Miyazaki Mish-mosh

Some items about the most-recognized Japanese animation filmmaker in the west, Hayao Miyazaki:

-- His studio, Studio Ghibli, has announced its next feature film project, due for release in 2006: Ged Senki: Tales of Earthsea, based on the Earthsea novels written by Oregon writer Ursula K. LeGuin. The movie will be directed by Miyazaki's son, Goro Miyazaki. It's interesting that H. Miyazaki's last film, Howl's Moving Castle, was an adaptation of a fantasy novel by a British author, Diana Wynne Jones; and this project is an adaptation of an American writer's fantasy novel series.

A couple of years ago, Sci-Fi Channel did a live-action Earthsea miniseries, which LeGuin lambasted for several reasons (including that it turned several characters of color into Aryan white folks). It will be interesting to see the Miyazakis' take on it.

-- On Thursdays in January, Turner Classic Movies is running a nine-film salute to Hayao Miyazaki . The occasion is Miyazaki's 60th birthday. The films will include Whisper of the Heart(written by him, and directed by a protege who died shortly after the film was released) and Only Yesterday (produced by him), neither of which is available on domestic video; and My Neighbor Totoro, previously available from Fox, but now being released by Disney with a new dub. The films will be shown both in dubbed versions, and in Japanese with English subtitles.

-- At the Christmas party I attended Sunday at my in-laws' house, I put on a DVD of one of Miyazaki's films from the '90's, Porco Rosso. In short order, it got nearly everyone at the party watching it, from a five year old girl to a man in his '50's. We watched the dubbed version. Disney produced an exceptional dub for the movie, with Michael Keaton playing Porco, Cary Elwes voicing his American rival Donald Curtis, and David Ogden Stiers dubbing aircraft engineer Piccolo. The movie itself is sui generis -- a parody of action films that's also a meditation on middle-aged melancholy, a romance, and a valentine to aircraft, with some of the most stunning flying scenes ever animated.