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Japanese animator Hayao Miyazaki is getting some really good reviews for his movie and has become an early favorite for the top prize. This comes just a day after a pair of grim psychological dramas for grown ups at the Venice Film Festival.

Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea tells the story about a 5 year old boy Sosuke who is out to save the life of a goldfish that washes up on the shore below his house stuck in a jam jar.

The film then begins to morph with Ponyo a 5 year old girl with special powers who is soon abducted back to the sea world by her father a former human turned sorcerer.

Miyazaki said parallels with the Hans Christian Anderson fairy tale The Little Maermaid made into an animated Disney film in 1989, were unintentional.

“Animation needs the pencil; it needs man’s drawing hand. I will keep using my pencil as long as I can,” Miyazaki said.

Yesterday there was the release of the crime drama Il Papa di Giovanna directed by Pupi Avati. A crime drama set in Bologna during the war. An intense father- daughter relationship has an echo in Giovanna’s pivotal act, which all but destroys her already tenuous relationship with her mother and lands her in a psychiatric hospital as Allied bombs begin to rain down.

Another movie called L’Autre directed by the duo Patrick Mario Bernard and Pierre Trividic. It tells the story about a woman who breaks up amicably with her boyfriend, only to go nearly mad with jealousy when he takes up with someone else.

Another controversial entry this year is the Emmanuelle Beart starrer called Vinyan. The film deals with the tsunami that plagued most of Asia in 2004. But there have been many who have called the movie a little insensitive to the people affected by the tragedy.

One of the five US entries this year was screened yesterday called The Burning Plain staring Kim Basinger and Charlize Theron. It is an intense love story of love and betrayal and it marks the directorial debut of the acclaimed script writer Guillermo Arraiga.

There is another new film set in Indian Kashmir called Zero Bridge directed by US born Tariq Tapa. He tries to make a movie that is devoid of all the clichés that have really films from this part of the country. The film is going to be a far cry from the portrayals that have been done from Bollywood or the subject of news reports and documentaries into the violence.

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