Hayao Miyazaki’s Studio Ghibli has released stunning free backgrounds for videoconferencing software like Zoom. Change your set and setting to Spirited Away, Howl's Moving Castle, Princess Mononoke, Castle in the Sky, and four other enchanting film scenes. Download them here: "Studio Ghibli wallpaper that can be used for web conferences"

(via Open Culture)

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Film editor Andrew Saladino of the Royal Ocean Film Society analyzes the exquisitely engineered airships in the films of Hayao Miyazaki. Read the rest

Japan's iconic animation Studio Ghibli, co-founded by anime director Hayao Miyazaki, is developing a 'My Neighbor Totoro' theme park. Read the rest

Legendary animator Hayao Miyazaki "fails at retirement again," writes Amid Amidi. He's taking the helm again at Studio Ghibli to direct a new full-length feature film, Boro the Caterpillar.

The news of Miyazaki’s pending return to feature film was the subject of an entire NHK TV special that aired in Japan on Sunday: Owaranai Hito Miyazaki Hayao (The Man Who Is Not Done: Hayao Miyazaki). In the show, Miyazaki not only discussed his current project—a 12-minute CG animated short Kemushi no Boro (Boro the Caterpillar) that will debut at the Ghibli Museum in 2017—but floated plans for a follow-up feature film.

Miyazaki is 76 and evidently far from done; the infamous quote often attributed to him in the image accompanying this post is deliberately mistranslated from a more nuanced, but no less damning statement:

Almost all Japanese animation is produced with hardly any basis taken from observing real people, you know. It’s produced by humans who can’t stand looking at other humans. And that’s why the industry is full of otaku!.

The stars of Hayao Miyazaki's films recede into the background in a series of prints inspired by Japanese woodblock artist Kawase Hasui. Read the rest