The Academy’s 6th Annual Governors Awards will be held on Saturday, November 8th and the world renowned Hayao Miyazaki has been chosen to receive an Honorary Award.
The Academy’s Governors Awards is a yearly event that doesn’t reward notable recipients for their past year in film industry, but rather for their lifetime achievements. With an expansive career as an animator, Miyazaki has shown himself as an artist, writer, director, producer, and he’s no stranger to prestigious awards. Miyazaki is a three-time Oscar nominee in the Animated Feature Film category, as well as a one-time winner for ‘Spirited Away’ in 2002.
He will be honored alongside other world-class talents such as the American singer and actor Harry Belafonte, French screenwriter Jean-Claude Carriere and Irish actress Maureen O’Hara.
(via Reuters)
WWDJAPAN looked back at the past year (from June of last year to May of this year) and recognize the celebrities that accumulated the most amount of covers.
For women’s magazines, model-actress Kiko Mizuhara was crowned the number one spot with an overwhelming 24 covers. For men’s, Korean duo Tohoshinki (U-Know YUNHO, Max CHANGMIN) topped the list with 7 covers together.
It’s been nearly a year since prolific photographer Hiroshi Nomura suddenly passed away at the age of 52. To commemorate his life and work, a memorial exhibition and photo-book ‘THE PORTRAITS‘ spanning his entire career will be released in his honor.
Active in various fields of visual expressions, his work has been featured professionally over 600 times, from the covers of CD jackets, to magazine covers, to movie posters for the biggest successes in the Japanese entertainment industry. The photo-book ‘THE PORTRAITS,’ which is going to be released on September 16th, features 72 faces of musicians and actors such as Perfume, Superfly, Reina Triendl and Chara.
Check out the 72 actors, singers, idols, and bands that made the cut below!
The debut single for duo pla2me (Puranime) ‘Plastic 2 Mercy’ will be released on September 30, and in preparation, they have uploaded a live video to YouTube.
This new unit consists of Mari Mizuta and former BiS member Saki Kamiya. The video features ‘Plastic 2 Mercy’, a song with a sad melody produced by Kenta Matsukuma (who has previously worked with Shoko Nakagawa and BiS), and footage from their live stage at ‘Tokyo Idol Festival 2014’.
Check it out below!
The PV for Frederic‘s new song ‘oddloop’ has been published to YouTube.
The song is the title track to Frederic’s new mini album set for release on September 24th. Centered around a dance theme, the songs feature strange lyrics set to a highly addiction sound.
The video features footage of two poker-faced women (Yuho Uchida & Aris Mukaide) interwoven with shots of the band performing. The director of the PV, Smith, has previously worked with NICO Touches the Walls and Fuji Fabric.
Cool Japan: Japan’s attempt to capitalize on its culture, both traditional and pop, in an effort to increase the nation’s soft power abroad. In recent years, Japan’s government and some of its companies have sought to revive Japan’s cultural influence on the world stage. Some have said this is Japan’s response to South Korea’s Hallyu, which in recent years has captured a niche following across the globe. There is however some confusion on what exactly Japan should export to current and potential Japanophiles across the globe. In an effort to figure out what exactly is cool about Japan, and in effect should be exported, MTV81 has began a series asking Japanese people in cultural centers what they think is cool about Japan. The first stop is Tokyo’s trendy Harajuku. Find out what the denizens of Harajuku had to say after the jump!
As Hello Kitty’s 40th anniversary nears, a vital piece of information has been made known: Hello Kitty is not actually a cat, but rather a little girl.
For an upcoming retrospective for this international power icon, Christine R. Yano, an anthropologist who has been studying the phenomenon of Hello Kitty, reveals that Sanrio made sure that she stayed in line throughout the process. That included making sure she never called Hello Kitty (fullname Kitty White, daughter to George and Mary White) a cat.
According to Tokyo Sports (read: gossip), the day when Namie Amuro fades out from center stage could be near. The entertainment industry is furious at her for leaving her label “Rising Pro”. People don’t want to cooperate with her demands surrounding her entertainment activities, so she might be blacklisted from the industry, and in short, retire.
Gossip has been swirling the past month or two about the pop diva exiting her contract with Rising Pro Inc. agency that she has been under for the last 22 years. Amuro met the president of Rising Pro, Tetsuo Taira (68), when she was a young girl in sixth grade. Since then there was a “parent-child” relationship between them. Through his mentorship with Amuro, now 36-years old, she is said to have signed a contract at the age of 14 that would legally bind her to the company for 25 years, ending in February 2017.
A music industry professional commented, “It’s become known to people in the industry that Amuro is ignoring the ‘rules’ of the entertainment industry and it’s causing an outrage behind the scenes. Because of her lack of effort, they’ll fail to reach an agreement, and if this continues, she won’t be able to formally do her activities.”
