NEW MIYAZAKI MOVIES (AND NICK PARK!)

Nausicaa.net has news on three new animated shorts from Japan's God of Animators, Hayao Miyazaki, that are slated to premiere at the Ghibli Museum on January 23, 2006.

The short, BORO THE CATERPILLAR (cute!) has morphed into WATER SPIDER MONMON (super-cute!) about the underwater world seen through the eyes of a little tiny insect (apparently the caterpillar wasn't interesting enough so Miyazaki squished it and moved on to the water spider). The second movie is THE DAY I BOUGHT A STAR based on a story by WHISPER OF THE HEART background painter Naohisa Inoue. Then there's debate over whether one, or two more, projects are in production. Some folks say there's one about a girl looking for a home, and one set on a river back in the days when rivers were a big deal, and others say it's either the homeless girl or the river, not both.

Also, at the Tokyo International Film Festival, Miyazaki and Nick Park (of Aardman Animation) hooked up and Miyazaki announced that his Ghibli Museum will be holding an exhibit on Aardman soon. Then Nick Park gave Miyazaki a little clay statue of himself (of Miyazaki, not of Nick Park).

If only Pixar, Aardman Animation and Studio Ghibli could team up I bet they could totally defeat all evil in about 20 minutes and still have time left over to make some movies.

(Thanks, also, to Anime News Service)