Venice. Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea.

"Hayao Miyazaki's latest animated epic, Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea, unfolds with a magic limpidity, teeming with imaginative transports that owe nothing to CGI," writes Ronnie Scheib in Variety.

"Effortlessly shuttling between sea, land and sky, this Little Mermaid-ish tale dives deep into the collective unconscious of Japan's island culture, imagining a transparency between natural elements that promises salvation and apocalypse in equal measure."

Updated through 9/4.

"The draughtsmanship is jaw-dropping, and Miyzaki's ability to expressed extremes of emotion in his child characters without resorting to sentimentality or treacly music is remarkable," writes the Telegraph's David Gritten. "If Miyazaki were to win The Golden Lion for this animated classic, it would be a surprise - but not a huge one."

"The opening sequences feel like a trip through the type of rainbow paintings you might see in a kindergarten, so keenly does Miyazaki capture the spirit of his five-year-old protagonist, Sosuke (Hiroki Doi)," writes Fionnuala Halligan in Screen Daily. "But Ponyo is firing on all cylinders on every level. From the sheer creativity of its traditional cel animation to its characterisations (every adult here feels real); the interactions between old and young; the untrammelled imagination on display throughout the story; and, above all, the way Miyazaki still dares to be different."

"It is a work of great fantasy and charm that will delight children ages 3 to 100," Deborah Young assures us in the Hollywood Reporter.

"The long-awaited follow-up to Spirited Away and Howl's Moving Castle has already taken over 10 billion yen at the box office, which translates to over 8.43 million tickets sold in just over a month on release, promising a final figure which seems likely to break records by the end of its run," notes Wendy Ide in the London Times. "It's a testament to the esteem in which the 67-year-old Miyazaki is held (frequently described as the greatest living animator, he is cited by Pixar creative head John Lasseter as a major influence) that the film screens in competition at Venice despite the fact that it is not a world premiere. And at the press screening I attended, the audience reception was the warmest of any film yet in the festival."

Earlier: "Ponyo in Japan."

Update, 9/2: "'I think animation is something that needs the pencil, needs man's drawing hand,' [Miyazaki] told the press at Venice, 'and that is why I decided to do this work in this way.'" Richard Corliss in Time: "More important, his movies don't work on Hollywood logic. They are children's tales, and little kids rarely worry about the absence of secondary characters, let alone a story's connection to the nightly news. They want to be coaxed into another world, through words and pictures. Miyazaki has done that here. He's learned the secret language of children, and speaks to them as one gifted five-year-old to his enthralled peers. That's how an anime veteran turns animation into ani-magic."

Update, 9/4: Miyazaki "wraps everying up in a fluffy bundle of niceness by the end, taking his cue from Disney rather than Andersen's sombre original," writes the Guardian's Andrew Pulver. "It wouldn't really work any other way. I doubt Ponyo will accrue the same slavering praise as Spirited Away; but even little kids will love it, and the wonderful DayGlo visuals ought to keep their parents entertained, too."

Posted by dwhudson at September 1, 2008 12:08 PM