Today I'm going to share my very first top five list after my long break hehe. During my hiatus mode, I was able to get a chance to watch different movies with my siblings. Hayao Miyazaki suddenly became my favorite director and I suddenly became very interested with all of his works. Miyazaki's films often incorporate recurrent themes like humanity's relationship with nature and technology, and the difficulty of maintaining a pacifist ethic.What makes his works more interesting is that, there is no actual antagonist or villain on his film because most of them usually turned to the good side or perhaps learned their lessons in the end.
Anyway, listed below are my personal picks. Hope you like it!
TOP FIVE GREATEST HAYAO MIYAZAKI'S FILMS
TOP 5 GREATEST HAYAO MIYAZAKI'S FILM
"HOWL'S MOVING CASTLE"
The film was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature at the 78th Academy Awards in 2006. The film was based on the novel written by Diana Wynne Jones. Wynne Jones's novel allows Miyazaki to combine a plucky young woman and a mother figure into a single character in the heroine, Sophie. She starts out as an 18-year-old hat maker, but then a witch's curse transforms her into a 90-year-old gray haired woman. Sophie is horrified by the change at first. Nevertheless she learns to embrace it as a liberation from anxiety, fear and self-consciousness. The change might be a blessed chance for adventure. The film is very different from Jones's original novel. The plot is similar, but it is flavored with Miyazaki's familiar style and characters, as well as several missing or drastically altered key plot points from the book. The plot is still focused on Sophie and her adventure while cursed with old age; however, the main action of the film's story takes place during a war, and its plot is chiefly concerned with Howl's attempts to avoid fighting in it for pacifist reasons.
TOP 4 GREATEST HAYAO MIYAZAKI'S FILM
"PONYO"
It is Miyazaki's eighth film for Ghibli, and his tenth overall. The plot centers on a goldfish named Ponyo who befriends a five-year-old human boy, SÅsuke, and wants to become a human girl. The film was written, directed, and animated by Hayao Miyazaki, who said his inspiration was the Hans Christian Andersen story, "The Little Mermaid" but his inspiration was more abstract than a story.
It is probably one of the cutest creation from Hayao Miyazaki's collection. The film has won several awards, including the Japan Academy Prize for Animation of the Year.
TOP 3 GREATEST HAYAO MIYAZAKI'S FILM
"MY NEIGHBOR TOTORO"
The film follows the two young daughters of a professor and their interactions with friendly wood spirits in postwar rural Japan. The film won the Animage Anime Grand Prix prize and the Mainichi Film Award for Best Film in 1988. The Disney version of Totoro features a star-heavy cast, including Dakota and Elle Fanning as Satsuki and Mei, Timothy Daly as Mr. Kusakabe, Pat Carroll as Granny, Lea Salonga as Mrs. Kusakabe, and Frank Welker as Totoro and Catbus. The songs for the new dub retained the same translation as the previous dub, but were sung by Sonya Isaacs. My Neighbor Totoro helped bring Japanese animation into the global spotlight, and set its writer-director Hayao Miyazaki on the road to success. The film's central character, Totoro, is as famous among Japanese children as Winnie-the-Pooh is among British ones.
TOP 2 GREATEST HAYAO MIYAZAKI'S FILM
"PRINCESS MONONOKE"
Princess Mononoke is a period drama set specifically in the late Muromachi period of Japan but with numerous fantastical elements. The story concentrates on involvement of the outsider Ashitaka in the struggle between the supernatural guardians of a forest and the humans of the Iron Town who consume its resources. There can be no clear victory, and the hope is that relationship between humans and nature can be cyclical. It took Miyazaki 16 years to fully develop the story and characters of Princess Mononoke. The film was extremely successful in Japan and with both anime fans and arthouse moviegoers in English-speaking countries. In those countries, critics interpreted the film to be about the environment told in the form of Japanese mythology. Disney's Miramax subsidiary purchased U.S. distribution rights, but wanted to cut the film for American audiences (and for a PG-rating).
THE GREATEST HAYAO MIYAZAKI'S FILM
"SPIRITED AWAY"
The film tells the story of Chihiro Ogino, a sullen ten-year-old girl who, while moving to a new neighborhood, becomes trapped in an alternate reality that is inhabited by spirits and monsters. After her parents are transformed into pigs by the witch Yubaba, Chihiro takes a job working in Yubaba's bathhouse to find a way to free herself and her parents and escape back to the human world. Spirited Away became the most successful film in Japanese history, grossing over $274 million worldwide. The film overtook Titanic (at the time the top grossing film worldwide) in the Japanese box office to become the highest-grossing film in Japanese history. It won the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature at the 75th Academy Awards, the Golden Bear at the 2002 Berlin International Film Festival (tied with Bloody Sunday) and is among the top ten in the BFI list of the 50 films you should see by the age of 14.
FIRST TWO COMMENTERS
Lawrence
Foongpc
Anyway, listed below are my personal picks. Hope you like it!
TOP FIVE GREATEST HAYAO MIYAZAKI'S FILMS
TOP 5 GREATEST HAYAO MIYAZAKI'S FILM
"HOWL'S MOVING CASTLE"
The film was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature at the 78th Academy Awards in 2006. The film was based on the novel written by Diana Wynne Jones. Wynne Jones's novel allows Miyazaki to combine a plucky young woman and a mother figure into a single character in the heroine, Sophie. She starts out as an 18-year-old hat maker, but then a witch's curse transforms her into a 90-year-old gray haired woman. Sophie is horrified by the change at first. Nevertheless she learns to embrace it as a liberation from anxiety, fear and self-consciousness. The change might be a blessed chance for adventure. The film is very different from Jones's original novel. The plot is similar, but it is flavored with Miyazaki's familiar style and characters, as well as several missing or drastically altered key plot points from the book. The plot is still focused on Sophie and her adventure while cursed with old age; however, the main action of the film's story takes place during a war, and its plot is chiefly concerned with Howl's attempts to avoid fighting in it for pacifist reasons.TOP 4 GREATEST HAYAO MIYAZAKI'S FILM
"PONYO"
It is Miyazaki's eighth film for Ghibli, and his tenth overall. The plot centers on a goldfish named Ponyo who befriends a five-year-old human boy, SÅsuke, and wants to become a human girl. The film was written, directed, and animated by Hayao Miyazaki, who said his inspiration was the Hans Christian Andersen story, "The Little Mermaid" but his inspiration was more abstract than a story. It is probably one of the cutest creation from Hayao Miyazaki's collection. The film has won several awards, including the Japan Academy Prize for Animation of the Year.
TOP 3 GREATEST HAYAO MIYAZAKI'S FILM
"MY NEIGHBOR TOTORO"
The film follows the two young daughters of a professor and their interactions with friendly wood spirits in postwar rural Japan. The film won the Animage Anime Grand Prix prize and the Mainichi Film Award for Best Film in 1988. The Disney version of Totoro features a star-heavy cast, including Dakota and Elle Fanning as Satsuki and Mei, Timothy Daly as Mr. Kusakabe, Pat Carroll as Granny, Lea Salonga as Mrs. Kusakabe, and Frank Welker as Totoro and Catbus. The songs for the new dub retained the same translation as the previous dub, but were sung by Sonya Isaacs. My Neighbor Totoro helped bring Japanese animation into the global spotlight, and set its writer-director Hayao Miyazaki on the road to success. The film's central character, Totoro, is as famous among Japanese children as Winnie-the-Pooh is among British ones.
TOP 2 GREATEST HAYAO MIYAZAKI'S FILM
"PRINCESS MONONOKE"
Princess Mononoke is a period drama set specifically in the late Muromachi period of Japan but with numerous fantastical elements. The story concentrates on involvement of the outsider Ashitaka in the struggle between the supernatural guardians of a forest and the humans of the Iron Town who consume its resources. There can be no clear victory, and the hope is that relationship between humans and nature can be cyclical. It took Miyazaki 16 years to fully develop the story and characters of Princess Mononoke. The film was extremely successful in Japan and with both anime fans and arthouse moviegoers in English-speaking countries. In those countries, critics interpreted the film to be about the environment told in the form of Japanese mythology. Disney's Miramax subsidiary purchased U.S. distribution rights, but wanted to cut the film for American audiences (and for a PG-rating).THE GREATEST HAYAO MIYAZAKI'S FILM
"SPIRITED AWAY"
The film tells the story of Chihiro Ogino, a sullen ten-year-old girl who, while moving to a new neighborhood, becomes trapped in an alternate reality that is inhabited by spirits and monsters. After her parents are transformed into pigs by the witch Yubaba, Chihiro takes a job working in Yubaba's bathhouse to find a way to free herself and her parents and escape back to the human world. Spirited Away became the most successful film in Japanese history, grossing over $274 million worldwide. The film overtook Titanic (at the time the top grossing film worldwide) in the Japanese box office to become the highest-grossing film in Japanese history. It won the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature at the 75th Academy Awards, the Golden Bear at the 2002 Berlin International Film Festival (tied with Bloody Sunday) and is among the top ten in the BFI list of the 50 films you should see by the age of 14.FIRST TWO COMMENTERS
Lawrence
Foongpc
