Word: ponyo
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...comedy Welcome to the Sticks, at $243 million; the first installment of the two-part Red Cliff, John Woo's return to Chinese-language action films, starring Tony Leung Chiu-wai and Takeshi Kaneshiro, which has taken in $125 million; and Hayao Miyazaki's charming animé for kids, Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea, earning $177 million. U.S. fans of Miyazaki (Princess Mononoke, Spirited Away) will be pleased to hear that Disney will be releasing the film in the States this summer. Meanwhile, the No.1 international film last week was Slumdog Millionaire, which has taken in $170.6 million...
...Ponyo, a little fish who wants to become a little girl. In this very loose retelling of The Little Mermaid - really, a dream triggered by a distant memory of the Hans Christian Andersen tale - we see her and her dozens of sisters navigating Miyazaki's notion of the sea. The director doesn't bother much with the usual cartoon bubbles; he trusts the blue-green palette, the gentle undulating of the creatures and the haunting buoyancy of Jo Hisaishi's score to establish the location with the waves of a watery wand. One little adventuress, known...
...Ponyo has interspecies powers and a low immunity system. Sosuke has cut his finger breaking the jar; she heals it with her touch, and in briefly tasting his blood, she starts to become human. She sprouts rudimentary hands and feet; for an instant she looks like a child's drawing of a chicken. She also develops a taste for the things humans eat. Mmmm, ham! - more savory than plankton. And in one of the film's many wonderful vignettes, she enjoys her first sip of honeyed tea. Ponyo is accepted into the household by Sosuke's mother Lisa (Tomoko Yamaguchi...
...news of a four-year-old running, let alone swimming, away from home would upset any parent. But Ponyo's dad, Fujimoto (George Tokoro), isn't just any parent. He's the king of the sea, at least in these parts, and quite the dude. With his gaunt face, form-fitting red-and-white-striped jacket, flowing seaweed hair and a perpetually haggard look, he suggests an underwater rock star; he could be the Ron Wood of the deep. Fujimoto calls himself an "ex-human" (apparently he's undergone a sea-change operation) and has the imperious zeal...
...Ponyo nicely portrays the agitation of a wife raising two kids (one of them part-piscine) while her husband's away; but for long stretches, when Koichi's life is imperiled by the storm, the movie forgets about him - perhaps because he's doing a bit of illegal whaling. Fujimoto's wife, Gran Mamare, is a magnificent sea goddess, with the perfect posture and forehead jewel of a Bollywood queen, but she doesn't show up till late in the film. Miyazaki also creates a tsunami that, however fantastical and benign he portrays it, can't help recall the fatal...