Category Archives: Hayao Miyazaki

‘Irreplaceable’: will Hayao Miyazaki, Japan’s animation auteur, ever retire?

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The Boy and the Heron’s Oscar win has prompted debate over whether the 83-year-old could put down his pencil

It could have been the perfect send-off – recognition at the Academy Awards of the artistry of Japan’s peerless animator Hayao Miyazaki.

The moment The Boy and the Heron was named the winner of best animated feature in Los Angeles last weekend gave Japan a chance to reflect on Miyazaki’s towering influence, and contemplate whether the 83-year-old is truly finished making films.

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The Boy and the Heron, Hayao Miyazaki’s last film, wins Oscar for best animation

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Master Japanese director wins his second Oscar for story of a young boy searching for his mother during the second world war

The Boy and the Heron, supposedly the final film from Japanese master director Hayao Miyazaki, has won the Oscar for best animated feature film at the 96th Academy Awards in Los Angeles.

Inspired by Genzaburō Yoshino’s 1937 novel How Do You Live?, The Boy and the Heron is the loosely autobiographical story of a young boy during the second world war, searching for his mother in a mysterious fantasy world; on its UK release it was described as “a mysterious and charming fantasy that circles back to Miyazaki’s classic themes of childhood pain and grief” by the Guardian’s chief film critic Peter Bradshaw.

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Hayao Miyazaki’s ‘final’ film The Boy and the Heron hits No 1 at North American box office

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The Japanese director’s animation beats The Hunger Games prequel and Godzilla Minus One on its opening weekend in the US and Canada

The Boy and the Heron, reportedly the final film from Japanese master animator Hayao Miyazaki, has taken the number one spot at the box office on its North American release, as well as achieving record figures for the director.

Preliminary box office returns report that The Boy and the Heron took $12.8m in the US and Canada on its opening weekend, putting it a significant distance ahead of The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, which managed $9.4m. In third place was another Japanese film, the monster movie Godzilla Minus One, on $8.3m.

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Studio Ghibli to release Hayao Miyazaki’s final film with no trailers or promotion

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The director and veteran of Studio Ghibli plans to retire after the release of How Do You Live? which will forgo trailers and marketing ahead of its Japanese release next month

Hayao Miyazaki’s next and apparently final film will be released with no trailer, marketing or other new promotional materials, it has been revealed.

In an interview with Japanese magazine Bungei Shunju, translated by the Hollywood Reporter, producer Toshio Suzuki said the film, titled How Do You Live?, would be released with “no trailers or TV commercials at all … no newspaper ads either.” He added: “Deep down, I think this is what moviegoers latently desire.”

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