Takahata Isao had directed a number of animated television series and a few feature films when he was brought in to the fold of the newly-formed Studio Ghibli in the mid-1980s. Ghibli had been largely formed through the efforts of producer Suzuki Toshio and director Miyazaki Hayao, a longtime collaborator of Takahata’s by that point; […]
An earlier version of this review can be found here. Once again, the newest Miyazaki Hayao film was accompanied by the newest announcement of the writer-director’s retirement. And following the 2004 release of Howl’s Moving Castle, he stuck to it for a good year; not counting a few shorts for the Ghibli Museum, he didn’t […]
Following Spirited Away, Miyazaki Hayao didn’t immediately start upon another feature film. Between 2001 and 2006, he directed a cluster of short films meant exclusively for the Ghibli Museum just outside of Tokyo; shockingly, that exclusivity seems to have held firm, even in this day of widespread internet piracy, and despite my best efforts, I […]
After completing Princess Mononoke, Miyazaki Hayao issued one of those threats that directors sometimes do: having found the experience of making that film so grueling, he’d elected to abandon filmmaking altogether, dedicating his time instead to the planned Ghibli Museum, and to the studio itself, where he would stay on as an executive. It never […]
We’re ten films into this Miyazaki Hayao retrospective now, and so far I’ve said barely a word about how they’ve been made; and it’s worth discussing, because it’s fairly special, and explains why thus far I’ve made so freely with “Miyazaki did this” and “Miyazaki did that”, despite the fact that one usually doesn’t treat […]
The following link is current as of November 2023: https://vimeo.com/394801904) In 1995, during the first real lull in Miyazaki Hayao’s filmmaking career since the beginning of the 1980s, he was approached by the pop duo Chage & Aska, who wanted him to make a music video. With nothing else to do at the moment, Miyazaki […]
Miyazaki Hayao’s sixth feature film grew out of an idea pitched by Japan Airlines, who were looking for a short in-flight movie: “a fun movie for middle-aged businessmen whose brains became tofu from overwork”, in the translation provided by the excellent Miyazaki fansite Nausicaa.net. But by the time Porco Rosso was completed, it had far […]
In 1987, Studio Ghibli acquired the rights to a children’s novel written by Kadono Eiko, titled Witch’s Delivery Service: the story of Kiki, a 13-year-old girl, and the last year of her training as a witch, as she set off for a new town away from her family and had to learn independence and self-sufficiency. […]
When I first had the idea of a Miyazaki Hayao retrospective, one of my biggest reasons for wanting to do it was that it would give me a plausible reason to see his 1988 feature My Neighbor Totoro, which I had, unthinkably, never watched until two days ago. Not that I should have needed a […]
Following the success of Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, one of that film’s producers, Suzuki Toshio, teamed up with Miyazaki Hayao to create a new animation studio, one that would release films boasting the opulence and epic scope of Nausicaä on a more or less regular basis. 24 years and 16 films later, […]
