Veteran animator Hayao Miyazaki’s last film is among the nominees for the 86th Academy Awards, announced Thursday in Beverly Hills.
In the Best Animated Feature Film category, director and writer Miyazaki and producer Toshio Suzuki were nominated for “The Wind Rises” (Kaze Tachinu), which is based on the life of airplane designer Jiro Horikoshi.
The other nominees are “The Croods,” “Despicable Me 2,” “Ernest & Celestine,” and “Frozen.”
Miyazaki won an Oscar in 2003 for “Spirited Away” and was nominated in 2006 for “Howl’s Moving Castle.”
Other 2014 nominees include:
• “Cutie and the Boxer” by Zachary Heinzerling and Lydia Dean Pilcher. A reflection on love, sacrifice and the creative spirit, this candid New York tales explores the chaotic 40-year marriage of famed boxing painter Ushio Shinohara and artist Noriko Shinohara. (Best Documentary Feature)
• “20 Feet from Stardom,” the story of backup singers who live in a world just beyond the spotlight. Their voices bring harmony to the biggest names in popular music, but the public has had no idea who these singers are or what lives they lead, until now. Among those featured is Judith Hill, a singer of Japanese and African American descent who was to have been part of Michael Jackson’s “This Is It” tour. (Best Documentary Feature)
Also nominated for best documentary feature are “The Act of Killing,” “Dirty Wars,” and “The Square.”
• “Possessions” by Shuhei Morita, a 14-minute film in which a man loses his way deep in the mountains and comes across a small shrine that transforms into a room of a different world. (Best Short Film-Animated)
Also nominated are Daniel Sousa and Dan Golden for “Feral,” Lauren MacMullan and Dorothy McKim for “Get a Horse,” Laurent Witz and Alexandre Espigares for “Mr. Hublot,” and Max Lang and Jan Lachauer for “Room on the Broom.”
• Andy Koyama, Beau Borders and David Brownlow for “Lone Survivor,” the true story of four Navy SEALs on a covert mission in Afghanistan. (Best Sound Mixing)
Koyama’s credits include “Walking with Dinosaurs 3D,” “Carrie,” “Iron Man 3,” “The Last Stand,” “The Dictator,” and “Battleship.”
Also nominated are the sound-mixing teams for “Captain Phillips,” “Gravity,” “The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug,” and “Inside Llewyn Davis.”
To see the complete list of nominees, go to http://oscarnominations2014.org. The Oscar ceremony will be broadcast on March 2.
Even though Naoko’s health continues to deteriorate, she and Jiro enjoy their life together, the one lending strength to the other, right up to the day of the test flight of the prototype of what would become his first successful aircraft, the Mitsubishi A5M . On that day, after Jiro leaves for the factory, Naoko informs the company housing manager’s wife that she feels strong enough to take a walk. Her departure is witnessed by Jiro’s sister, who fears that this represents a desire on Naoko’s part to spare Jiro the horror of her final dissolution in the coils of the disease — a fear which is borne out in three letters which Naoko leaves for her husband, family, and friends. At the test site, Jiro is interrupted by a burst of wind — seemingly implying that his wife has died.