From the director of ‘Grave of the Fireflies’
THE TALE OF THE PRINCESS KAGUYA
OUT TO OWN ON DVD, DOUBLE-PLAY BLU-RAY & LIMITED COLLECTOR’S EDITION WITH POSTCARDS
STUDIOCANAL are delighted to announce the July 13th Home Entertainment release of THE TALE OF THE PRINCESS KAGUYA, to be available in DVD and Double-play formats. Featuring the original Japanese Language version across all formats, they also all include the English Language dub featuring the voice cast Chloe Grace Moretz, James Caan, Lucy Liu, James Marsden, Mary Steenburgen & Geroge Segal
SYNOPSIS
When an aging bamboo cutter finds a tiny girl in a glowing stalk of bamboo he and his wife decide to raise her as their daughter. Growing at a rapid rate, she soon becomes an enchanting and beautiful young lady, but beneath the magic she holds a secret that will affect the lives of all those she encounters and everything she claims to love.
The Tale of The Princess Kaguya, the latest visionary tour de force from acclaimed Studio Ghibli co-founder Isao Takahata, following his acclaimed masterpieces Grave of The Fireflies and My Neighbours The Yamadas, is the fruit of a decades long love for Japanese Fairytale.
55 years ago, Isao Takahata, then a protégé of one the great directors of the day Tomu Uchida, helped plan a grand project by Uchida to make an animated feature of the classic ‘The Tale of The Bamboo Cutter’. Though never realised at that time, the scenarios he created for his heroine, the Princess, never left Takahata. Later when he created ,with Hayao Miyazaki, the animated TV series ‘Heidi, A Girl of The Alps’ they noted the similarities to The Princess Kaguya. Both heroines growing up in a beautiful mountain environment, from which the adults in their lives remove them in favour of life in the city, and there they both long for the lost mountain home. ‘Someday we should make a Japanese Heidi’ Takahata and Miyazaki agreed after ‘Heidi, A Girl of the Alps’ and now, 40 years later their long cherished ambition has come to the screen, earning Takahata a nomination for the 2014 Best Animated Feature at the Academy Awards.
Joining with Princess Mononoke Art Director Kazuo Oga, Takahata moved production of the film outside Studio Ghibli to experiment with wholly new animation processes. In traditional hand drawn animation, backgrounds are separate from character cells, but for The Tale of The Princess Kaguya, Takahata wanted to unite backgrounds and characters to provide the dream of all animators, the impression of an entire picture in motion. The sketch-like compositions of the film go far beyond conventional animation in bringing the characters vividly to life. Takahata’s triumph has been to pair an age-old story with a new style of cutting age animated expression, one that will long be remembered in the history of the medium.
EXTRAS
- Film completion announcement
- Japanese Trailers
- Japanese TV Spots
- Studio Ghibli Collection trailers