At a press conference held on March 19th, Toho and Studio Ghibli announced Hayao Miyazaki's next directed film will be the full length anime feature Gake no Ueno Horyo or Gake No Ueno Ponyo ("Ponyo On A Cliff") (there are several different pronunciations currently circulating), it will be released to theaters in Japan in July, 2008. This marks the master animator's first return to the director's chair in 4 years. At that time he made Howl's Moving Castle which grossed 19.6 billion Yen at the box office, drawing in excess of 15 million people. The plot will based on an entirely original screenplay and tell the story of "goldfish princess" and a 5 year boy who lives in a seaside town and vows to become a man. Miyazaki based the scenery on Setouchi in Okayama prefecture where he lived in 2005. According to producer Toshio Suzuki, the story is in someway based on Miyazaki's real life experience with his eldest son Goro (director of Gedo Senki) when he was 5 years old. The theme will be "Little Mermaid" with a thick Japanese twist. The story is halfway completed presently. He adds Ghibli will return to their "zero point" with no CG to be used in the animation process. The illustrations will be "drawn simply like those of a child". These guidelines will pose a different challenge than past works. They are quite eager to get on with it.
Can't wait to see this. I'm a little disappointed in the regression of art, going with a childish art style, because many of Ghibli's films have been amazingly beautiful. However, I get the reasons and still look forward to it a lot.
I have, I did enjoy the film. But it is hard to watch anime drawn like this, I've been spoiled by the many HQ film's and TV shows lately that it's hard to motivate myself to watch something intentionally drawn childishly, when I know they can do so much more.
But it's a minor thing, as I said. I'm still very eager to see the film.
I saw a commercial on Disney Channel featuring the recording an english language song for the film. Sung by a young Cyrus sister, and a young Jonas brother. who are also apparently the main characters voice actors...
As much as I love Disney in general, these are two things representative of what I hate most about modern Disney. I don't think I can bring myself to see an english language version of this film and will be waiting for the DVD...
Cute movie, much love for Miyazaki's work. The art was fabulous, as always.
The English dubbing, not so much (especially the poor theme song). Hopefully the DVD release features the original Japanese language track, if it does it'll be a definite purchase for me.
We walked out during the credits when the theme song went techno. It makes me cringe to see what disney COULD Have done with a bit more leeway. In the end, that's all they managed to **** up.
I'd venture to say this is his most visually stunning movie yet, at least I thought so. The story was a bit shallow, it lacked the grandeur of spirited away, but it was more put together than howl's. I thoroughly enjoyed it.
Ponyo has decidedly few lines, mostly just parroting what Sasuke says. The Jonas brother actually did a pretty good job. I loved Betty White, Cloris Leechman, and Lily Tomlin as the old women, and Tiny Fey as the mother was excellent as well.
I finally got around to watching this movie. It was the first movie that I've watched on Blu-Ray and I have to say that it was worth waiting until I found a PS3 to play it on. The movie was absolutely gorgeous. I almost got the same feeling of awe that I get while watching a movie in the theater.
The plot was more on the level of Kiki's Delivery Service than Spirited Away, but was still very enjoyable.
