“The Wind Rises,” January 15, 2015 (2013), DVD, We watched this one dubbed into English and don’t regret it as the animation is superb and the vocal acting remarkable. Jiro Hirokoshi was Japan’s foremost fighter plane designer before and during WWII. He wants to design beautiful and elegant planes on the order of Italy’s early products, but air power is really military power. It explores the beauty and terror of flight and the rise of militarism and fascism. It chronicles his studies, his work life, his marriage, and his understanding of the futility of this effort to rule Asia and the Pacific. In so doing, it charts the rise and fall of an aspiring imperialist state with a military industrial corporate complex similar to ours. Wonderful animation and voice work from Joseph Gordon –Levitt, John Krasinski, Emily Blunt, Stanley Tucci, and Werner Herzog