Midnight Ramblings

Got some cool DVD news I'd like to share.

It looks like March 7, 2006 is the day that Disney will release Wave 4 of their dubbed Studio Ghibli films. Wave 4 will consist of:

Howl's Moving Castle - Hayao Miyazaki's latest epic. I saw it back in the summer and it was pretty good.

My Neighbour Totoro - The film that put Miyazaki on the map as a filmmaker, as it was the first one to get a major North American release. (Way back in 1993.) Sadly, this DVD won't contain the original 1993 dub, but an all new Disney produced dub.

Whispers of the Heart - Ghibli's 1995 film, directed by Yoshifumi Kondu, with a screenplay by Miyazaki. A shy young girl meets a walking, talking cat and this helps her come out of her shell. Ghibli's 2002 film The Cat Returns was actually a sequel to this, and The Cat Returns was part of Disney's Studio Ghibli Wave 2, which came out back in the spring.

There's no word yet on bonus materials but, based on Disney's past Studio Ghibli releases, we can expect the animatics for the whole film, a featurette on the dubbing process, and the original, uncut Japanese language tracks.

Got some other Studio Ghibli bits:

- The Studio Ghibli Museum is about to premiere three brand new exclusive animated short films. Each one was written and directed by Hayao Miyazaki. All three premiere on January 3, and the only place on Earth you can see them is at the Studio Ghibli Museum.

- The next film from Studio Ghibli will be directed by Miyazaki, but not the one you think. The next Ghibli opus will be directed by Goro Miyazaki, son of the legendary Hayao Miyazaki. The junior Miyazaki was originally a landscape architect, and his last job was director of the Studio Ghibli Museum. The senior Miyazaki is apparently none too pleased that his son has decided to follow in his footsteps.