Yes, the ones from Howl's Moving Castle are there! That's what I was waiting for.

__________________

i was vigorously waiting for this one



now my new desktop background. There was another of the castle in the field with mists. they forgot that one

__________________
Watch everything but only take the good things from it

Ask, think and learn. Because the more we know the more we grow.

Watching the wrong to happen is the same as commiting the wrong.

If it looks like things are forcing you to be creative, Then be creative.

its a uniquely Miyazaki film, one only he could make and its uniqueness places it beyond being easily critiqued.[About Porco Rosso]
taken from a quote of Saddletank and Orphic Okapi

Maybe not "news" exactly, since there's nothing especially new about it, but it's interesting to hear Suzuki's opinion on Ghibli's current situation.

https://www.ft.com/content/7d36dca9-2aab...14-987d5ed5a4be

EDIT: it's been brought to my attention that the paywall prevents some people from reading the article, so I'll copy it below.


______


Some weeks into its state of Covid-19 national emergency, Japan, along with the rest of the world, was suffering from cabin fever. Children in particular were scared and bored.

It was at this point, says Toshio Suzuki, telling the story from the welled kotatsu bench of a sushi restaurant near his office, that the education board of his native Nagoya called Japan’s most famous animation producer and co-founder of Studio Ghibli and asked him to come up with an encouraging message. The request resonated.

As an 11-year-old, Suzuki had lived through 1959’s devastating Isewan Typhoon and he recalls entertainers who were drafted in to divert children like him from the fearsome death toll.

“The normal thing would be to send a message saying something like ‘don’t let corona win’, but I didn’t want to do that,” he says.

His alternative offer to Nagoya was a short, grandfatherly video (now well and truly viral), in which he showed children with just a few simple pen strokes the secret of how to draw Totoro — a rotund woodland spirit, a symbol of supernatural comfort and the most globally recognisable of Studio Ghibli’s pantheon of characters.

Suzuki, 72, tells the story in part to underline the importance of meeting adversity by creating, rather than consuming. But he also uses it to illustrate the way that he and Ghibli’s two other co-founders — the legendary animator Hayao Miyazaki, 79, and the late Isao Takahata, a pioneer of serious storytelling through a medium once considered for children — have run one of the world’s most beloved creative powerhouses for the past 35 years. Everything, he says of the distinctively Japanese studio, has always been on their terms.

And a lot of the confidence behind that, he says, has hinged on the friendship between himself and Miyazaki: a relationship that makes the entire process of running the business feel like a single, ongoing chat between companions “who have been dating for 42 years since 1978”.

“He’s my best friend. You can’t only be kind to your friends, and you can’t only be strict with them. You have to be both?.?.?.?I have met and talked with him every single day,” says Suzuki. And there is, he adds sadly, a ghost in all those conversations. The loss of Takahata, who died in 2018 at the age of 82, reduced a trio of inseparable friends to a duo. Suzuki says the great storyteller still features in all his conversations with Miyazaki as a question: what would Takahata think about this?

The outcome of those conversations has repeatedly defined the company, starting in the mid-1980s with the pivotal decision to produce Miyazaki’s My Neighbour Totoro and Takahata’s wrenching war epic Grave of the Fireflies in spite of pleading from financial backers and others to look for something more action-packed and bankable.

“Miyazaki and I were brought up comfortably and I think it shows in Ghibli films because they are not driven by the need for commercial success. The most important thing is to be free,” he says, adding later in our conversation that there was a moment when the company received an offer that would have made him and the other founders billionaires but was ultimately rejected as posing too great a threat to their independence.

“I am still actually angry when we have really huge sales,” says Suzuki, who has a grandson he prefers doesn’t watch too many Ghibli films. “It is more important to make a work than to sell it. I absolutely hate it when our work is called ‘content’. Hayao Miyazaki and I are both very opposed to children watching Totoro over and over. You only have to see it once.”

To a considerable extent, he adds, his role as producer and head of the studio has been to protect Miyazaki from the necessary run of business decisions. Suzuki knows what it costs to make the films as the maestro wants them, he says, and considers the venture a success if it breaks even.

And through that approach, says Suzuki, he has been free to consider the studio’s work only in the context of how it will play to Japanese audiences, however ravenous the global appetite for Ghibli’s output. The fact that Suzuki’s Totoro-drawing video was downloaded around the world by countless fans, that Spirited Away won an Oscar in 2003, that Netflix secured the rights to show most of the Ghibli back catalogue on its platform or that the Ghibli Museum was (pre-Covid) a must-see for foreign tourists, is, to Suzuki, a distraction.

“When we make a film, we only think about the Japanese audience. We never think that what we are making here will expand around the globe and be supported by people worldwide. I never used to think about that, and I still don’t,” he says.

The question Suzuki now faces is whether the pandemic and its restrictions are going to take some measure of Ghibli’s freedom away, either by making it more difficult to create the films themselves or by forcing more nakedly commercial pressures on the studio. Japan’s voluntary — but widely observed — lockdown conditions affected all companies to varying degrees, and Japan’s animators have not escaped disruption. The Japanese economy has been hit grievously hard.

And it all came at a critical time for Ghibli. Two weeks before our meeting in June, the studio had announced that Miyazaki’s son Goro was working on a computer-animated adaptation of Diana Wynne Jones’s novel Earwig and the Witch, which is scheduled for broadcast in Japan next month. But even more fascinating for Ghibli’s global fan base is the progress of the elder Miyazaki on How Do You Live? — his first film back in the director’s chair since The Wind Rises in 2013 and the reason he decided to come out of retirement. It was a decision, says Suzuki, that did not arise from any formal meeting within the company (“we never have those!”) but from another of the daily chinwags between the two old friends.

Miyazaki, says Suzuki, has come into the office every day of the Covid crisis, even as the rest of the operation has had to be pared back and dependent on teleworking. The good news is that production has therefore continued to some extent; the bad news is that because the maestro works at his own perfectionist pace, the actual film is at least three years away.

But beyond the practical, day-to-day concerns of running a studio in unprecedentedly tough times, and of coping with the long-term demographic challenges to the Japanese animation industry that Suzuki sees as inevitable, he has a greater fear around Covid-19. “My biggest worry is that corona will cause a change in everyone’s mood. And when that happens, will anyone be interested in the things you are making now?”

__________________

Looks like a live action Whisper of the Heart is coming out later in the year! Apparently it's a sequel based on the manga, so it isn't actually an adaptation of the Ghibli film, but at least visually, it's clearly not straying too far from what we know.

Here's the trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ytbzOw3q7g

__________________

quote:

---

the bad news is that because the maestro works at his own perfectionist pace, the actual film is at least three years away.

---

__________________
It's now very common to hear people say, 'I'm rather offended by that.' As if that gives them certain rights. It's actually nothing more... than a whine. 'I find that offensive.' It has no meaning; it has no purpose; it has no reason to be respected as a phrase. 'I am offended by that.' Well, so loving what - Stephen Fry.

Ni no Kuni, the video game series with Studio Ghibli designs and music by Joe Hisaishi, has a mobile game now, and it just got its full release today. Here's the link for anyone who's interested: https://ninokuni.netmarble.com/en

__________________

I think this was probably announced a while ago since it's actually coming out soon, but an artbook covering all the Ghibli films is going to be released in English in October! https://twitter.com/GhibliTavern/status/...kn7vWM8fJUKOHkQ

__________________

Studio Ghibli cryptically posted a short video on Twitter today, showing nothing but the Ghibli and Lucasfilm logos.
https://twitter.com/JP_GHIBLI/status/1590720957676949504

__________________

Yeah, I saw that on Twitter. Intriguing, to say the least.

__________________

Curiouser and curiouser???

__________________

The details have now been revealed! It's a short film about the Star Wars character Grogu (aka "Baby Yoda") and the susuwatari. If you have Disney Plus, it's on there already!

https://www.polygon.com/star-wars/234536...-plus-baby-yoda

__________________

Big news! The poster for How Do You Live? has been revealed, and it's going to be in cinemas in Japan next July! https://twitter.com/GhibliTavern/status/...JdBr1MLua9AyBYg

__________________

Looks like some (maybe all?) Ghibli films are disappearing from Netflix in the UK soon. So let this be a reminder that you can't count on them staying available on streaming services!
https://twitter.com/GhibliTavern/status/...1261210631?s=20

__________________

Makes me glad that I have most of the Ghibli's on DVD...

__________________

Update: sounds like it was a false alarm and Netflix have actually renewed the licences. Still something to be wary about in principle though!

__________________

Good to hear...

__________________

The Ghibli Park "phase two" opening dates have been announced. Mononoke Village is set to open on 1 November 2023, and Valley of Witches (featuring stuff from Kiki, Howl, Aya) opens on 16 March 2024.

https://ghibli-park.jp/info/info20230720.html

(edit: fixed a typo)

__________________

You might see some headlines about Miyazaki returning to the studio to work on a new project, but I advise taking these with a grain of salt! A film journalist made a brief comment about being told this by the Ghibli VP at the Toronto International Film Festival - and right now I think this is the only source for all these reports. Nobody else has independently said anything similar and that journalist hasn't given any further information.

But do keep your eyes peeled in case there's some more official word on this!



EDIT: There is now a video clip! The overall message is that Miyazaki isn't particularly planning on retiring, and he still has other ideas for projects.
https://www.cbc.ca/player/play/2262124099906

__________________

I kinda understand the statement about Miyazaki having more ideas as, even though I not very physical any mote, I still have very active thoughts and thinking in my head, lol... So the brain is still very active... Thankfully...

__________________

https://www.oricon.co.jp/news/2295679/full/

Studio Ghibli is now a subsidiary of Nippon Television. Apparently Suzuki and Miyazaki have been concerned about who should take over from them for some time. Goro was asked repeatedly, but he refused, feeling the job was too great for one person - and Hayao is said to have been opposed to the idea as well. In the end, I suppose this is the solution they decided on, as they already cooperate with NTV quite a lot.

__________________