• Warning: Spoilers
    I'm sorry (though not really) but Wall-E is a sappy love story of approximately 9-year olds in love. A good idea with dull characters and so-so visuals and a huge deficit of imagination. It won the Oscar for 2008. Pixar's Up was superb for the first half an hour but after that was a complete mess, a crass nonsense. That one got the Oscar for 2009! Ponyo was NOT EVEN NOMINATED! Ponyo is by far the superior to both, the superior by a country mile.

    Ponyo is a marvelously imaginative tale of a daughter of the sea found by a boy. There are many ways to watch it. One is to look all over each frame for the wonderful incidental details. The imagination, vision and visuals are, at times, breathtaking. Again, as with his other films, the environment and caring for it, is extolled. Amazing that the films carry this stringent message without in any way compromising the animation. And he has been doing so in film since all the way back in '84 with the equally great Nausicaa and the Valley of the Winds.

    If there is such a thing as magic it is in the work of Miyazaki. A corrupt Academy Awards denied it the acclaim is so very richly deserves.