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).

Some mornings I wake up feeling like an old, old man slouching toward death, and other days I'm magically transported back to my childhood -- like today! That's because Nausicaa.net is reporting that the storyboards for Ponyo on the Cliff, the latest masterpiece from Japanese master Hayao Miyazaki, have been completed.

Our own Monika Bartyzel brought us official word on the project in March 2007. She noted that Ponyo on the Cliff is an original work delving "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." One of the things I love about Miyazaki's work is his ability to take you by the hand and lead you into unknown territories, so I really don't want to know more about the plot than that simple description.

As a point of comparison, Nausicaa.net compares the number of cuts in the storyboards (1,138) with those in Miyazaki's previous films, which may hint at Ponyo's eventual running time. The completion of the storyboards by Miyazaki is roughly equivalent to the completion of principal photography on a live action film, which means the film is well on its way. If you can read Japanese, you can perhaps get more information from the official Studio Ghibli production diary.

If the current, perhaps temporary, poster (pictured) represents the style of art that will be presented, it looks somewhat different than Miyazaki's previous films -- still wonderfully detailed, but with softer textures, almost as though the characters are merging more with the backgrounds. I'm very eager to see the finished film, which should hit screens in Japan later this year.

As Martha previously reported, Studio Ghibli's adaptation of Ursula K. Le Guin's Wizard of Earthsea (renamed, for some reason, Tales of Earthsea) is on the way. Studio Ghibli has been pimping the upcoming film on their website for a while now, while Earthsea fans waited anxiously to see if this version will be any better than the miniseries. According to IMDB, Le Guin wanted Hayao Miyazaki to direct it, but he was tied up directing Howl's Moving Castle. The new film ended up being directed by Hayao Miyazaki's son, Goro, and apparently dad didn't want his son directing it. There's familial support for you.

Catsuka has the trailer up (a downloadable Realplayer file), and it looks very, well, Studio Ghibli - not a bad thing, if you're a fan of Studio Ghibli's animation style, which I am (the elder Miyazaki's Howl's Moving Castle and Spirited Away are two of my faves). Earthsea fans - what do you think? We can't really tell much about the story's adaptation from the trailer, but it looks very pretty, doesn't it?

[ via Kaiju Shakedown, who heard about it at Twitch ]