Ghiblis situation makes me really sad. They are my all-time favourite movie studio. I love the fact that they still did georgeous hand painted animations, now that Disney abandoned ship on that front. Seeing such a wonderful studio go down like this is terrible.
No wonder they kept pulling miyazaki out of retirement over and over again. They needed his direction. Now that he's left everything is going to hell, sadly. They seem to have failed to groom new and upcoming talent properly and it's coming back to bite them in the arse now. I mean if Disney survived Walts death, theres no reason Ghibly shouldn't survive Miyazakis retirement.
I've seen a lot of their films, but not all of them. I really waynted to go and see Princess Kaguya but it had such a limited run here that I missed it (it had like, a single show in my town). I havent heard anything about Marnie yet, but I've been meaning to watch it ever since I saw the japanense trailer.
My favourites would be
1. Howls moving Castle (Not only a wonderful film, but it also introduced me to the brilliant Diana Wynne Jones)
2. Spirited Away
3. My neighbour Totoro
4. Princess Mononoke
5. Ponyo
Grave of the fireflies gets a special mention because it's the most emotionally impactful of all their films, it has me weeping like a baby everytime.
