Filmography: Spirited Away (2001); Howl's Moving Castle (2004); Ponyo (2008); The Wind Rises (2013) If you talk about animation in the 21st Century, most people's first thought will likely go to Pixar, and for good reason. The Disney-owned animation studio has made many good movies since the year 2000 and has built a reputation as the top name in animation. However, if you had to point to a single individual who has most advanced the medium of animation in the new millennium, it is hard to accept any other answer than Hayao Miyazaki. The Japanese director, who had already built a good reputation for himself in the previous century, started the latest century with a smash hit in his film Spirited Away. Even those previously unfamiliar with or resistant to Japanese animated cinema were won over with Miyazaki's Alice in Wonderland-esque tale of a young girl who strays from her parents to find a world of fantasy and mystery. The film became only the second movie ever to receive the Oscar for Best Animated Feature Film and was so successful financially that Disney ended up distributing the rest of Miyazaki's films in America. After Howl's Moving Castle and Ponyo, Miyazaki announced that his newest film, The Wind Rises, a fanciful biopic of the man who designed the infamous Zero plans for the Japanese during WWII, would be his last. The film was one of the greatest biopics of the last few years, but was unfortunately overlooked relative to some of Miyazaki's other most recent films (if you haven't seen it yet, do so). While we may never again see a new Miyazaki premiere, the man has already left an indelible mark on cinema in the 21st century, animated or otherwise.
A film fanatic at a very young age, starting with the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle movies and gradually moving up to more sophisticated fare, at around the age of ten he became inexplicably obsessed with all things Oscar. With the incredibly trivial power of being able to chronologically name every Best Picture winner from memory, his lifelong goal is to see every Oscar nominated film, in every major category, in the history of the Academy Awards.
