Spirited Away

Spirited Away (Japanese: 千と千尋の神隠し, Hepburn: Sen to Chihiro no Kamikakushi, "Sen and Chihiro's Spiriting Away") is a 2001 Japanese animated fantasy film written and directed by Hayao Miyazaki and produced by Studio Ghibli. The film stars Rumi Hiiragi, Miyu Irino, Mari Natsuki, Takeshi Naito, Yasuko Sawaguchi, Tsunehiko Kamijō, Takehiko Ono and Bunta Sugawara, and tells the story of Chihiro Ogino (Hiiragi), a sullen ten-year-old girl who, while moving to a new neighborhood, enters the spirit world. After her parents are transformed into pigs by the witch Yubaba (Natsuki), Chihiro takes a job working in Yubaba's bathhouse to find a way to free herself and her parents and return to the human world.

Miyazaki wrote the script after he decided the film would be based on his friend, associate producer Seiji Okuda's ten-year-old daughter, who came to visit his house each summer. At the time, Miyazaki was developing two personal projects, but they were rejected. With a budget of US$19 million, production of Spirited Away began in 2000. During production, Miyazaki realized the film would be over three hours long and decided to cut out several parts of the story. Pixar director John Lasseter, a fan of Miyazaki, was approached by Walt Disney Pictures to supervise an English-language translation for the film's North American release. Lasseter hired Kirk Wise as director and Donald W. Ernst as producer of the adaptation. Screenwriters Cindy Davis Hewitt and Donald H. Hewitt wrote the English-language dialogue, which they wrote to match the characters' original Japanese-language lip movements.

One Summer

One Summer is a 1983 British television drama serial written by Willy Russell and directed by Gordon Flemyng. It stars David Morrissey and Spencer Leigh as two 16-year-old Liverpool boys from broken homes who escape from their grim lives by running away to Wales one summer. It also starred James Hazeldine and Ian Hart (credited in the series as Ian Davies). The series was shown in five 50-minute episodes on Channel 4 from 7 August to 4 September 1983. It was repeated on ITV in April 1985.

Synopsis

Sixteen-year-old Billy Rizley (Morrissey) comes from a broken home in Liverpool. His father is absent, his older sister despises him, and his mother suffers from depression and is unwilling to care for him. Billy and his slightly dimwitted friend Icky (Leigh) have truanted from school for some time and have fallen into a life of delinquency, regularly fighting with local gangs and getting into trouble with the police. Billy is already on probation and it seems only a matter of time before his life of crime and violence results in his incarceration. When the pair decide to go back into school in order to go on a school camping trip to Wales, they are rebuffed by their teacher. With no direction or prospects in life, the pair decide to run away to Wales by themselves, the last place Billy had any happy memories when he went away on a previous school trip some years earlier. Billy steals some money from his mother to facilitate their trip. Upon their arrival in Wales, they almost immediately get into trouble with the local police but escape arrest. They try to spend the night in a barn at a secluded farm, but are caught by the farmer and his wife. Though they take pity on the two boys and let them spend the night in the house, in the morning Billy and Icky make a quick getaway from the farmhouse when the police arrive.

Joe Hisaishi

Mamoru Fujisawa (藤澤 守, Fujisawa Mamoru, born December 6, 1950), known professionally as Joe Hisaishi (久石 譲, Hisaishi Jō), is a composer and musical director known for over 100 film scores and solo albums dating back to 1981. Hisaishi's works has invited comparisons with American composer John Williams.

While possessing a stylistically distinct sound, Hisaishi's music has been known to explore and incorporate different genres, including minimalist, experimental electronic, European classical, and Japanese classical. Lesser known are the other musical roles he plays; he is also a typesetter, author, arranger, and conductor.

He has been associated with animator Hayao Miyazaki since 1984, having composed scores for all save The Castle of Cagliostro. He is also recognized for the soundtracks he has provided for filmmaker 'Beat' Takeshi Kitano, including A Scene at the Sea (1991), Sonatine (1993), Kids Return (1996), Hana-bi (1997), Kikujiro (1999), and Dolls (2002), as well for the video game series Ni no Kuni. He was a student of legendary anime composer Takeo Watanabe.

Summer

Summer is the hottest of the four temperate seasons, falling between spring and autumn. At the summer solstice, the days are longest and the nights are shortest, with day-length decreasing as the season progresses after the solstice. The date of the beginning of summer varies according to climate, tradition and culture, but when it is summer in the Northern Hemisphere, it is winter in the Southern Hemisphere, and vice versa.

Timing

From an astronomical view, the equinoxes and solstices would be the middle of the respective seasons, but sometimes astronomical summer is defined as starting at the solstice, the time of maximal insolation. A variable seasonal lag means that the meteorological center of the season, which is based on average temperature patterns, occurs several weeks after the time of maximal insolation. According to meteorologists, summer extends for the whole months of June, July, and August in the northern hemisphere and the whole months of December, January, and February in the southern hemisphere. Under meteorological definitions, all seasons are arbitrarily set to start at the beginning of a calendar month and end at the end of a month. This meteorological definition of summer also aligns with the commonly viewed notion of summer as the season with the longest (and warmest) days of the year, in which daylight predominates. The meteorological reckoning of seasons is used in Austria, Denmark, the former Soviet Union and Japan. It is also used by many in the United Kingdom. In Ireland, the summer months according to the national meteorological service, Met Éireann, are June, July and August. However, according to the Irish Calendar, summer begins on 1 May and ends on 1 August. School textbooks in Ireland follow the cultural norm of summer commencing on 1 May rather than the meteorological definition of 1 June.