ponyo on a cliff Tagged Articles at Cinematical

Recently we passed on the news that Japanese master Hayao Miyazaki had completed the storyboards for his upcoming animated film Ponyo on a Cliff, and now it appears that a release date has been set.

Nausicaa.net says we can expect the film to be released in the middle of July, very likely on Saturday, July 19. Their source is Variety Japan. According to a publicist for Studio Ghibli, Miyazaki's animation studio, more information on the film will be made available after the Tokyo International Anime Fair, which will be held March 27-30.

When can we expect to see the film in the US? I haven't seen a hint so far, but Miyazaki's previous production, Howl's Moving Castle, was released in Japan in November 2004 and in the US in June 2005, while the one before that, Spirited Away, took more than a year to reach US theaters. I'd love to see this one by the end of the year.

Ponyo revolves around a boy and goldfish who wants to become a girl. A family story of a very different sort has won favor with Hong Kong critics. The Postmodern Life of My Aunt features Chow Yun-Fat as an amateur Chinese opera singer who lures the 60-something heroine into a bogus scheme involving cemetery plots. David Rooney's Variety review says that's only one of the film's narrative strains.

The Associated Press reports that he Hong Kong Film Critics Society rewarded the picture this week with three prizes: Best Film, Best Director (Ann Hui) and Best Actress (Siqin Gaowa, who plays the heroine). Other awards went to Tony Leung Ka-Fai (Best Actor, Eye in the Sky) and Wai Kai-Fai and Au Kin-Yee (Best Script, Mad Detective).

After a few months of silence, we've finally got official word on Hayao Miyazaki's next animated feature. The Howl's Moving Castle creator has been the center of anxious buzz for a while. In January, I posted that his upcoming film might be based on the Chinese children's novella, I Lost My Little Boy. While this rumor turned out to be false, Miyazaki was definitely right about the title having "no" in it twice. The next film is called Gake no ue no Ponyo, which translates into Ponyo on a Cliff.

Instead of an adaptation, this will be another original work for the animated filmmaker. The story delves into the lives of a 5-year-old boy named Sosuke, the image of whom will be visually modeled after Miyazaki's grandson, and a princess goldfish named Ponyo who is aching to become human. As for more details, Ghibli World says that the film will deal with themes of "father," "mother" and "cliff," which I'm sure is all the specifics you were looking for, right? "Cliff" makes things ominous, but the president of Studio Ghibli, Toshio Suzuki, has said that "Almost 70 to 80% of the film takes stage on sea. It will be a director's challenge on how they will express the sea and its waves with freehand drawing." Hmm. Waters and cliffs and I'm sufficiently confused. How about you?

[via Twitch]