Slashdot Mirror

Jesrad writes "As was reported two years ago on Slashdot, japanese artists, students and engineers under the lead of Kazuhiko Hachiya have taken upon themselves to build a real-size, fully functional Mehve (japanese website), the small jet-powered glider flying wing ridden by anime heroin Nausicaa. They have made a lot of progress, and are now test-flying the full scale, yet unpowered model by tow-launching it along with its thrilled pilot. They're having a lot of fun, too, judging from the movies of the testing sessions."

blamanj writes ""Howl's Moving Castle" (Howl no Ugoku Shiro), is the latest animated epic from Miyazaki's Studio Ghibli. In a departure from his usual sources, this time Miyazaki has adapted a story by British author Diana Wynne Jones. The reviews look good." CT: Apparently Howl's opened a few weeks ago.

ChibiOne writes "Nausicaa.net is reporting very interesting news regarding the US release for the works of (Hayao Miyazaki's) Studio Ghibli. Steven Alpert (VP at Tokuma International, parent of Studio Ghibli) spoke after the screening of "Porco Rosso" in New York and revealed several new release plans. AnimeOnDVD has a complete report." It says "every Ghibli feature film should be released in the US by the end of next year" as well as a widescreen re-release of Totoro. Here's hoping!

ChibiOne writes "Nausicaa.net is reporting very interesting news regarding the US release for the works of (Hayao Miyazaki's) Studio Ghibli. Steven Alpert (VP at Tokuma International, parent of Studio Ghibli) spoke after the screening of "Porco Rosso" in New York and revealed several new release plans. AnimeOnDVD has a complete report." It says "every Ghibli feature film should be released in the US by the end of next year" as well as a widescreen re-release of Totoro. Here's hoping!

SuperElectric writes "As reported on slashdot.jp, Opensky is a project led by media artist Kazuhiko Hachiya to implement a working, jet-powered version of Moewe, the vehicle (pic) that the heroine rides on in "Nausicaa of the Valley of Wind". They've successfully test-flown (.mov, 8.6MB) a 1/2 scale model, and are moving into phase 2, which includes interviewing for test pilots (women only!). Can anybody knowledgeable in experimental aeronautics speculate on how doable this is? While it's not designed for general production (riders must be less than 50 kg/120 lbs), this would certainly beat Segway any day!"

srstoneb writes "Earlier this week the Disney dub of Miyazaki's "Porco Rosso" premiered at the Austin Film Festival. It will probably be the only theatrical showing of "Porco", sadly, but reviews of the dub have been quite favorable. Even more exciting, as reported at Nausicaa.net and elsewhere, is that the Hewitts -- who did the English scripts for "Spirited Away" and "Porco" -- said they're currently working on "Nausicaa"! The cast includes Patrick Stewart, as well as Uma Thurman and, tentatively, Natalie Portman. A post to the Nausicaa.net mailing list by fan Dan Vogler further states that Stewart's role is Lord Yupa. (Somebody already made the inevitable joke about Picard being stabbed by a Nausicaan, so don't bother.) Both movies are tentatively intended for DVD release in spring 2004." Porco Rosso is a great flick, check it out if you aren't to dead inside to enjoy a kids flick. Greatly looking forward to both DVDs.

May Kasahara writes "The first annual Los Angeles Anime Festival is being held May 2-15. Among other films screening at the festival are Studio Ghibli's The Cat Returns (making its US debut), Memories, and all nine episodes of The Animatrix. However, the film I really want to see is the trippy-looking Tamala 2010: A Punk Cat In Space. More information, including a full schedule of events, is available here."

Slashback with more on Bill Gates' comments on bugs in Microsoft's code, the recent compromising of millions of credit card numbers, more .uk domain waffling, and more, including a foolproof way to stop anyone from reading data off of your discarded hard drive's platters.

Let me just slide your card a few dozen more times ... Any Web Loco writes "Following on from this piece on /., this story in the Sydney Morning Herald tells us that the company that got hacked (exposing up to 8 million credit card numbers) was Data Processors International. Not much to the story, but we now know who it was."

Another reason to be cautious about domains with "uk" in them. An anonymous reader writes "The Register reports that Nominet has looked at opening .net.uk up or killing it off and then decided it can't decide. The chair of sub-committee responsible, Clive Feather, is currently standing for re-election to Nominets Policy Advisory Board. The sub-committee he chaired had suggested shutting down net.uk entirely, which the main board rejected. His position must surely be under scrutiny by the internet community."

Interesting bugs are in the teeth of the beholder. dvdweyer writes "I myself do remember having read the whole interview with Bill Gates in Focus, a German weekly news magazine (their online service now seems to be part of MSN *yuck*). There are however resources online which provide full sources, in English, most notably RISKS in issue 17.43 (not 17.42) with a follow-up in issue 17.44."

When fan-subs just aren't what you want. May Kasahara writes "Studio Ghibli fansite Nausicaa.net now has official release dates for Region 1 DVDs of Kiki's Delivery Service , Laputa: Castle in the Sky , and Spirited Away , as well as official preview artwork of the disks and packaging. As a side note, the site now has a page up for Miyazaki's upcoming Howl's Magic Castle . See you at the video store on April 15!"

Fonts make your terminal much more useful. Russ Nelson writes "The Bitstream Vera fonts are available for trial use. Bitstream is still tweaking them, so they're under the provisional "no redistribution" license. You can download them yourself, though, and in about a month, put them in your software distribution. Kudos to X co-creator Jim Gettys for finally getting X some professional-quality fonts."

Dear Mr. Ashcroft: I hope you find this slag useful. eecue writes "Due to the recent MIT study concerning data recovery from old hard drives, we decided that the only foolproof means of data removal was complete destruction."

Slashback with more on Bill Gates' comments on bugs in Microsoft's code, the recent compromising of millions of credit card numbers, more .uk domain waffling, and more, including a foolproof way to stop anyone from reading data off of your discarded hard drive's platters.

Let me just slide your card a few dozen more times ... Any Web Loco writes "Following on from this piece on /., this story in the Sydney Morning Herald tells us that the company that got hacked (exposing up to 8 million credit card numbers) was Data Processors International. Not much to the story, but we now know who it was."

Another reason to be cautious about domains with "uk" in them. An anonymous reader writes "The Register reports that Nominet has looked at opening .net.uk up or killing it off and then decided it can't decide. The chair of sub-committee responsible, Clive Feather, is currently standing for re-election to Nominets Policy Advisory Board. The sub-committee he chaired had suggested shutting down net.uk entirely, which the main board rejected. His position must surely be under scrutiny by the internet community."

Interesting bugs are in the teeth of the beholder. dvdweyer writes "I myself do remember having read the whole interview with Bill Gates in Focus, a German weekly news magazine (their online service now seems to be part of MSN *yuck*). There are however resources online which provide full sources, in English, most notably RISKS in issue 17.43 (not 17.42) with a follow-up in issue 17.44."

When fan-subs just aren't what you want. May Kasahara writes "Studio Ghibli fansite Nausicaa.net now has official release dates for Region 1 DVDs of Kiki's Delivery Service , Laputa: Castle in the Sky , and Spirited Away , as well as official preview artwork of the disks and packaging. As a side note, the site now has a page up for Miyazaki's upcoming Howl's Magic Castle . See you at the video store on April 15!"

Fonts make your terminal much more useful. Russ Nelson writes "The Bitstream Vera fonts are available for trial use. Bitstream is still tweaking them, so they're under the provisional "no redistribution" license. You can download them yourself, though, and in about a month, put them in your software distribution. Kudos to X co-creator Jim Gettys for finally getting X some professional-quality fonts."

Dear Mr. Ashcroft: I hope you find this slag useful. eecue writes "Due to the recent MIT study concerning data recovery from old hard drives, we decided that the only foolproof means of data removal was complete destruction."

Slashback with more on Bill Gates' comments on bugs in Microsoft's code, the recent compromising of millions of credit card numbers, more .uk domain waffling, and more, including a foolproof way to stop anyone from reading data off of your discarded hard drive's platters.

Let me just slide your card a few dozen more times ... Any Web Loco writes "Following on from this piece on /., this story in the Sydney Morning Herald tells us that the company that got hacked (exposing up to 8 million credit card numbers) was Data Processors International. Not much to the story, but we now know who it was."

Another reason to be cautious about domains with "uk" in them. An anonymous reader writes "The Register reports that Nominet has looked at opening .net.uk up or killing it off and then decided it can't decide. The chair of sub-committee responsible, Clive Feather, is currently standing for re-election to Nominets Policy Advisory Board. The sub-committee he chaired had suggested shutting down net.uk entirely, which the main board rejected. His position must surely be under scrutiny by the internet community."

Interesting bugs are in the teeth of the beholder. dvdweyer writes "I myself do remember having read the whole interview with Bill Gates in Focus, a German weekly news magazine (their online service now seems to be part of MSN *yuck*). There are however resources online which provide full sources, in English, most notably RISKS in issue 17.43 (not 17.42) with a follow-up in issue 17.44."

When fan-subs just aren't what you want. May Kasahara writes "Studio Ghibli fansite Nausicaa.net now has official release dates for Region 1 DVDs of Kiki's Delivery Service , Laputa: Castle in the Sky , and Spirited Away , as well as official preview artwork of the disks and packaging. As a side note, the site now has a page up for Miyazaki's upcoming Howl's Magic Castle . See you at the video store on April 15!"

Fonts make your terminal much more useful. Russ Nelson writes "The Bitstream Vera fonts are available for trial use. Bitstream is still tweaking them, so they're under the provisional "no redistribution" license. You can download them yourself, though, and in about a month, put them in your software distribution. Kudos to X co-creator Jim Gettys for finally getting X some professional-quality fonts."

Dear Mr. Ashcroft: I hope you find this slag useful. eecue writes "Due to the recent MIT study concerning data recovery from old hard drives, we decided that the only foolproof means of data removal was complete destruction."

Slashback with more on Bill Gates' comments on bugs in Microsoft's code, the recent compromising of millions of credit card numbers, more .uk domain waffling, and more, including a foolproof way to stop anyone from reading data off of your discarded hard drive's platters.

Let me just slide your card a few dozen more times ... Any Web Loco writes "Following on from this piece on /., this story in the Sydney Morning Herald tells us that the company that got hacked (exposing up to 8 million credit card numbers) was Data Processors International. Not much to the story, but we now know who it was."

Another reason to be cautious about domains with "uk" in them. An anonymous reader writes "The Register reports that Nominet has looked at opening .net.uk up or killing it off and then decided it can't decide. The chair of sub-committee responsible, Clive Feather, is currently standing for re-election to Nominets Policy Advisory Board. The sub-committee he chaired had suggested shutting down net.uk entirely, which the main board rejected. His position must surely be under scrutiny by the internet community."

Interesting bugs are in the teeth of the beholder. dvdweyer writes "I myself do remember having read the whole interview with Bill Gates in Focus, a German weekly news magazine (their online service now seems to be part of MSN *yuck*). There are however resources online which provide full sources, in English, most notably RISKS in issue 17.43 (not 17.42) with a follow-up in issue 17.44."

When fan-subs just aren't what you want. May Kasahara writes "Studio Ghibli fansite Nausicaa.net now has official release dates for Region 1 DVDs of Kiki's Delivery Service , Laputa: Castle in the Sky , and Spirited Away , as well as official preview artwork of the disks and packaging. As a side note, the site now has a page up for Miyazaki's upcoming Howl's Magic Castle . See you at the video store on April 15!"

Fonts make your terminal much more useful. Russ Nelson writes "The Bitstream Vera fonts are available for trial use. Bitstream is still tweaking them, so they're under the provisional "no redistribution" license. You can download them yourself, though, and in about a month, put them in your software distribution. Kudos to X co-creator Jim Gettys for finally getting X some professional-quality fonts."

Dear Mr. Ashcroft: I hope you find this slag useful. eecue writes "Due to the recent MIT study concerning data recovery from old hard drives, we decided that the only foolproof means of data removal was complete destruction."

Slashback with more on Bill Gates' comments on bugs in Microsoft's code, the recent compromising of millions of credit card numbers, more .uk domain waffling, and more, including a foolproof way to stop anyone from reading data off of your discarded hard drive's platters.

Let me just slide your card a few dozen more times ... Any Web Loco writes "Following on from this piece on /., this story in the Sydney Morning Herald tells us that the company that got hacked (exposing up to 8 million credit card numbers) was Data Processors International. Not much to the story, but we now know who it was."

Another reason to be cautious about domains with "uk" in them. An anonymous reader writes "The Register reports that Nominet has looked at opening .net.uk up or killing it off and then decided it can't decide. The chair of sub-committee responsible, Clive Feather, is currently standing for re-election to Nominets Policy Advisory Board. The sub-committee he chaired had suggested shutting down net.uk entirely, which the main board rejected. His position must surely be under scrutiny by the internet community."

Interesting bugs are in the teeth of the beholder. dvdweyer writes "I myself do remember having read the whole interview with Bill Gates in Focus, a German weekly news magazine (their online service now seems to be part of MSN *yuck*). There are however resources online which provide full sources, in English, most notably RISKS in issue 17.43 (not 17.42) with a follow-up in issue 17.44."

When fan-subs just aren't what you want. May Kasahara writes "Studio Ghibli fansite Nausicaa.net now has official release dates for Region 1 DVDs of Kiki's Delivery Service , Laputa: Castle in the Sky , and Spirited Away , as well as official preview artwork of the disks and packaging. As a side note, the site now has a page up for Miyazaki's upcoming Howl's Magic Castle . See you at the video store on April 15!"

Fonts make your terminal much more useful. Russ Nelson writes "The Bitstream Vera fonts are available for trial use. Bitstream is still tweaking them, so they're under the provisional "no redistribution" license. You can download them yourself, though, and in about a month, put them in your software distribution. Kudos to X co-creator Jim Gettys for finally getting X some professional-quality fonts."

Dear Mr. Ashcroft: I hope you find this slag useful. eecue writes "Due to the recent MIT study concerning data recovery from old hard drives, we decided that the only foolproof means of data removal was complete destruction."

Slashback with more on Bill Gates' comments on bugs in Microsoft's code, the recent compromising of millions of credit card numbers, more .uk domain waffling, and more, including a foolproof way to stop anyone from reading data off of your discarded hard drive's platters.

Let me just slide your card a few dozen more times ... Any Web Loco writes "Following on from this piece on /., this story in the Sydney Morning Herald tells us that the company that got hacked (exposing up to 8 million credit card numbers) was Data Processors International. Not much to the story, but we now know who it was."

Another reason to be cautious about domains with "uk" in them. An anonymous reader writes "The Register reports that Nominet has looked at opening .net.uk up or killing it off and then decided it can't decide. The chair of sub-committee responsible, Clive Feather, is currently standing for re-election to Nominets Policy Advisory Board. The sub-committee he chaired had suggested shutting down net.uk entirely, which the main board rejected. His position must surely be under scrutiny by the internet community."

Interesting bugs are in the teeth of the beholder. dvdweyer writes "I myself do remember having read the whole interview with Bill Gates in Focus, a German weekly news magazine (their online service now seems to be part of MSN *yuck*). There are however resources online which provide full sources, in English, most notably RISKS in issue 17.43 (not 17.42) with a follow-up in issue 17.44."

When fan-subs just aren't what you want. May Kasahara writes "Studio Ghibli fansite Nausicaa.net now has official release dates for Region 1 DVDs of Kiki's Delivery Service , Laputa: Castle in the Sky , and Spirited Away , as well as official preview artwork of the disks and packaging. As a side note, the site now has a page up for Miyazaki's upcoming Howl's Magic Castle . See you at the video store on April 15!"

Fonts make your terminal much more useful. Russ Nelson writes "The Bitstream Vera fonts are available for trial use. Bitstream is still tweaking them, so they're under the provisional "no redistribution" license. You can download them yourself, though, and in about a month, put them in your software distribution. Kudos to X co-creator Jim Gettys for finally getting X some professional-quality fonts."

Dear Mr. Ashcroft: I hope you find this slag useful. eecue writes "Due to the recent MIT study concerning data recovery from old hard drives, we decided that the only foolproof means of data removal was complete destruction."

peter_gzowski writes "Anime News Network is reporting that, 'The Japanese consumers in the Kyoto and Hyogo prefectures of Japan have filed a lawsuit against Walt Disney Japan over the red tint on the Japanese DVD release of Spirited Away.' Japanese consumers who purchased the Spirited Away DVD were very disappointed when they discovered a red tint to the film. A hundred thousand consumers complained, but Buena Vista Home Entertainment Japan (a subsidiary of Walt Disney) pretended nothing was wrong with the disc. The original source of news of the suit can be found (in Japanese) at Mainichi. No response from Disney yet."

Spirited Away, or Sen to Chihiro no Kamikakushi, is a made-for-Japan animated film that has now made it across the Pacific. Famed director Hayao Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli are well-known for producing exceptional films, and this one is outstanding. It made some vast amount of money in Japan, and U.S. critics are raving about it, but it probably isn't showing in your neighborhood: it's opening in ten large cities this week, a few more next week, and perhaps still more the week after that. There's a proprietary-format trailer available.

Let's get a few things out of the way first. There's both a subtitled version with Japanese audio, and an English-dubbed version. The dubbed version appears to be showing in more theaters, with the subtitled version only showing in a very few locations. I saw the subtitled one, not because I'm a purist (I usually prefer the dubbed versions so my eyes can concentrate on the animation rather than having to read), but just because it was showing at a convenient time, so I can't comment on the quality of the English dub.

The film might be too intense for very young viewers in a few places. One theater nearby has a note saying they won't allow kids under six to attend - I have no idea how they came up with that age, but there's definitely a few scenes that could be frightening to very young kids. You might want to watch it ahead of time, or at least be prepared to hold them tight.

And on to the film. It is excellent. Several of Miyazaki's other films have had themes involving the spirits of nature, and this is a continuation of those. Other tales it made me think of: Princess Mononoke, My Neighbor Totoro, Alice in Wonderland, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (Narnia in general), The Neverending Story, and the tale of Circe the Enchantress in the Odyssey. You remember Circe, don't you, the sorceress who turned Odysseus' men into pigs? No doubt if I knew more about Japanese legends I would see lots of places that Miyazaki drew from there as well.

The basic plot is simple: Chihiro's parents stumble into a place they shouldn't be, and get turned into pigs, and she must save them. I'm not going to elaborate on it because I really enjoyed discovering what was going on throughout the movie and I'd rather not spoil it for you. There's a happy ending - this isn't a Grave of the Fireflies - so you don't have to worry about your kids being permanently traumatized.

Everything about the film says that a great deal of effort was put into it. Tiny details are included in every frame of the animation. There's a pretty extensive use of CGI for rendering background man-made objects (nature backgrounds are mostly drawn), but it fits in very well with the hand-drawn art and adds rather than detracts from the movie. I don't know how I can really convey the difference between this and a typical Disney animated film... Maybe this: think about how, in the Lion King or a similar movie, there are often large swatches of a similar color taking up large parts of the screen. Oh, here's a lion, and it has three square feet of an absolutely pure tan color (which, incidentally, takes very little effort to draw). An equivalent lion in a Miyazaki film would have a hundred shades of color and streaks and details and highlights and lowlights, and it would have that in every frame that it appeared in. The colors are brighter, the whites are whiter. (Note that apparently the subtitled version I saw is being shown in a digital projection, while the dubbed version is traditional film.)

You don't have to like anime to like this movie - it will be fun for nearly all ages. It's not quite as endearing as Totoro, not quite as mystical as Mononoke (well, maybe it is, at that). But it's definitely as good as either of these. Well worth seeing in the theaters.

soupforare writes "Spirited Away is slated for a US limited theatre release in on Sep. 27th nausicaa.net has a theatre listing and some more info. It looks like some theatres are even going to be showing the subtitled version." No showings near me, but hopefully those prints will make it around. Been wanting to see this one for a long time.

liquidbrains writes "With 'Princess Mononoke' fresh in our memories, the number one highest grossing film in Japan -ever- is coming to the US. Thanks to Disney and Pixar's John Lasseter, who has supervised the dub, we can soon expect a fine English adaptation of animation master Hayao Miyazaki's latest masterpiece, 'Spirited Away'. See the trailer here." Reader thefalconer writes "It seems that Apple has just released the very first trailer to X-Men 2 on their website. From what I've seen this movie looks like it's going to rock! Too bad I have to wait for May of next year!"

peter_gzowski writes "Dreamworks has acquired the license for the worldwide distribution of Satoshi Kon's latest picture, Millennium Actress. Satoshi Kon is best known for directing the anime classic Perfect Blue, but has also worked on Patlabor 2 and Roujin Z (the latter two from the director of Ghost in the Shell & Akira, respectively). Read about it from Yahoo! Movies or Anime News Network, whichever you prefer. I guess Dreamworks was feeling left out after Miramax (with Princess Mononoke) and Columbia Tri-Star (with Final Fantasy and Metropolis) got into the anime distribution business. Maybe Spielberg and company will fare better trying to convince North American audiences to watch serious animated films."

peter_gzowski writes "Well known film critic and closet otaku, Roger Ebert, has a bi-weekly segment on his website where he reminisces about the greatest films of all time (in his opinion, anyway). The most recent installment covers My Neighbor Totoro. This is the second anime to make the list, joining Grave of the Fireflies. For those unfamiliar, Totoro is a film by anime master Hayao Miyazaki, the man behind Princess Mononoke, amoung many other great films (Castle of Cagliostro being my favorite)." Always pleased to see anime get more mainsream cred. And Miyazaki always deserves it.

Christopher Cashell writes: "The critically acclaimed Anime film by Hayao Miyazaki and Ghibli studios, Princess Mononoke, has been released on DVD. The DVD release was initially delayed due to the public outcry when it was discovered that the original Japanese dialogue wouldn't be included. In this case, the effort from people writing Miramax paid off, as this release does include Japanese language tracks. This movie was reviewed on Slashdot when released in theaters. More information on Princess Mononoke can also be found here." and on AnimeFu (fwiw, that is Kurt The Pope & I's anime review site, check it out if you're curious). My copy hasn't arrived yet (Express.com fails me once again. When they stopped being DVDExpress, their UI went to poop, and now I have to wait weeks for titles.) but I hear they really did this disc up right; they've even got Gaimen's subtitles or Miyazaki's original script subtitles. I'm excited to see this disc. And hear Gillian Anderson again. I got to see the movie in an old local artsy theater. What a great movie.