Hayao Miyazaki

Hayao Miyazaki (born 1941) is a Japanese director, screenwriter, producer and animator. His animated full-length feature films have achieved great success around the world. He is the founder of Studio Ghibli, which creates many popular and critically acclaimed animated films. Miyazaki's most successful feature film was "Spirited Away" (2001; 千と千尋の神隠し "Sen to Chihiro no Kamikakushi"). This film won the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature Film in 2002, beating "Lilo & Stitch" and "Ice Age." His most recent film, "The Wind Rises" (2013; 風立ちぬ "Kaze Tachinu") was said to be be his last full-length film. However, in November 2016, it was reported that he would come out of retirement to work on another film. The new film will be called How Do You Live? and its release date has not yet been announced.

Miyazaki has been compared to Disney, but his feature films are very un-Disneylike in many ways. Miyazaki's films rarely have a villain in the Disney sense, and the characters often have a kind of ambiguity in their motivations. The stories often lack a traditional story arc, with a more meandering feel and a more leisurely pace. For people raised on Disney movies, this can be either disconcerting or refreshing.

When Miyazaki's movies come out, they are often the highest-grossing films of the year in Japan, and they are almost always candidates for awards, both in Japan and internationally.

* Miyazaki movies are widely admired for their beautiful and detailed hand-drawn and hand-painted artwork. Ghibli movies rarely use computer generated imagery. Backgrounds are often beautiful country landscapes or quaint village streets. Characters that fly, sometimes in aircraft, sometimes under their own power, are often seen in the films.
* When "Spirited Away" was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Animated Feature Film in 2002, Miyazaki did not attend the awards ceremony in protest of the American bombing of Iraq.

[My personal thoughts and recollections about Hayao Miyazaki and his movies were supplemented with details, dates and numbers from Wikipedia. - Kevin]  

Links to Miyazaki biographies:
Wikipedia
IMDb

Links to some Miyazaki movie trailers:
My Neighbor Totoro (1988) - trailer with English subtitles
Kiki's Delivery Service (1989) - English trailer 
Princess Mononoke (1997) - English trailer 
Spirited Away (2001) - English trailer
    Making of Spirited Away; Part 1  / PDF  ⮜
Howl's Moving Castle (2004) - English trailer 
Ponyo (2008) - English trailer 
The Wind Rises (2013) - trailer with English subtitles
Triple Feature - Nausicaa, Porco Rosso, The Cat Returns - English trailer

To Do List

1) Watch as many trailers and clips from Miyazaki and Jackson as you can.
2) Do The Hobbit: Battle of the Five Armies listening exercise (PDF) below. It's short!  ⮜

3) Do the Making of Spirited Away, Part 1 listening exercise (PDF) above.  ⮜
4) Do the online grammar exercise (passive) linked in the blog post below.