By YURI KAGEYAMA Associated Press TOKYO (AP) — Isao Takahata, co-founder of the prestigious Japanese animator Studio Ghibli that stuck to a hand-drawn “manga’’ look in the face of digital filmmaking, has died. He was 82. Takahata started Ghibli with Oscar-winning animator Hayao Miyazaki in 1985, hoping to create Japan’s Disney, and helped shape the […]
Hand-drawn ‘Princess’ stands apart from other Oscar nominees
By Yuri Kageyama Associated Press TOKYO (AP) —The princess laughs and floats in sumie-brush sketches of faint pastel, a lush landscape that animated film director Isao Takahata has painstakingly depicted to relay his gentle message of faith in this world. But his Oscar-nominated work stands as a stylistic challenge to Hollywood’s computer-graphics cartoons, where 3D […]
Songwriter recalls lonely, idyllic childhood, & feeling ‘different’
By Andrew Hamlin Northwest Asian Weekly The half Korean singer/songwriter Priscilla Ahn, coming to the Columbia City Theater on May 13, remembers her childhood in Pennsylvania as idyllic. “I started singing when I was 6,” she said. “One of the first songs I learned to sing was ‘If We Hold on Together’ from ‘The Land […]
“The Wind Rises”
By Andrew Hamlin Northwest Asian Weekly Master animator and director Hayao Miyazaki, co-founder of Studio Ghibli and the man who introduced anime features in America, has declared that “The Wind Rises,” a fictionalized biography of airplane designer Jiro Horikoshi, will be his last film. It is also his first and only film not explicitly directed […]
“The Secret World Of Arrietty”
By Andrew Hamlin Northwest Asian Weekly Studio Ghibli, founded in 1985 by anime directors Hayao Miyazaki
SIFF celebrates Studio Ghibli in “Castles in the Sky” series
By Andrew Hamlin Northwest Asian Weekly In 1985, Japanese anime directors Hayao Miyazaki and Isao Takahata joined forces to create a new studio for anime films. The studio’s name, Studio Ghibli, was named after an Arabic word meaning “Mediterranean wind,” with the hope that their works would blow a new wind through the world of […]