[UPDATED] Actor Thomas Gibson Suspended From Hit Show Criminal Minds

A statement has been released from ABC Studios and CBS Television that actor Thomas Gibson has been fired from the hit show Criminal Minds following an on set altercation that according to some sources happened two weeks ago. Thomas Gibson issued his own statement following his termination from the series expressing his gratitude towards the show, cast and crew and the fans.

Following an altercation on set, as reported by TMZ, actor Thomas Gibson (Criminal Minds, Dharma & Greg) will be suspended for two episodes from the hit CBS show Criminal Minds. His character, Aaron Hotchner, will be written out of the two episodes in the upcoming 12^th season that’s currently shooting. The altercation stemmed from an argument Thomas Gibson had while directing one of the episodes with one of the episodes writers who was on set. Thomas Gibson has directed six episodes of Criminal Minds from season 8 to season 11 but after this altercation he has been pulled from directing duties on the episode he was working on and looks to be done directing any future episodes for the rest of the season. He is under contract for the season currently in production but no word yet from the studio on what the future will hold for Thomas Gibson and the series he’s been with since its debut in 2005.

[UPDATE] American Horror Story Have Just Released Teaser #8

What better way to start the day than with the just realeased (minutes ago) Teaser #8 for the up-coming season 6 of American Horror Story.  Someting’s coming…. Check it out below if you dare?

Something’s Coming AHS6

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The Tinkerer Is Cast In ‘Spider-Man: Homecoming’

It has been announced that Michael Chernus (Orange is the New Black, People Places Things, Complete Unknown) will be joining the Spider-Man: Homecoming cast as The Tinkerer.

Whilst the Vulture villain reveal had fans suspicious that The Tinkerer would be involved in this reboot of the Spider-Man movie franchise, it’s now been confirmed by Marvel as Chernus takes the role of the brainiac.

Spider-Man: Homecoming will swing into cinemas on July 7th 2017, with Tom Holland (Captain America: Civil War, Billy Elliot the Musical Live, In the Heart of the Sea) reprising his role as the web-slinger.

New ‘Chronicles Of Narnia’ Movie Planned By TriStar (WOOHOO!)

Narnia is coming back to the big screen. (WOO!)

TriStar, the Mark Gordon Company and Entertainment One will financially back an adaptation of C.S. Lewis’ The Silver Chair from the author’s Chronicles of Narnia book series. As of now it is unclear if past cast members from earlier films are returning.

The Silver Chair will take place after the events of The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, when Prince Caspian has become King Caspian. The story begins with Caspian’s son, the prince, going missing, leading Aslan the lion to send Eustace Scrubb and his boarding school classmate Jill Pope in search of the missing monarch.

The writer behind for the on screen adaptations of Life of Pi and Finding Neverland, David Magee, will pen the script.

The Chronicles of Narnia film franchise began in 2005 with the first film The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, which grossed $745 million at the worldwide box office. The next two installments in the series,Prince Caspian and Voyage of the Dawn Treader, were released in 2008 and 2010, respectively. The entire franchise has grossed more than $1.6 billion at the global box office.

Who’s excited to see Narnia one more time? ( I know I am!) Sound off in the comments below!!

 

Robert De Niro AND Jullian Moore TV SHOW!!! *EEEK*

It used to be rare if we saw a big star on TV shows back in the day. If we did it would be a quick cameo or even one star not so big in the business, but big enough to make us go “oooooh.” Today, however, it seems that TV networks are grabbing the big guys from the screen and placing them in TV shows.

Premium cable networks are normally ones who will have the big guys on. I mean, there have been normal networks that may have had big guys from the past, like CSI or what have you, but HBO has True Detective starring Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson and more recently Sharp Objects with Amy Adams, while Netflix grabbed Maniac with Emma Stone and Jonah Hill. But it seems we may have a show to be aired on the smaller networks have a couple well-known names in Hollywood. Huge icons such as Robert De Niro and Jullianne Moore! (De Niro is such a stud!!) Though it may not have a network yet, it appears to be highly sought after and has had many offers.

The person behind the show is named David O. Russell (thank you David), who directed Heavyweights. And there seems to not be much as far as the plot goes for this TV series. One site called deadline.com heard it’s supposed to be another crime/cop thriller set in the 1990s. (Could be cool, but I’m kind of done with the cop dramas, they seem to be everywhere…)  But still it’s not for sure what the show will be about, and production won’t start until the director is back from vaycay. (Poor guy must be getting hounded for offers while he is trying to relax lol.)

Well whatever the show is, cop drama or not, I will definitely be checking this bad boy out. I am a huge De Niro fan, loving all he has done (even Bad Grandpa though not one of my favs) and can’t wait to watch him each week on TV. This man is a stuuuuuuuuuud as before mentioned and will kill it in the TV series I’m sure, plus paired up with Ms Moore, dear goodness, I hope the networks can handle this much Hollywood stardom. ^_^

Warner Bros Getting Sued For Suicide Squad Deleted Scenes !?!??

You heard me right, there is actually someone out there suing Warner Bros for missing Joker scenes in Suicide Squad. Are you kidding me right now? This is too good.

The person who is doing this is a reddit user by the name of BlackPanther2016. He calling it ‘false advertising,’ and compared it to going to a fast food chain, ordering a burger as advertised and getting something different. He is fed up with Hollywood showing previews to movies and removing those scenes from the actual film. OK, so I understand the irritation on some level, but seriously, it’s not like it was not known by many that there would be some missing scenes in the movie. Though it wasn’t exactly said which ones until after (at least I didn’t hear which ones till the movie hit) But this wasn’t exactly a secret. Where has this guy been? Under a rock?

He also goes on to complain that he drove from Scotland to London to watch this movie, just to see those specific scenes of the Joker as shown in the previews. Right, like he really drove for those parts in particular? Ummmmmm really? I mean, most may argue that there are sooooooooooooooo many more things to see in the movie besides the Joker…. Like maybe Deadshot, Killer Croc, and Harley Quinn… But according to this dude, he wasted money driving and sitting through this movie to be disappointed that the sought after scenes were not in the movie. … And now he wants to sue. (He has nothing better to do…)

He watched the movie, left the theater angry and demanded his money back. They refused to give it to him, then escorted him out. So he is suing for his money back and the embarrassment of being laughed at while he was kicked out of the movie theater. Of course they were laughing, how can you walk in to a theater and leave a movie such as this, complaining that they were missing Joker scenes, which is something that we all knew about??

The scenes he went there specifically for were: when Joker banged his head on his car window, when Joker says, ‘let me show you my toys’ when Joker punches the roof of his car, when Joker drops a bomb with this face all messed up and says ‘bye bye,’ and he also says there was a couple of scenes with Katana that he wanted as well, her eyes going black, and the slow motion of her and her sword taking souls. His brother is a lawyer and submitted the case…. And it was ACCEPTED!!! WHAT!!!!! This is going to be a good laugh for sure.

If you are behind this dude, he is calling for those who are also tired of the falsely advertised scenes in the previews. He says “lets stop this nonsense of false bullsh***ery… and don’t let them bribe you with their ‘deluxe premium special director’s gold extended edition supreme cut’ nonsense” (omg is this guy for real??)

I’m sorry, if some of you feel the same way as this dude, then well I don’t know what to tell you. But really, it’s a movie, and I’m sure that when it comes out on DVD there will probably be a directors cut or extended version on the blue ray edition. And we will get to see the Leto/Joker and other deleted scenes there. But really, move on. It is what it is and there are other things in life much more important than if the scenes from the preview was not in the movie…. Plus, can I ask one question: How is it he drove 300 miles to London to watch a movie? Weren’t there other theaters closer to him? I mean, why go to that specific one so far away??? I don’t know, but this was just to funny to read about.

Doctor Who Comics, With 4 Doctors!!!!!!!

OMG I am currently hooked on the Doctor Who comics. Been mostly reading the David Tennant 10^th Doctor ones (because he is my fav) but recently I found a series that includes all 4 doctors! Yes! I mean, it has Doctors 9, 10, 11 and 12 all interlocking in one big story line that includes Cybermen, Sontariens, and more. But I am sad to say there are only 5 comics in this series…. Why??? 😥

  

  

Just the idea alone is awesome. I loved “the Day of the Doctor” episode of Doctor Who when they had Matt Smith, David Tennant and John Hurt, plus the special guest of one of the original Doctors from the past seasons, Tom Baker! (yes, he with the scarf and wonderful nose!!) This was truly fantastic and made me squeal the whole time watching this episode. You can imagine what I looked like reading this comic! LOL!

This year is the 50^th anniversary of the Cybermen, and Titan Comics decided to give us all a thrill with comics called Supremacy of the Cybermen, in celebration of them. In the stories, the Cybermen have captured the ousted Gallifreyan leader Rassilon and get their robotic mitts on the time travel technology. It’s up to the four incarnations of the Doctor to stop them. The series not only has our fab four, but also companions of the past, such as Rose Tyler and Captain Jack Harkness!! The wonderful story is written by George Mann and Cavan Scott, with art by Alessandro Vitti.

I have only acquired the first edition right now… and am hooked. I love what they are trying to do here. They should do a movie… another movie where they gather all our boys to stop the Cybermen. If you have not yet picked up one of these comics, you really should. I mean, I don’t know about you, but I get to craving some more Tennant or Smith action (insert dirty joke here…. giggles) And this gives me them and more!! Plus my friends, if you have not just picked up other Doctor Who comics, then you are missing out. They are beautifully illustrated, fun to read, and really do well capturing the essence of our Doctors in the stories. ^_^

Scream SN2 EP11 – ‘Heavenly Creatures’

Now we’re starting to get somewhere with the who is behind all this. It looks like my main suspects could very well be the ones behind it all, Eli and Stavo. So far the why hasn’t been fully revealed, there is still no connection between them and Piper. Stavo could’ve been recruited by Piper because of his dad’s connection with Brandon James. Who knows why Eli is doing this unless there’s a family connection between him and Piper somehow. In horror movie logic the son of the killer’s brother’s college roommate will exact revenge for the death of the killer’s daughter he never knew. Sounds about right. The one thing we can all agree on though after 2 seasons of Scream is that the grownups in Lakewood are terrible people. They have all these secrets that are costing people their lives and instead of confronting them they continue to hide them and either ignore them or try to get rid of them. From Maggie and Acosta not revealing that they rescued but left Brandon James to die in the abandoned pig farm to the shady dealings of Mayor Maddox rearing their ugly head again. No wonder the kids are messed up and there is always a killer on the loose.

Lets get down to the nitty gritty of the episode. This week’s episode had Noah coming to terms with Zoe’s death and evidence mounting that Eli is behind all of it. Firstly lets see what’s up with Eli. In the beginning of the episode someone breaks into Emma’s home at night. Alarm system is easily disarmed and even though they were very noisy trying to open one of the doors they manage to get in and go into Emma’s room to swipe her dream journal. And who is very skilled at breaking into peoples homes? None other than Eli who has been shown standing over people sleeping in bed and then fixing himself a PB&J. Emma figures someone is in the house because the intruder is making all kinds of noise and when she heads to the front door she finds a wooden heart with her name carved into it. Another Brandon James trademark since he left a wooden heart with Daisy carved into it for Emma’s mom before he went on his killing spree. We later see Kieran on his way out and he runs into Eli in the kitchen. Its the middle of the night but Eli says he couldn’t sleep, or he had just made his way back from breaking into Emma’s house.

We go to Noah in the hospital in full grieving mode. He wants nothing to do with horror movies or his podcast anymore. He concludes that his obsession has cost him a lot in life not just girlfriends, its made him miss a lot of opportunities and experiences. So he decides to shut down everything, his investigation and The Morgue and he asks Emma, Audrey and Kieran to tear down his murder board. The gang goes to his room and start to dismantle and pack up everything Noah had on the Piper murders and his investigation into her accomplice. While they’re doing this Emma finds a newspaper clipping of Will’s funeral, her ex that had one of the most gruesome murders of the entire series so far. In the photo for the article she notices that Eli was there. Now why would Eli be at a murder for someone he never knew? They say that criminals like to return to the scene of the crime so now there’s more proof that Eli is involved with everything even the Piper murders. Audrey tries to tell Noah this new piece of information but he’s not having it. He’s completely done with everything murder related but he will do one final The Morgue podcast since Zoe did like his show and he wants it to be a tribute/eulogy for her. While Noah is telling Audrey his plans for the tribute podcast Audrey gets a killer text telling her that she cuts people off but he cuts deeper. What?

Audrey shows Emma and Kieran the text and they conclude that the killer is Eli and he’s referring to Emma. The explanation is flimsy but here goes, Emma says that she never talked to Eli again after the carnival when she found out that he was caught breaking into a girls room. So because of that she’s someone who “cuts people off” but the killer is going to cut them deeper, which means its Eli. But anyway, this is what the gang needs to investigate Eli a little closer. While this is going down Eli is dealing with his mom. She starts packing saying that she was given money to leave town. I guess whatever she had going on with the mayor went south because he wants her gone. Eli tells her they aren’t going anywhere but the mom wants them to go before the town finds out who they really are. Again just reiterating the fact the grownups are terrible people. So now Eli has to take care of the Mayor. This means that he breaks into the mayor’s mansion and steals some documents that will certainly be used to blackmail him. I feel a bit sorry for the mayor’s character because all he seems to be in this series is the one who gets blackmailed. And all this money he pays out to his blackmailers makes me wonder how much money a mayor makes. Maybe I should get into public service. Another clue that Eli is the killer is what he wears when he breaks into the mayor’s home. Black hoodie and jeans, the official uniform of the Brandon James follower.

Sheriff Acosta is trying to figure out who has a connection to Piper. He interviews Ms. Lang since she has a past with Piper in the orphanage. But according to Ms. Lang she never knew Piper. She was only at the orphanage for a few months and then she left. Certainly not enough time to form a murder bond with a future serial killer. So Acosta asks her if she knows of anyone that was obsessed with Piper. Ms. Lang points the finger at Emma, saying that she has been obsessed with Piper since she killed her plus she’s displaying an increasingly violent behavior. Acosta asks about his son but Ms. Lang says that he isn’t obsessed with Piper but with death in general because he wants to understand how his own dad’s mind works. When Stavo was young, we assume before his friends death, he saw a crime scene photo of a dead gang member. This left such an impression on him that he wondered how someone can cope with death on a daily basis, like a cop. This leads to drawing graphic death pictures instead of you know talking with your dad about what he does for a living and how he copes.

Noah is trying to figure out how to do his podcast when Stavo visits him. Noah informs him that his tribute episode will be the last one but Stavo tells him that he shouldn’t do it because people need it, it helps people like him. The murder obsessed type. To convince Noah not to shut down The Morgue he emails him a comic panel layout. In the comic panels its Noah depicted as the hero of the story. In small panels on the corners you see Noah in his investigation and doing his podcast, front and center is a showdown between him and the killer but it looks like he has the upper hand. So in reality Noah is the hero of the story, which I agree with, but this feels more like manipulation than praise. A quick jump back to Eli, he’s talking to his mom about the papers he took from the mayor’s office. Turns out that the mayor wasn’t just involved in insurance scams but he’s also robbed half the town plus he screwed over the James family. Just terrible grownups all around. While this is going on Kieran is running a recon mission of his own.

Since Emma, Audrey and Kieran have decided to look closer at Eli they decide to check out Kieran’s house. While Eli is talking to his mom in the backyard Kieran is snooping around Eli’s room. I found it funny that he decides to facetime with Emma and Audrey. Why have Kieran distracted in a way trying to keep their video feed in sight of what he’s looking at when he should be more concerned that he doesn’t get caught. Horror movie logic. In his snooping around he finds the stack of letters Audrey wrote to Piper and childhood photos of Emma at the pig farm. This is the final nail in the Eli is the killer coffin. Emma and Audrey have Kieran return the letters and photos so that they don’t tip off Eli that they’re on to him, but while Kieran is returning the letters and photos you can see that Eli has caught Kieran in his room.

Noah is finishing up his final tribute podcast but towards the end he declares that he’s going to continue with The Morgue and his investigation because Zoe would’ve told him to do it. Here is where I felt again that her death was necessary. Why couldn’t Noah go through his near death experience without Zoe being a victim. He could’ve decided to stop everything if it was just him that almost died. And have Zoe actually tell him that he needed to continue. There isn’t a legitimate reason that she had to die for Noah to have this character turn. When he finishes his podcast he starts to upload it but in the middle of it his computer gets hacked and another file gets uploaded. This hacked file is a video that incriminates Audrey and Emma in both the Piper murders and the current ones. It plays the recording of Audrey confessing that she brought Piper and it shows her going to Jake’s body to remove the note pinned to his body. It shows passages and recordings of Emma talking about her dreams where she kills her friends plus video of Emma in the hotel room when the desk clerk was already dead in the bathroom. So not only is the killer getting revenge for Piper but he’s pinning everything on Audrey and Emma. Here is where I think Stavo is involved. When he sent the comic to Noah, the file could’ve been carrying the virus needed to either upload the video or to take control of his computer. I still think that this doesn’t warrant Zoe being killed. One could say that Zoe’s death is what allowed Stavo to hack Noah’s computer. But again this could’ve happened without Zoe’s death. While Noah is coping with his near death he probably wouldn’t be paying too much attention to his friends or girlfriend and Stavo could still come in and give him his uplifting comic drawing. Another piece of evidence that Stavo is involved is that in the hacked video you see some of Stavo’s drawings. But he could also say that he was hacked. Then again he packs up his stuff and rides of to an unknown location so why run if you got nothing to hide.

Audrey and Emma aren’t aware of the video because they are at the pig farm. They decided to check it out again because the pictures that Eli had are from her time there. They think that there are more clues there or it could be where Eli has been hiding since the Piper murders. Emma finds the room behind the wall bed and her and Audrey look around. Audrey finds Emma’s stolen dream journal and it’s opened to her entry about killing her friends. Before they can discuss Emma’s bad dreams they see that the mayor has pulled up to the barn next to the house. The mayor is there because he’s getting blackmailed again. The only one we know that has the papers is Eli, so it has to be him that brings the mayor to the barn, right. In the barn the mayor texts the blackmailer and he hears the notification ring go off. He keeps texting the blackmailer to track them down and he finds the phone on a stool. The mayor then gets a selfie of the killer holding a pitch fork in the barn. He turns and gets a pitchfork right in the chest. Audrey and Emma get to the barn as the mayor is dying. They get near him and get their hands covered in his blood. When they hear some rustling further in the barn Audrey grabs a pipe and Emma grabs the pitchfork. Talk about serving yourself up on a silver platter. They might as well have stabbed the mayor a couple more times with how much they have incriminated themselves in his death. The cops show up and of course arrest Emma and Audrey. The video and their fingerprints all over the mayors crime scene is all the cops need to pin everything on them. Emma and Audrey realize that they are royally screwed and could go down for the whole thing.

This week’s episode showed a bit of the endgame for the killer. Not only are they trying to get revenge for Piper’s death but they’re trying to pin it all on Audrey and Emma. The Piper murders would fall on Audrey and the new murders could go to Emma with her violent behavior and killing dreams. Eli seems more like the mastermind but still no connection to Piper has been defined. Stavo is the accomplice but again no clear motivation as to why he joined Eli or maybe even Piper if he’s been with this outfit since the beginning. Next week wraps up the series, so all should be revealed in the final showdown between the Lakewood survivors and the Brandon James followers. Check out the sneak peak below.

 

Tonari no Totoro: An Emblematic Childhood Dream

Totoro Bus Stop in Ume, Saiki City, Oita, Japan. STA3816. CC BY-SA 3.0  http://bit.ly/2aBLIUF

I must have been around sixteen or seventeen when I watched Tonari no Totoro (My Neighbour Totoro) for the first time on TV. First released in Japan in April 1988, it reached the public in the USA and Europe in the early ‘90s. Those were the very years of birth of the Internet, and those kiddos like me who had spent their childhood indulging in the few anime shows broadcast on the tellys – like Alps no Shoujo Heidi (1974), Haha wo Tazunete Sanzenri (1976) or, more recently, the still nowadays überpopular Dragon Ball – gasped in awe in front of what we were watching on the screen at that very moment. For many of us, it was our very first OVA (later on brought to theatres as well), and also the beginning of something utterly new.

Tonari no Totoro was created by Studio Ghibli (led officially until around 2013-14 by main director Hayao Miyazaki, although he hasn’t truly retired yet, in spite of his many announcements to do so) and it tells the story of two sisters, Satsuki, aged 10, and Mei, aged 4, who move in with their father to an old country house in Japan which needs restoration. Born and raised in Tokyo, the two young girls face this change with excitement as well as with agitation. Helped by the friendly neighbours of the rural village, the girls’ father, Tatsuo, a university professor, encourages the girls to participate in the moving and reforming process and to adapt to their new lifestyle.

The whole movie is a song to praise life in the countryside and the exhuberant beauty of nature, portrayed through the most delightful illustrations of the semi-abandoned rural mansion, the cultivated fields, the majestic camphor tree on the top of the hill and the lush forests nearby. Such magnificence is underlined by the solemn and emotional compositions of the OST, by Joe Hisaishi – a regular collaborator with Ghibli. Along the movie we know that the true reason why the family moved to the place is because the mother is in a nearby hospital, suffering from some sort of life-threatening illness that needs the healthier atmosphere of the country to heal (as Hayao Miyazaki’s mother was bedridden with spinal tuberculosis for more than nine years, it is assumed that the movie echoes this straining experience from his childhood).

 

Inmersed in that new environment, and being forced to carry on without the presence of their mother in their daily lives, the two little girls express their anguish for their mother’s well-being more or less clumsily, in accordance with their different age range. Helping them to walk through this emotional passage, and in full touch, for the first time, with the majestic charm of nature, the two sisters will make contact with a series of extremely kawaii supernatural beings: the susuwatari (‘black soots’, or ‘dust bunnies/goblins’) and Totoro: a huge, sturdy and fluffy bunny-like being that controls the winds and the growth of plants, generally appearing together with its smaller kin. Later on in the movie, the girls will also meet the Nekobasu (‘Catbus’), a furry, slightly creepy though cute hybrid of a cat and a bus, as the very name implies. Only the girls can see and interact with these supernatural beings as they help them reunite the family again together.

What was a novelty about Tonari no Totoro, as regards other anime or cartoons we were watching at the time (either too child-oriented or too packed with battles and superheros), was that it portrayed, in an utterly captivating, subtle and intelligent manner the colourful inner world of the two little girls: how they interpret life through play, how they learn about this new habitat, their perception of nature and magic, and how they relate, with Mei trying to copy everything Satsuki does and Satsuki wandering between the natural playfulness of her age and the responsibilities of her new role as her sister’s caretaker. And also how they adjust to their new school, mates, neighbours, guardians. Though undeniably sugar-coated (with much darker undertones), it’s such a legitimate portrait of childhood one could say that even the supernatural elements are not even that necessary for the magic of the movie to unfold. Infancy and its vision of things is the true enchantment of the film, for we all can relate to the two sisters’ adventures and games.

http://www.ghibli-museum.jp/en/

In a 2014 interview to Miyazaki by Robbie Collin for The Telegraph he states that his Tonari no Totoro, together with Sen to Chihiro no Kamikakushi (2001), “are about kids who discover magical places and creatures hidden in reality’s cracks.” This is a recurring leitmotiv in many Ghibli movies, particularly the first ones – the most recent films, although they portray magical elements too, have a slightly more sombre, less innocent tint – and it relates directly to a coping mechanism in children who face problems or insecurities, which is to shelter psychologically in a world of imagination where everything is possible and the child doesn’t lack company, nourishment, or protectors. Somehow, the children who survive recall how this skill, this mind plasticity in terms of interpreting reality or reacting to life problems, allowed them to have more resources and/or use them more appropriately at that time. This is how great artists, writers, entrepeneurs are born.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/film/10816014/Hayao-Miyazaki-interview-I-think-the-peaceful-time-that-we-are-living-in-is-coming-to-an-end.html

The generation that grew up with the beautiful and moving films by Ghibli is around their 30s-40s now. I’m pretty sure that for most of us life has proved to be much tougher than we expected it to be, in those golden years of our childhood and adolescence, when we discovered Miyazaki’s movies for the first time. There’s war, an ongoing economic crisis, natural disasters, earthquakes that fatally affect nuclear power plants… the consequences, both in the short and in the long term, are still unknown, but they don’t paint a pretty picture of the future overall. That’s why most of us haven’t still left behind the memories of these movies from our youth, those emblematic childhood dreams; far from that, we’ve raised them, nostalgically, to the status of totems. I still remember in detail the very moment in which I watched, for the first time, how Totoro made the huge camphor tree grow in seconds; I can still feel in my heart the same awed, soul-stirring sentiment; I’m still moved when I hear Joe Hisaishi’s background music for that moment. And I’m not the only one with such a fondness: all year round, fans from all over the world visit the Ghibli Museum in Mitaka (which features a huge sculpture of Totoro at the entrance, and the only place where one can watch a 13-minutes-long short film with Mei and a kitten bus as the main characters, Mei to Konekobasu). Besides, you can even visit a perfect replica of Mei and Satsuki’s house in Nagoya, Japan. The design and construction was supervised by Miyazaki’s son, Gorō. Visitors are lead through a 45-minute tour around the house, during which they can touch and feel everything, even the contents of the drawers. You can find there even the bottomless bucket Mei and Satsuki play with in the movie, near the water pump in the garden.

 

And if that wasn’t enough, there’s even a railway station in Japan (Nobeoka, Miyazaki) called Totoro Station. If that’s not true, heart-felt devotion towards a movie and all it symbolises, who knows what it could be.

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More info:

• http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0096283/
• http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0096283/releaseinfo

 

Hayao Miyazaki, Much More Than The “Japanese Walt Disney”

Hayao Miyazaki. FICG.mx. CC BY 2.0 http://bit.ly/2b744wa

Of all of us from mild to obsessive otakus that have grown up enjoying all kinds of anime, manga and Japanese films, if someone who knows nothing about the genre were to ask us what are the best and most family-friendly anime movies to get started with, it’d be very likely that the first name that comes to our mind is Hayao Miyazaki.

Hayao Miyazaki, chief director of Studio Ghibli for almost 60 years, is considered “the Walt Disney of Japanese animation.” But not because the movies resemble in anything the typical Disney style filled to the brim with princes and princesses, romance and rescuers, heroes and heroines climbing the social ladder and evil characters who are creatively dispatched in each movie – it’s because of the extension and importance that Studio Ghibli’s products have achieved worldwide. In contrast to Disney Movies, the values portrayed in Miyazaki’s creations are more oriented towards the return to nature and simplicity, enjoying family relationships, valuing hard work (like in Mimi wo Sumaseba or Majo no Takkyūbin) and fostering strength and resourcefulness, all of this through the most creative and delightful plots, characters and illustrations.

Hayao Miyazaki was born on the 5^th of January, 1941, in Akebono-cho, Bunkyo-ku District, Tokyo, at the times of WWII. He was the second son, after Arata (born in 1939) of Katsuji Miyazaki, an aeronautical engineer who worked with his brother at Miyazaki Airplane, the family business, devoted to manufacturing rudders of Zero fighter planes. From his father and uncle’s fascinating work, the child Hayao inherited a lifelong passion for aeronautics and flying, which is reflected in many of his most important movies, being one of the clearest examples Kurenai no Buta (1992). The family had to leave from Tokyo when he was only three, and they would not come back until three years later. After their return, his mother, Dola, became ill with spinal tuberculosis, keeping her bedridden for more than nine years – most of Hayao’s childhood. Nevetheless, strict and intellectual, she held great infuence over the young kids, and she had two more children after Hayao, Shirou (birthdate unknown) and Yutaka (born in 1944).

 

The young Hayao Miyazaki also changed schools very often, depending on the family’s needs to move – he attended Utsunomiya City, Omiya Elementary School in Suginami-ku, Eifuku Elementary School, Omiya Junior High, and finally Toyotama High. Together with his mother’s ill health and the country’s generalised distress at the time, this lack of stability exerted a powerful influence on him as well. The future cartoonist was growing up to became an intelligent, brilliant and dreamy young man, yet also aloof, sullen, angry, even a little bit of a misanthrope. He effortlessly indulged in fantasy while painstakingly enduring reality. When he watched the first animated color movie released in Japan in 1958, Hakujaden or The Legend of the White Serpent, he became so spellbound that he himself admitted in a 1988 interview to having literally fallen in love with the main protagonist, the princess Bai-Niang. Actually, many of the subsequent plots of his movies will involve characters undergoing similar magical transformations into animals or fantastic beings, like in Kurenai no Buta (1992), Gake no Ue no Ponyo (2008) or Sen to Chihiro no Kamikakushi (2001).

 

Already before entering Gakushuin University (he graduated in Political Science and Economics in 1963), Hayao Miyazaki already knew that what he really wanted to be was a mangaka: a comic-book artist. He joined the Children’s Literature Research Club while in college, the closest to a manga club these days. Inspired, like so many other youths with the same ambitions, by the great master Osamu Tezuka, he too had a passion for the Western culture and fostered an image of friendly multiculturalism throughout his films, in spite of having lived first-hand the shock and destruction of the war and the consequences of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. Movies like Kurenai no Buta (1992), Kaze Tachinu (2013), Kaze no Tani no Nausicaä (1984), the animated series Mirai Shōnen Konan (1978; this was his first work as a director for Nippon Animation) and above all Horatu no Haka (1988) deal with the issue of warfare and the results of senseless confrontation amongst human beings; although also Mononoke Hime (1997), Hauru no Ugoku Shiro (2004), Tenkû no Shiro Laputa (1986) and Pom Poko (1994) can also be considered films that, directly or indirectly, deal with the subject of war, anihilation of living species and environments and even genocide (the Tanuki people in Pom Poko, for instance). How these movies can be stirring, tender, uplifting and bright while having such undeniably heart-rending undertones is one of the particular magic effects produced by Miyazaki and Ghibli Studio, an effect that is very rarely achieved in other works of anime, or even common films or shows, in such a perfect balance. Leaving aside the most innocent ones, the great bulk of Miyazaki’s movies (and the most popular ones, in fact) are delightfully atrocious and dreadfully lovely, although in such a subtle way that your mind simply goes through the plot dazzled by the beauty and barely noticing (or not wanting to notice) the fear, the abandonment, the underlying horror. Like life itself, in times of war.

 

The man that Hayao Miyazaki has come to be, a man of sharp contrasts, with his characteristic pure white hair and beard and pitch-black eyes, eyebrows and glasses, with his serene and surly demeanour, has created one of the most outstanding animation empires around the world. After working for Toei Animation, Nippon Animation, A Pro, Zuiyô Pictures, Telecom and many others, together with Isao Takahata, Yasuyoshi Tokuma and Toshio Suzuki they founded Studio Ghibli on the 15^th of June, 1958, in Koganei, Tokyo, Japan. Miyazaki chose the name after a World War I war aircraft (the Caproni Ca.309), nicknamed “the Ghibli”, a hot and dry wind from the Sahara. With the only exception of Lupin Sansei: Cagliostro no Shiro, all the movie scores for Ghibli and pre-Ghibli films have also been masterfully composed and performed by Joe Hisaishi, adding even more charm to the already rich mixture.

 

Before the foundation of Studio Ghibli, Miyazaki had already participated in the creation of big classics like Taiyou no Ouji: Horus no Daibouken (1968), Alps no Shoujo Heidi (1974), Meitantei Homuzu (1984), Haha wo Tazunete Sanzenri (1976), Kaze no Tani no Nausicaä (1984) and Lupin Sansei: Cagliostro no Shiro (released in 1979, nominated for the Saturn Award 1981 as Best International Film by the Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror Films, USA; winner of the Ofuji Noburo Award by Mainichi Film Concours in 1980). He married a fellow cartoonist, Akemi Ôta, and they have two children: Gorō Miyazaki (who, following his father’s steps as a filmmaker, directed Gedo Senki in 2006 and Kokuriko-Zaka Kara in 2011) and Keisuke Miyazaki. Studio Ghibli’s signature icon is Totoro, the fantastic character from Tonari no Totoro (1988), one of their most emblematic movies and also one we can easily deduce that mirrors a great deal of Miyazaki’s feelings in relation to his mother’s enduring illness. So far, Studio Ghibli has produced more than 20 major animated films.

 

He doesn’t like to be called the “Japanese Walt Disney”. He says Disney was a producer, not a director. “Disney is such a big company, they’re very keen to have everything in the world!”, he laughs. Disney speaks in a very different language to the audience: heroes win and get the honor and the girls; heroines win and get their autonomy and also the boys; baddies are badly punished, and in the end the world is a better, cleaner, more prosperous and perfect place.

That’s not what happens in Ghibli’s films: there’s uncertainty, defencelessness, fear of death and death itself. There’s no “and they lived happily ever after”, but “and they lived. And life was good at times, and sometimes it wasn’t”. Ghibli’s movies are not based on fairy tales that portray mighty messages – they are the inner subtelty of the space that exists between dreams and hopes and anticipation; they are living your own days, your own fantasies to the fullest, even if you’re feeling insecure about your future, your family’s well-being, or about whether you will thrive and succeed in life. Ghibli is not Disney; Ghibli is not like anything else in the anime and film industry… Ghibli is a little child that relies on dreaming so as not to lose innocence too soon, a child that longs to fly, to grow up and live and love and rise, high above the peril, high above the underlying dark horrors of war.

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Sources:

• http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0594503/bio
• http://www.encyclopedia.com/topic/Hayao_Miyazaki.aspx
• http://www.notablebiographies.com/newsmakers2/2006-Le-Ra/Miyazaki-Hayao.html
• http://www.nausicaa.net/miyazaki/miyazaki/miyazaki_biography.txt
• http://www.nndb.com/people/940/000059763/
• http://www.angelfire.com/anime/NVOW/Interview1.html
• http://www.referenceforbusiness.com/biography/M-R/Miyazaki-Hayao-1941.html
• http://bit.ly/2aMuBjU