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Japanese animation director Hayao Miyazaki, 72, has retired, say reports from the Venice Film Festival. The announcement was made by Koji Hoshino, the president of Studio Ghibli. “Miyazaki has decided that Kaze Tachinu will be his last film and he will now retire,” Hoshino said.

As industry observers know, this is not the first time that Miyazaki or someone from his camp has announced his retirement. We posed the question on Twitter, and most people seem to believe that Miyazaki has announced his retirement at least three times.

Is anyone keeping track of how many times Hayao Miyazaki has retired?

— Cartoon Brew (@cartoonbrew) September 1, 2013

Hoshino promised that more details would be revealed at a press conference next week in Tokyo.

While the new Hayao Miyazaki film, Kaze Tachinu (The Wind Rises) will not be released in American theaters until sometime next year, attendees of the Venice International Film Festival, Toronto International Film Festival and New York Film Festival will get an opportunity to experience the film much sooner.

Kaze Tachinu, which opened in Japan on July 20th, is based on the life of Jiro Horikoshi, a World War II designer of Zero fighters, including the Mitsubishi A6M Zero which was used by the imperial Japanese navy for kamikaze missions and during the Pearl Harbor bombing.

“My wife and staff would ask me, ‘Why make a story about a man who made weapons of war?” Miyazaki told Japan’s Cut magazine in 2011. “And I thought they were right. But one day, I heard that Horikoshi had once murmured, ‘All I wanted to do was to make something beautiful.’ And then I knew I’d found my subject… Horikoshi was the most gifted man of his time in Japan. He wasn’t thinking about weapons… Really all he desired was to make exquisite planes.”

According to the South China Morning Post, this choice of subject matter, which lead to some veiled jabs at Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has put Miyazaki in the crosshairs of conservative nationalists. He has also found himself defending the film to South Koreans offended of his glorification of a man so closely connected to a Japanese military that used forced laborers from the Korean peninsula. And, the Japan Society for Tobacco Control, has taken issue with the depictions of smoking presented in the film, especially in a scene where the lead character smokes a cigarette while sitting with his wife, who is bedridden and suffering from tuberculosis.

Despite the controversy (or perhaps because of it), Kaze Tachinu was Japan’s biggest opening of the year at ¥960M ($9M US) in its first two days, and has stayed at number for four consecutive weekends with a total box office gross of ¥7.2B ($74.1M US). em>Kaze Tachinu

In spite of a soft third-place opening in the United States, Sony’s Smurfs 2, directed by Raja Gosnell, managed to become the number one film globally last weekend. The film opened with just $17.5 million in U.S. theaters, but made up for it with $52.5 mil in over forty international markets. Even with the strong overseas opening, the film is unlikely to top the original Smurfs worldwide gross of $563.7 mil.

Illumination’s juggernaut Despicable Me 2 scored $10.1 mil in its fifth U.S. weekend, boosting its domestic cume to $326.4 mil. It also added $13.8 mil internationally, and after last weekend, its global gross is $716.7 mil. It is the third highest-grossing movie of the year so far, trailing only Iron Man 3 and Fast & Furious 6. Disney’s Monsters University earned $1.4 mil domestically and $11.4 mil internationally. Its global total is $613.5 million through last weekend.

In Japan, Hayao Miyazaki’s Kaze Tachinu (The Wind Rises) held onto the top spot in its third week of release. The film grossed $5.6 mil from 454 screens, and has a Japanese box office total of $44.3 mil.

As reported by Anime News Network, documentary filmmaker Mami Sunada (Ending Note: Death of a Japanese Salaryman) is nearing completion on the Studio Ghibli documentary Kingdom of Dreams and Madness. The film follows studio producer Toshio Suzuki, and directors Hayao Miyazaki and Isao Takahata (Grave of the Fireflies) as they work on two upcoming Studio Ghibli films, Kaze Tachinu (The Wind Rises) and Kaguya-hime no Monogatori (The Tale of Princess Kaguya).

When discussing her film’s title, Sunada explains: “I think that having a dream entails having a bit of madness, no matter what the profession. There are times when you will go to extremes, and times when you are feared by others for that.”

The Wind Rises, which is the first Miyazaki directed film in five years, debuts this weekend in Japan. Centering on Zero fighter designer Jiro Horikoshi, it is inspired by a manga Miyazaki created for Gekkan Model Graphics magazine and based on the novel of the same name by Tatsuo Hori. The Tale of Princess Kaguya, directed by Takahata is an adaptation of the Japanese folk story, The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter. Originally slated to premiere simultaneously with The Wind Rises, Kaguya’s release date was postponed due to production snags, and as a result, Sunada continues to film in the studio to cover the extended production. Sunada’s documentary will premiere this fall in Japan.

After a successful UK premiere and a short run in Tokyo, Whole Hog Theatre’s stage version of Hayao Miyazaki’s Princess Mononoke will return to London’s New Diorama Theatre next month due to “unprecedented demand.” The production is a collaboration between the British theatre troupe and Miyazaki’s Studio Ghibli and features large scale puppetry and a recreation of Joe Hisaishi’s original film score.

Miyazaki, who is known for refusing the re-versioning of his films into theatrical productions, approved the project after being presented with a video proposal from Whole Hog by way of Aardman’s Nick Park. As recalled by Studio Ghibli producer, Toshio Suzuki, he gave his consent “a couple of seconds” into viewing the presentation. Suzuki was equally impressed: “I wanted to watch a strange ‘Princess Mononoke’, he told the Wall Street Journal.

With puppets by Charlie Hoare and costumes by Yoseph Hammad, the show translates the film’s eco-friendly theme and inherent Asian aesthetic by use of reclaimed materials and a form of Japanese textile work called Boro, which involves the patch-working of rags into garments.

“Being a big Studio Ghibli and Miyazaki fan myself, I have no desire to alter the film’s narrative and atmosphere, or to add a ‘new spin’ on the story. I only want to re-tell it in a different form,” director Alexandra Rutter told Film-book.com. “However, whilst audiences can expect to see much of the film’s narrative happen onstage, they should also expect the techniques we use to tell the story to be quite different.” And her artistic objective has paid off as the production has been picking up positive word of mouth, selling out entire runs and was even featured as one of Lyn Gardner’s theater picks in The Guardian.

The second UK run of Whole Hog Theatre’s Princess Mononoke is scheduled for June 18th-29th at the New Diorama Theatre in London. The cast is led by Mei Mac as San/Princess Mononoke and Maximillian Troy Tyler as Prince Ashitaka. The production also features musical direction by Kerrin Tatman and design by Polly Clare Boon.

“Animation is a young man’s game,” Chuck Jones once said. There’s no question that animation is a labor-intensive art that requires mass quantities of energy and time. While it’s true that the majority of animation directors have directed a film by the age of 30, there are also a number of well known directors who started their careers later.

Directors like Pete Docter, John Kricfalusi and Bill Plympton didn’t begin directing films until they were in their 30s. Don Bluth, Winsor McCay and Frederic Back were late bloomers who embarked on directorial careers while in their 40s. Pioneering animator Emile Cohl didn’t make his first animated film, Fantasmagorie (1908), until he was 51 years old. Of course, that wasn’t just Cohl’s first film, but it is also considered by most historians to be the first true animated cartoon that anyone ever made.

Here is a cross-selection of 30 animation directors, past and present, and the age they were when their first professional film was released to the public.

1. Don Hertzfeldt (19 years old)
   Ah, L’Amour

I spent a formative year of my youth in Japan, during which time I was exposed to early works of Hayao Miyazaki. Even now his work excites my boyish sense of wonder. Nausicaä is his only work that started as a manga, yet his cinematic style fills the pages, telling a classic story of a [...]

Hayao Miyazaki, who has been known to often take a negative tone about the animation industry and society in general, recently tweeted that he gets the feeling that the Japanese animation industry is “done for,” and as evidence, cited the emergence of women animators. Here’s what he said in Japanese:

They say it’s over for animation in Japan. When we look for new hires only women respond, and I get the feeling that we’re done for. In our last hurrah we borrow from outside staff (i.e. outsource), but soon we won’t be able to do that forever.

The tweet would seem to indicate that he somehow correlates the end of Japanese animation with women employees, but that may not be the case. Blogger Anne Ishii asked him to clarify and he responded with a five-part tweet, that perhaps made things a little better but also confused the issue further with some tangent about women bus drivers. The ambiguity may partly be due to translation issues and partly because Twitter is an awful forum for having meaningful discussions of any kind.

Considering that Miyazaki is arguably the most successful feature animation director of all time, his comments are worthy of discussion, and I, for one, am curious to hear him explain further what he meant when he said, “I think it would be great to see a female animation director, but as far as Ghibli’s concerned, I can’t think of a single one for us.” To read Miyazaki’s entire commentary, go to the Hooded Utilitarian blog. If you’re familiar with Japanese society and have a different understanding of what he’s saying, please share your thoughts.

Cartoon Brew: Leading the Animation Conversation | Permalink | 5 comments | Post tags: Hayao Miyazaki, Japan

In an odd new twist for the Studio Ghibli film library, Daily Variety is reporting that U.S. distributor GKids (The Secret of Kells) has acquired the U.S. theatrical and non-theatrical rights to thirteen Ghibli films – including Hayao Miyazaki’s Princess Mononoke, My Neighbor Totoro, Castle in the Sky and Spirited Away. Disney will retain the home video rights. Gkids is planning to distribute a series of Miyazaki film festivals to theatres nationwide.

Disney must have felt they no longer needed the theatrical rights. It’ll interesting to see how GKids will fare with these films – that company is certainly emerging as a leader in distributing worthy international animated features.

Meanwhile, I just caught up with these incredible Lego sculptures by Iain Heath. Heath’s tribute to the master animator Hayao Miyazaki was unveiled last year at Seattle’s BrickCon where it received the “Big in Japan – Best Overall” award. Check out his entire Miyazakitopia on Flickr. These two (below) are my favorites:

Cartoon Brew: Leading the Animation Conversation | Permalink | No comment | Post tags: Hayao Miyazaki, Lego

First, there’s the book and then there’s the movie.  Where to encounter the narrative first is always the question!  Most of us ‘older’ folk tend to encounter the narrative first in a book, and then later in the movie version.  But for today’s children and for me — especially in the case of Japan’s Studio Ghibli movies at any rate — it’s often the movie first.    When I first got wind of Studio Ghibli’s movie release, Arietty (it came out in Japan in 2010, DVD release July 2011) I noted quickly that it was based on Mary Norton’s The Borrowers (Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1953).  The directors at Studio Ghibli — notably Hayao Miyazaki and son, Goro Miyazaki — have occasionally gone to British children’s books for inspiration for their movies.  Their previously released Howl’s Moving Castle was based on Diana Wynne Jones’ book of the same title (published in 1986) and it was through that movie, that I was introduced to Wynne Jones’ writing.

Thanks to Studio Ghibli again, my daughter and I have had a chance to experience The Borrowers by Mary Norton.  I picked up a hardback edition of the novel at a used book sale in Nishinomiya where I lived and began reading it at night to my daughter.  The Borrowers are little people who live under a house in England, and who ‘borrow’ things from the much larger humans that dwell above them.  The family in the first series of the Borrowers books is a small one comprising of the father, Pod, the mother, Homily, and their fourteen year old daughter, Arietty (on whom the movie title is based.)    My daughter and I got about halfway through the novel before she got to see the movie (we rented the DVD in Japan just before the day we left) and it was clear from the snippets I saw of it that the Studio Ghibli team was well into animating the tiny world of the Borrowers with its signature, detailed and colorful animation for which it is famous.  I hope Arietty makes it into the North American viewing market soon, but barring that, The Borrowers still make a great read for parents and children alike.

Here’s a strangely abrupt teaser trailer for Studio Ghibli’s newest film, From Up on Poppy Hill (Kokurikozaka kara). It’s based on the 1980 two-volume manga of the same name written by Tetsurō Sayama and drawn by Chizuru Takahashi. The film is a collaboration between Gorō Miyazaki (Tales from Earthsea), who directed it and his father, Hayao Miyazaki, who wrote the screenplay.

(Thanks, Ben Price)

Cartoon Brew: Leading the Animation Conversation | Permalink | No comment | Post tags: Hayao Miyazaki

Science-fiction writer Diana Wynne Jones (pictured, via) has passed away. She was 76-years-old.

Jones wrote several bestselling children’s books including Chrestomanci, Castle, and the Magids series. The first novel in the Castle series, Howl’s Moving Castle was adapted by filmmaker Hayao Miyazaki into an Oscar-nominated animation movie. Throughout her writing career, she also published picture books, short story collections, and fiction for adults.

Here’s a tribute from Neil Gaiman on his site: “She adopted me when I was a 24 year old writer for magazines of dubious respectability, and spent the next 25 years being proud of me as I made art that she liked (and, sometimes, I didn’t. She’d tell me what she thought, and her opinions and criticism were brilliant and precise and honest, and if she said ‘Yee-ees. I thought you made a bit of a mess of that one,’ then I probably had, so when she really liked something it meant the world to me). As an author she was astonishing.”

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Today is Aug. 6, the anniversary date of the bombing of Hiroshima.  Shortly afterwards Japan surrendered.  In the wake of such catastrophic defeat, thousands of children were orphaned.  Kenji and the Cricket by Adele Wiseman, illustrated by Shizuye Takashima (Porcupine’s Quill, 1988)  is the story of such a war orphan.  Kenji is from Tokyo.  With no parents or place to live, he wanders the city alone, scrounging for food from fish markets and restaurants.  One summer evening, he discovers a cricket in the bushes in the park.  The soothing music of the insect comforts Kenji and he adopts him as a pet.  But where and how will he keep such a precious but fragile creature?  Kenji sets out with the cricket stuffed in his shirt, determined to find it a home.

Kenji and the Cricket is a little known classic of  Canadian children’s literature.  Written by the late Adele Wiseman in 1988, and illustrated by late Japanese Canadian artist, Shizuye Takashima (author of A Child in Prison Camp,) the work is a collaboration by two well known Canadian women artists.   I don’t think I’d ever read anything about Japanese war orphans in English for children until I read this book.  Up until then my only knowledge of the plight of such children was through John Dower’s Pulitzer Prize winning historical analysis of Japan in the immediate post-war period Embracing Defeat published in 1999.  And also, there was a film by well known Japanese filmmaker, Hayao Miyazaki called Grave of the Fireflies, which was also released in Japan in 1988 alongside his childrens’ blockbuster, My Neighbor Totoro.

If you’re looking for a book that describes the plight of war orphans, you might just look up Kenji and the Cricket.  Do you know of any good books that cover this topic for children?  Do recommend them to me and others by leaving a comment!

Cool

The Addictive Weirdness of Mattias Adolfsson – Swedish illustrator and  Europe’s Bizarrio No. 1

Jennifer: I hesitate to ask, your right brain is so hyperactively active who knows what it will let loose, but from where does all this creativity come! Inherited, evolved or from somewhere, dare I ask where, else?

Mattias: Evolved perhaps, but It might have been inherited from my father. My Father was a very funny man, he never got to get an education but I think he had great potential as a Illustrator as well. He came from poor conditions though and had to leave school early.

The Melon Mine Ball House

Bird of Paradise

Sketched Whilst Wandering

The Frontline Sky Ark

Jennifer: As a kid, did you get the bedtime story treatment? What were you favourite stories? What were the illustrations/illustrators you remember most vividly?

Mattias: I really can’t remember getting the bedtime story treatment, but my mother started sticking books in my hands at an early stage (she continued until late in my teens suggesting books, she still does it). I’m rather Euroscentric in my upbringing, my favourite Illustrators as a child where: Oscar Andersson,  Tove Janson , Kjell Aukrust ,  and with Richard Scarry as an exception to the rule.

Osckar Andersson

Tove Janson

Kjell Aukrust

Richard Scarry / Scary

As for stories, I early got hooked on European (gallic) comics, Tintin and Asterix, I used to read them and still do.

Herge's Tintin

Jennifer’s Comment: I think readers will agree there are some  curious elements of these influences seeping through.

[Mad's master of detailed mayhem can't help himself, even his website in seminal form features, Groo, an example of his madcap  characterisations.]

All three artists have an anarchic humour both lauding and subverting utopian ideals and just about everything else in between, Herge, of course, being the subtle one of the three. Where do readers see Mattias flitting in and out of here?

Jennifer: You refer to your love of Mad Magazine’s Sergio Aragones what drives you to detail so transfixing, so almost maddeningly effusive? It is an art in itself to take in all of some of your creations at once! [Can we accuse you of having anything to do with behind the scenes of Where’s Wally?]!

Mattias:

I think the main influence in this is the books of Richard Scary, (where’s Wally is not something I have seen, but I’ve heard it mentioned often). Sometimes I get a craving for leaving the very detailed work as it is hard to take it in, it is lousy as traditional art.

[Note from Jennifer: No, Mattias please don't. We LOVE the detail!]

"Soupilification" Tree

Big Red Animal Bus

Sargasso

Death-Star

The detail is mindblowing and maniacal and insidiously addictive. You could study it for hours and still pick out new facets.

Jennifer: I think I mentioned to you once how your incredible machines reminded me of the crazy inventions depicted by Heath Robinson last century. You feature many maniacal machines in your work, what is the fascination?

Mattias: I’m not sure, to be frank I’m not that into machines, sometimes I use the drawing as some kind of meditation, they start to live by themselves.

[Jennifer: The Machine has a life. Mattias' machines have a humour and character like no other I have seen comparable.]

Horse Powers

City Dweller

Jogger

Migration2

Jenny Wagner once said that no children’s book should have a mchine at its heart. In the case of Mattias’ robottic house machines, I would have to disagree. They verge into the realm of the Iron Man, I Robot and even Bicentennial Man. There is a drama and pathos about them that mitigates against the sometimes bleak black humour of civilisation gone  in search of itself.

Jennifer: The architectural elements of your work have also been compared to Hayao Miyazaki. What inspires you particularly about brick, stone and wood construction?  You tell how you started out to be an architect but diverged. How did that come about?

Mattias:

I love buildings and especially of the older kind. Though, when I started studying Architecture, I soon found out that I wasn’t too good designing modern houses. So now I can design what building I want, not having to think about the dwellers.

Captains

Floaters

Church

Ship of the Desert

Oltec-Space

Jennifer:  Your recent scholarship sojourn in Greece produced a wealth of work which we all saw evolve over the months on your blog site. Tell us about winning the scholarship and where you see the outworkings of that experience taking you?

Mattias: Well winning was not that hard, it goes to professional Swedish Illustrators ( and I guess not too many can leave home for one month). I’d love to do more traveling and drawing but, in order to do that, I’d have to finance it in some way, maybe via some magazine.

Jennifer’s note: Mattias sketched the most ordinary and extraordinary and made them all ‘art’. He interspersed his online blog diary with the mind expanding mischief his followeres have come to love. These, not necessarily from that period, exemplify.

Grumpy disher - dishwasher/toiletcleaner

House Flower1

Left Dragon

Learning to Fly

Over Ambitious