That looks scary as hell. I've said it before, and I'll say it again. Miyazaki could make the most incredible, mindwarping anime adaptation of the works of H.P. Lovecraft *ever*. I'm just imagining his take on "At the Mountains of Madness," after watching this, and good lord, that could be the most disturbing movie ever.

It's cute beyond any means!!!! wiiii! (cuteness for the East and the West are a little different)

Why hire high paid stars when you have real pro voice people ready to work for everything!

http://arelente2.blogspot.com

Celebrity voices are one of my biggest pet peeves with animated features. So few actually can voice act. I mean Donkey is Eddie Murphy. It detaches me from the illusion of the film. But most american audiences love their celebrities, so they all get the great animation voice acting jobs now. And they of course always have the same excuse "I wanted to make something my kids could enjoy". ARRRGH

Because it really pays to get celebrity voices for cartoons who completely phone it in instead of some truly talented voice actors who can actually provide great performances.

Actually, yes it does. Throngs of idiots will go to see anything if it's got Will Smith or Ben Stiller doing a voice in it. It's the sad truth and why real voice actors don't get their due.

Then again, most of the people who go to see Miyazaki's movies when they come over here couldn't care less about celebrity voices.

I've seen this movie, and I assure you that, while it seems pretty batshit insane, it was still pretty damn cool. I really don't know what was going on, though. The subtitles were terrible.

Is Matt Damon going to voice the creature who says "PONYO!"?

That is SOO gonna rock!!!

PONYO!!!

There needs to be more CGI animals and that song that goes, "I like to move it, move it. I like to movie it, move it."

Now THAT'S a good animated movie.

I've also seen this film. At first I thought, 'Okay, this movie is for little kids, because they have a certain way of understanding and accepting things.' A little later, I thought, 'I see, Miyazaki was trying to think like a child when he made this, but I'm not sure it's working.' Fifteen minutes in, I just gave up trying to make sense of it all. And the subs I had were pretty decent.
Example: Those "hundreds of horrible, squirming little faces" are Ponyo's younger sisters. The fucked-up-looking guy with the long red hair (dressed, for some reason, like an escapee from the music hall stage who looks as if he might break into 'I Do Like To Be Beside the Seaside' at any minute) is their dad. And the Gigantor lady (who lives in the ocean? IS the ocean? and is somehow bigger than a boat) is their mom.
At one point, the batshit father basically says, "You need to do this, or THE MOON WILL CRASH INTO THE EARTH!!!" *gestures frantically at ginormous moon*
Everyone ignored him though, so I think he might have actually been crazy.
Don't take any of the above to mean that I didn't enjoy it, though.

Now, I sorta went into this on my blog on theInteresting Bits VIpost, and they may not release into huge theatre openings, but supposedly these movies: Howl's Moving Castle, Spirited Away, Princess Mononoke (to name the most recent)do HUGE $'s on DVD & I think that's the reason (besides John Lassiter) that they get these for the English adaptations. That plus, the automatic Oscar nods.