CULTURE & ENTERTAINMENT

Image via The Guardian.

Hayao Miyazaki: his final bow. The much-loved animator's Studio Ghibli has become part of the aesthetic fabric of Japan. But The Wind Rises will be Miyazaki's swansong as director. What happens next? Paul McInnes writes in The Guardian: "Studio Ghibli is the animation studio founded by Miyazaki and his partner Isao Takahata in Tokyo in 1985. Over the 29 years that followed they have released 19 full-length feature films, eight of them directed by Miyazaki. Of these, 2001's Spirited Away is the biggest film of all-time in Japan and was the first to gross $200m worldwide. When Japanese consumers are polled as to their favourite brands, they often put Ghibli top, ahead of Toyota and Sony. But Ghibli's importance in its home country goes beyond financial success; in a way it has helped to define a sense of national character, creating new fables for the country such as the environmental parable Princess Mononoke. Ghibli has come to stand for both an aesthetic and moral code, continuing the practice of hand-drawn animation as everything else turns digital and creating stories for children that offer a more complex morality – and have a more vivid imagination – than its peers." E.T.P. 18'

Image via The Independent.

Semi Chellas interviews Matthew Weiner in The Paris Review: "Born in 1965, Matthew Weiner is barely old enough to remember the period with which his television series Mad Men has now become almost synonymous. His office is exactly what one might hope for the creator of Don Draper: a stylish mixture of midcentury modern furniture, with a cabinet full of top-shelf liquor. But it turns out that the furniture came with the building, which was designed in 1955, and the liquor, mostly gifts, is wasted on Weiner, who hardly drinks at all." Read The Art of Screenwriting No. 4 in The Paris Review. E.T.P. 33'

Photo via The Topless Pulp Fiction Appreciation Society.

Topless Pulp Fiction Appreciation Society takes off. Allison Flood comments about this peculiar society in The Guardian's Blook Blog: "I'm not a member of a book club – perhaps it is rooted in the days of my education, but I just feel that I'd hate having to read something by a certain time. However, I am loving this week's slew of articles about New York's Outdoor Co-ed Topless Pulp Fiction Appreciation Society, a book group which loves "good books and sunny days and enjoying both as nearly in the altogether as the law allows". Read full article in The Guardian. E.T.P. 4'