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 …
Studio Ghibli may easily be called the Disney of Japan. An animation film studio founded in 1985 by Isao Takahta and Hayao Miyazaki, Studio Ghibli has consistently produced brilliant hand-drawn animated films, and its characters have become ubiquitous in Japanese culture. Over the last 25 years, the production studio has released 17 feature films, eight …
This week, Josh takes a look at a whole new world of animation, from Japanese auteur Hayao Miyazaki from Studio Ghibli. Pixar honcho John Lasseter introduced Americans to Spirited Away in 2002; ten years later, can Josh share Lasseter’s enthusiasm? Does admiring something equal liking it? Is Miyazaki a modern successor to Walt Disney? Can …
It was the year that many critics dubbed the worst in recent memory. With a toxic summer movie season that gave us disappointing dreck like Pearl Harbor and The Mummy Returns, and a dismal couple of autumn weeks where theatres were inundated with a staggering level of mediocrity (forgettable titles like Bandits, K-Pax, and Thirteen …
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 …
Don’t ever let them tell you they don’t make movies like they used to. With the final film on my countdown plus the fifty special mentions, I would argue they make them better than they used to. 1- Werckmeister Harmonies (2000) Directed by Béla Tarr / Ágnes Hranitzky (co-director) Genre: Drama / Art-House Bela Tarr …