After retiring from feature-length films and closing Studio Ghibli this past November, Japanese animation master Hayao Miyazaki is making a CG animated short film for the Ghibli Museum in Japan. According to the Anime News Network, his son, Goro Miyazaki, made the announcement at a talk show event in June. This will be the first …
There’s something special about the pure feeling that animated films give their viewers. There’s a certain depth of emotion that comes from these moments, and it’s the kind of depth that translates well to both critics and general audiences. Just look at the opening of Up, where we meet Carl as a young man, and …
The Japanese master of whimsical animation, Hayao Miyazaki, is one of animation’s most admired and successful directors. At the age of 72, he announced his retirement, but his films continue to inspire cinephiles and artists world-wide. Now, the films of Miyazaki are spotlighted in this amazing series of prints inspired by Japanese woodblock artist Kawase …
Almost every winter my family and I travel up to a cabin in Wisconsin Dells, and it serves as a great middle ground for our cousins who live in Iowa. The task predictably falls to me to bring some movies for the weekend. One of the films I wanted to introduce to my extended family …
Back in August we speculated on whether Studio Ghibli, the legendary animation studio behind films like Spirited Away, Grave of the Fireflies and My Neighbor Totoro, might be closing its doors due to financial difficulties. Now in an interview with the LA Times, the studio’s most vaulted director Hayao Miyazaki has announced that Ghibli is …
In a month full of horror and malevolent covens and blood-curdling scares, I offer now the soothing respite of Hayao Miyazaki’s beautiful and serene Kiki’s Delivery Service. Possibly Miyazaki’s most under-appreciated film, it is surely his most modest, which I mean as a compliment. It is the epitome of Miyazaki’s quiet filmmaking, letting the soft emotion and warm aesthetics of the animation do most of the talking. The fact that Kiki is a witch is rather beside the point, because this is a coming-of-age story for a young girl committed to helping others but forgetting about herself.
Could the magic that has come from films like Spirited Away, My Neighbor Totoro and Grave of the Fireflies be coming to an end? Thompson on Hollywood is reporting that Hayao Miyazaki’s Studio Ghibli may be closing its doors because the cost of making hand-drawn animated films with the attention to detail they include might …
With Hayao Miyazaki announcing that his latest animated feature, The Wind Rises will be his last feature, Studio Ghibli fans can take comfort in the following news. This Sunday’s episode of The Simpsons titled “Married to the Blob,” will provide some momentary relief as the show pays tribute to the master animator himself, with a …
Finding the reason for Akira’s resonance with all manner of audiences is not particularly difficult, since it is the zenith of great narrative-meets-dreamlike philosophical reality bending. For all that it blurs the lines of established faux-reality and fantasy, science-fiction and existentialism, it is ultimately a film about the fatal danger posed by one’s own anger.
An escapist, morally simplistic tale purveying hackneyed truisms masquerading as profundities, Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind is animation legend Hayao Miyazaki’s second feature and his inexperience as a writer shows. His debut is the relatively obscure Lupin III: The Castle of Cagliostro, which this column will cover at some point in the future.
America’s fascination with all things Japanese long predates Keanu Reeves’s backflips or the recent adaptations of Ringu. The popularity of Japanese pop culture is a huge subject and even tackling Japanese manga and anime is daunting. Experts in the fields of manga and anime will have to excuse the necessary compression needed to introduce some …
Princess Mononoke Directed by Hayao Miyazaki Written by Hayao Miyazaki Starring Billy Crudup, Claire Danes, Billy Bob Thornton, Jada Pinkett Smith We all have pop-culture blind spots, and one of mine has been, for a long time, the films of Studio Ghibli. For some of you, the very notion that I haven’t seen every Studio …
It’s a moment of truth on Mousterpiece Cinema this week, as Josh and Mike are joined by special guest Simon Howell from The Televerse and Sound on Sight’s flagship podcast. The trio team up to tackle the 1997 Studio Ghibli release Princess Mononoke. Along with Spirited Away, it’s one of writer-director Hayao Miyazaki’s most beloved …
The Secret World of Arrietty Directed by Hiromasa Yonebayashi (Gary Rydstrom for the U.S. version) Wirriten by Hayao Miyazaki Japan, 2010 North American cinema goers who enjoy solid animation feature films are privileged with a number of eclectic films produced by numerous studios. One can go see the latest animated picture from Disney, Pixar, or …
What Hollywood Has Left to Learn from Studio Ghibli? Everything: 5 Ghibli Films Hollywood Filmmakers Need to Watch Hayao Miyazaki can’t quit. Meaning that in both the ways it can be taken. First off, the man has seriously tried, having basically given a KISS-level amount of farewell tours, starting all the way back in 1997 …