THE STORY OF PRINCESS KAGUYA

The co-founder of Studio Ghibli, Isao Takahata has directed some truly charming animated features during his tenure. Grave Of The Fireflies is perhaps his most famous, but the romantic drama Only Yesterday is a charming film, as is his ecological fable Pom Poko. The Story Of Princess Kaguya is his latest project, a feature intended to double with Miyazaki’s The Wind Rises before delays forced it back to a November 2013 release in Japan.

Based on a Japanese folktale, it’s about a field worker who finds a tiny child inside a stalk of bamboo. Since he and his wife are childless, they raise the infant as their own child, little knowing that she’s a princess from the Moon. To emphasise the story’s traditional origins, Takahata and his team have animated The Story Of Princess Kaguya in the loose, shimmering style of traditional watercolour paintings. It’s a technique Takahata employed once before in his quirky, episodic slice-of-life drama My Neighbours The Yamadas, and it’s put to refined and particularly captivating use here.

THE BOXTROLLS

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2NqKFVOB_6o

Laika has two films to its name thus far. Number one is the outstanding Coraline. Number two is the excellent ParaNorman. In September 2014, it brings us its third feature, The Boxtrolls, and this time, it’s going to be a CG animated/hybrid production, rather than stop motion (it’s still primarily based in stop motion, which is wonderful news). We’d rather it was stop motion, in truth, but then we look at what Aardman did with the lovely Arthur Christmas, and our hopes remain high. Certainly the Laika style looks very much in tact here.

It’s based on Alan Snow’s novel, Here Be Monsters! (Snow is one of the film’s producers), and it’s the story of a young orphan boy by the name of Eggs, who’s raised by the Boxtrolls. Who are the Boxtrolls? Good question. They live in caves, they collect up rubbish, and they’re a quirky, lovable bunch. That is, until, Ben Kingsley’s exterminator has them in his sights. A dash of Flushed Away to it? Possibly. But Laika’s films have real identity to them, and we’d wager this is no different.

The voice cast features young Isaac Hampstead-Wright, and he’s joined by Elle Fanning, Simon Pegg, Toni Collette, Jared Harris, Nick Frost, Tracy Morgan and Riched Ayoade. Thus far, we’ve just had a teaser trailer for the movie, which is the one you can see above. But we remain hugely excited to see what this ultra-talented studio has produced next. While we’re waiting, we’ll just watch Coraline, if it’s okay with you…