

“It hit me that my life wouldn’t go anywhere if I kept doing this so I did something different.”

That’s Hayao Miyazaki talking about what led him to make My Neighbour Totoro, which came out on Blu-ray yesterday.

I had the joy of re-watching Studio Ghibli’s adorable tale of childlike wonder over the weekend, where I tried to get my seven-year-old nephew to watch it for the first time. He was captivated by the first 30 minutes, but soon got distracted – ironically enough by the hustling, bustling adults around him. (So I put him back in his box until next year, when we’ll try again.)

The only plus side of him failing to make it through all 88 glorious minutes? I got to gorge on the Blu-ray extras, which contained some unexpected stuff, including explanations of where the Catbus came from and the fact that Totoro was originally only about one girl. There are some stunning storyboards as well.

It’s always a shame when DVD/Blu-ray reviews ignore special features – it’s almost like the reviewer just wants a free copy of the film and doesn’t bother to review it properly. Funny that. (That’s another rant for another day.)

But as always, there’s the whole length issue. No one wants to read me gushing over giant furry creatures paragraph after paragraph. So, to accompany my Totoro Blu-ray review over at Cine-Vue, here are some of the things I was most surprised by...