In came this about anime fave Hayao Miyazaki's latest masterpiece. For those that love it, there is no comparison!!!
Looking over your animation news, I can't help but notice you're missing the big news in Japanese animation - "Mononoke Hime" or "The Princess Mononoke" (a Mononoke is a forest spirit.) This is the new Studio Ghibli film, which Disney picked up for global distribution. Fans of the genre are already touting it as the movie which will finally bring anime into the mainstream. It was written and directed by Hayao Miyazaki, who in Japan is considered the best animated filmmaker ever, and it had a budget of 2.4 billion yen, or almost triple Akira's budget. Over 80 CGI clips are used. Drooling yet?
In Japan, the movie came out in July, and has been in the top 10 since its release (16 weeks) and #1 for 8 of those weeks. It's already beaten E.T as the #1 grossing movie of all time in the Japanese box office.
The film is set in Japan's Muromachi Period (c.1333-1568), just before the period which is commonly evoked by the phrase "feudal Japan." (Miyazaki chose this period because very little is known about it, so he could take full creative liscence.) Samurai and other archetypes usually seen in this kind of period drama are largely missing. It is an action movie with heavy environmental overtones but devoid of the preachy, black-and-white delivery that tends to spoil movies like "Fern Gully."
Voice casting for a dubbed version has already begun, and they're saying the dub will have a full theatrical release in March. The cast is being kept a tight secret. There are rumors of a subtitled print seeing a theatrical run too. Both the dub and the sub will be uncut, preserving as closely as possible the original dialogue and music.
Disney signed the deal before it was known what the new movie would be, and so a lot of people are thinking that Disney got more than they bargained for - it was expected that Miyazaki would make another kiddie film like "Tonari no Totoro" ("My Neighbor Totoro") which was dubbed and released theatrically in San Fransisco and New York in '93. "Mononoke Hime" is a far more serious film - shots in the trailer and publicity photos depict a man losing his arms and San (the female lead) with blood smeared on her face. It will not get a rating of less than PG-13, and it could easily wind up being rated R. It is expected that Disney will give it to one of their subsidiaries. Right now, Miramax is the top contender.
The Japanese trailers are in gzipped and zipped Quicktime format on the Web at http://www.Nausicaa.net/file-archive/MononokeHime/movies/ and they are looking very cool. The Hayao Miyazaki Web has a very comprehensive web page at http://www.Nausicaa.net/~miyazaki/mh/, and Ryoko Toyama has an excellent page at http://www.helsinki.fi/~stvirtan/mh/index.html. The official homepage (currently only in Japanese) is at http://www.ntv.co.jp/ghibli/.
The Disney-Tokuma deal which included the rights to "Mononoke Hime" also included the video distribution rights to a number of Miyazaki's other movies, most notably his 1984 masterpiece, "Kaze no Tani no Naushika" ("Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind").
