Goodbye to a legend

[Houston]

The news hit the Venice Film Festival like an unexpected death notice: Hayao Miyazaki, the world’s most honored creator of animated features, was ending his movie career. “Miyazaki has decided that The Wind Rises will be his last film, and he will now retire,” Koji Hoshino, who runs the director’s Studio Ghibli, announced at a press conference for The Wind Rises, which received its European premiere here yesterday.

Miyazaki, a Japanese animation giant whose name has become practically synonymous with the entire industry, is ready to hand the work down to a new generation of animators. During a press conference at the Venice Film Festival, according to The Los Angeles Times, Studio Ghibli President Koju Hoshino announced Miyaziki's retirement but declined to answer questions, saying that there would be more details at a press conference in Tokyo next week.

Miyazaki co-founded Studio Ghibli in 1985 but his career stretches decades earlier than that, to when he joined Toei Animation in 1963 as an in-between artist on Gulliver's Travels Beyond The Moon. Miyazaki's first full-length feature was 1979's The Castle of Cagliostro in 1979, but his most famous features have all been made at Studio Ghibli, including My Neighbor Totoro, Porco Rosso, Spirited Away, Howl's Moving Castle and especially Princess Mononoke, which was the first animated film to win the Japanese Academy Award for Best Picture.

A sad day:crying:

 

[dell71]

The man's definitely a legend in the industry and will be missed. To be honest, I need to watch more of his work.