So Sen to Chihiro no kamikakushi, better known as "Spirited Away", won for Best Animated Feature. I'm happy. Hayao Miyazaki, a wonderful director with credits from Lupin III to his perhapse most well known work, Princess Mononoke, should have gotten this years ago for Nausicaa or Kiki's Delivery Service, or hell even Crimson Pig. Hayao Miyazaki is helping to bring the beauty of Japanese animation to American mainstream audiences, slowly but surely, with his films. He deserves all of this, and so much more.

From the IMDB Bio:
"Hayao Miyazaki was born in Tokyo on January 5, 1941. He started his career in 1963 as an animator at the studio Toei Douga, and was subsequently involved in many early classics of Japanese animation. From the beginning, he commanded attention with his incredible ability to draw, and the seemingly-endless stream of movie ideas he proposed. In 1978, he directed his first TV series, "Mirai shônen Conan" (1978) (Conan, The Boy in Future), then moved to Tokyo Movie Shinsha in 1979 to direct his first movie, the classic _Lupin III: Castle of Cagliostro (1979)_ . In 1984, he released _Nausicaä of the Valley of the Winds (1984)_ , based on the manga (comic) of the same title he had started two years before. The success of the film led to the establishment of a new animation studio, Studio Ghibli, at which Miyazaki has since directed, written, and produced many other films with Takahata. All of these films enjoyed critical and box office successes. In particular, Miyazaki's _Princess Mononoke (1999)_ received the Japan Academy Award for Best Film and was the highest-grossing (about US$150 million) domestic film in Japan's history."