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Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Emily Blunt Star in Miyazaki's The Wind Rises Dub

Actor and Don Jon director Joseph Gordon-Levitt (Inception, The Dark Knight Rises, Looper) and actress Emily Blunt (The Devil Wears Prada, Looper, Edge of Tomorrow) lead the cast for the English dub of The Wind Rises, the 11th and final feature film from Studio Ghibli co-founder Hayao Miyazaki. Gordon-Levitt plays Jirō Horikoshi (played by Evangelion director Hideaki Anno in Japanese), the designer of Japan's famed Mitsubishi A6M Zero fighter plane of World War II.

Gordon-Levitt told the USA Today newspaper that this film, unlike Miyazaki's others, "is more grounded in human beings and a historical moment in time. [However,] there's still a flavor of magic in it as you go inside the mind of this aeronautics engineer and you see him walking on the wings of airplanes in his dream." The newspaper describes Gordon-Levitt as a fan of Miyazaki's Princess Mononoke and Spirited Away films.

Miyazaki incorporated story elements inspired by Tatsuo Hori, the author of an earlier novel titled Kaze Tachinu. Blunt voices Nahoko, the film's female lead who is named after a character in Hori's works. Blunt told USA Today, "It's that dreamlike idea of thinking for one's self. My character represents that idea, that purity of dreaming for a better world, and that's partly because she knows she hasn't got long in this world."

Stanley Tucci plays a fictional version of Italian plane designer Giovanni Caproni. Also in the cast are John Krasinski as aircraft designer and Horikoshi's colleague Honyo, and Mandy Patinkin as senior designer Hattori at Mitsubishi. Blunt and Krasinski happen to be married, and Tucci is married to Blunt's sister. Patinkin previously voiced Louie in the English dub of Miyazaki's Laputa: Castle in the Sky.

The full main English dub cast includes:

Joseph Gordon-Levitt — main character Jiro Horikoshi

Emily Blunt — love interest Nahoko Satomi

John Krasinski — Honjo, Jiro's college pal and fellow aviation engineer

Martin Short — Kurokawa, Jiro's grumpy boss

Stanley Tucci — Caproni, Italian airplane creator

Mandy Patinkin — Hattori, senior designer at Mitsubishi

William H. Macy — Satomi, Nahoko's father

Werner Herzog — the mysterious Castorp

Mae Whitman — Kayo, Jiro's younger sister, as well as Kinu, Nahoko's caretaker

Jennifer Grey — Mrs. Kurokawa

Darren Criss — Katayama, one of Jiro's engineering colleagues

Elijah Wood — Sone, another of Jiro's colleagues

Ronan Farrow — Mitsubishi employee

Disney will release the film in North America, and Studio Ghibli International produced the English-language dub with producer Frank Marshall (From Up on Poppy Hill, The Secret World of Arrietty, Ponyo). The film played in New York and Los Angeles last month, and it will open across the United States in February.

The Wind Rises has been nominated for a Golden Globe award, and has also been submitted for an Oscar nomination. Composer Joe Hisaishi has also made the shortlist for Best Original Score Oscar nomination. The film was nominated for the Asia Pacific Screen Awards but did not win, and has been nominated for an Annie Award and a Satellite Award.

The Wind Rises has also recently won the Best Animated Film Award from the New York Film Critics Circle, The National Board of Review, The Boston Society of Film Critics, and the San Diego Film Critics Society, and was the runner-up in The Los Angeles Film Critics Association Awards' Best Animation category.

Update: Gordon-Leavitt wrote on Twitter on Monday, "Recording for Miyazaki's The Wind Rises. Not exaggerating, it's one of the most beautiful movies I've ever seen" with a picture of himself in the studio. He also wrote about Hideaki Anno saying, "Yes his perf exclnt!"

Images © 2013 Nibariki, GNDHDDTK
Actor images via IMDB

Update: Typo fixed. Thanks, fuuma_monou