Blog Archives

The Wind Rises (2013)

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The Wind Rises is Hayao Miyazaki’s first return to the director’s chair in five years (since Ponyo) and — if his statements in interviews are taken at face value — his final feature film in a career spanning six decades in Japanese animation. If that is indeed the case, it is in many ways a fitting swansong: it’s a layered, nuanced film that tells a story that is definitively Japanese yet universal, rooted in history yet filled with flights … (read more)

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Reunion (2012)

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No one with a television and an internet connection is unfamiliar with the events in March 2011 that resulted in the deaths of roughly nineteen thousand people in the Miyagi prefecture on the east coast of the main island of Honshu, Japan. On a scale of disasters, the 40 metre tsunami that levelled the area is an image that will not be soon forgotten, but for those of us lucky enough to be watching from afar, there is of course … (read more)

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Arrietty (2010)

Arrietty, the most recent release from Studio Ghibli, is released in cinemas nation-wide on the 12th of Jan, 2012.

Recently, Studio Ghibli seems to have turned to more non-Japanese inspiration for their particular and delightful brand of animated features – Howl’s Moving Castle was based on books by British author Diana Wynne Jones and Tales from Earthsea was of course drawn from the series by American author Ursula Le Guin. In both cases, Ghibli saw in these stories something that … (read more)

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