[kupoartist]

Haven't seen it, but personally i'm expecting something along the lines of "The Cat Returns", except not, obviously. In terms of budget and competence, it would make sense that every second, non-Miyazaki film coming out of Ghibli at the moment would be more of a money spinner to raise funds for the next big thing (regardless what the critics have said, people went to see the damned thing ).

I'm not a fan of Goro Miyazaki jumping the queue. I think it's very cynical that they wanted to bring in a nobody with the right surname to draw people in. Regardless of Goro's competence (or lack of), the team at Ghibli can float a reasonable movie without A-class direction, so basically, it's probably a watchable film that you will most likely enjoy, but not regard as the best thing since sliced bread.

Meiko, in the meantime, content yourself with the fact that Only Yesterday is out in like 2 weeks. Not in the US of course, where it will never be released because discussing menstruation makes Disney swoon and hide the entire movie away in the big iron vault. I use this opportunity to do a "haha! Europe finally got something America didn't out of Japan!" dance.

On the subject of Disney / Pixar / Dreamworks, I can only really admire Pixar and something of what Disney used to be. Disney is truely down the pan now, Dreamworks' output is just dire. I kind of enjoyed the Shrek movies, but they're not nearly as clever as a lot of people take them to be and they're certainly not masterpieces. Dreamworks are usually trying to copy Pixar, which just goes to show that Pixar are that much better.

Pixar's output has been varied - far more so than Ghibli, definitely less copycat than Dreamworks - they've done stories almost entirely about fish, bugs, cars, monsters and what have you, and I don't believe they've got stale. I'm not a fan of CGI animation, because I don't really enjoy how it looks, but they're still good film-makers.

One thing I do hate - and this goes for all american animators - Voice Talent is taking yet another dive into the abyss. The actors doing voices in western animators aren't professional VAs, but names put in to draw fans. The prevalence of comic-type animation movies in the west is furthered by this. Most of the A-listers brought in for animation movies can't manage serious acting in live-action, let alone animation where granting a character life is solely achieved through voices. Dubs of Anime movies make me cry for that reason, and Disney's approach is to fill out Ghibli's movies with celebs because they don't trust that the movies can sell themselves.

Well, at least they're keeping their filthy talons off of Only Yesterday