Free Republic

“The Wind Rises” is the type of art film that typically speeds into the Oscar race. Critics at film festivals have swooned over its nuance. It delivers messages about turbulent modern times by examining traumatic events of the past. The film’s 72-year-old director and writer, Hayao Miyazaki, a cinematic giant, has said the ambitious animated picture will be his last, a final bow. ...................................................... One explanation for the sensitivity? Although “The Wind Rises” has a strong pacifist message, it is essentially a biopic of Jiro Horikoshi, an aeronautical engineer whose contribution to the world was a killing machine. His designs...

As the projectors warm up in U.S. theaters today, 1300 of them are being prepped to pass the latest animated release from Japanese animation powerhouse Studio Ghibli through their lenses. While that's fewer than half the number of screens that will host each of this week's other two wide releases (Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance and This Means War), it's a significant number: Disney, the company responsible for distributing Ghibli releases in the United States, has never opened one of the Studio Ghibli's films on nearly as many screens. While past titles like Spirited Away and Princess Mononoke have been...

Disney, which received much criticism for its marketing and distribution efforts on behalf of Japanese director Hayao Miyazaki's Spirited Away (which ended up beating Disney's own animated product at this year's Oscars), has now agreed to distribute an animated feature produced in France. The company announced in Cannes on Saturday that it has bought for an undisclosed figure distribution rights to Onyx Films' 3-D animated film Renaissance, the first digitally rendered animated feature ever produced in France.