Tarrant County’s community of anime fans continues to keep the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth’s Anime at the Modern festival going. Where once the festival concentrated largely on films by the internationally acclaimed Hayao Miyazaki, now it is branching out into other Japanese filmmakers who use animation to tell complex stories.
This week features two films by Mamoru Hosoda, the extravagant fable The Boy and the Beast (which played briefly in local multiplexes last April) and Hosoda’s earlier The Girl Who Leapt Through Time, about a heroine who uses her time-travel superpowers with unintended consequences. Later on, the museum will screen Hiromasa Yonebayashi’s wistful ghost story When Marnie Was There in its English-dubbed version, which features voices by Hailee Steinfeld, Kiernan Shipka, and John C. Reilly. Isao Takahata’s film Only Yesterday, about a young woman who wonders whether she’s lived up to her childhood dreams, was made back in 1991 but is being released in America only now, with the dubbed voices of Daisy Ridley and Dev Patel. Hiroyuki Morita’s The Cat Returns was released direct-to-video in America in 2005, which explains how it snagged Anne Hathaway and Kristen Bell for its voice cast. The depth and history of Japanese animation will shine through at this year’s festival.
Anime at the Modern runs Aug 6-20 at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, 3200 Darnell St, FW. Tickets are $5-9. Call 817-738-9215.
