I have searched high and low, in a bid to figure out when and where the new film "Ponyo" will be opening. It's being released in 800 American theaters by Disney, is sporting an impressive cast of vocal talent - including everyone from Liam Neeson to Matt Damon - and yet I'm not sure if Milwaukee will be lucky enough to be on the list of selected cities.

I certainly hope it is, because "Ponyo" is the best animated film since "WALL-E," and easily the best family film of 2009. If it's not showing here, look toward Madison or Chicago. It's worth the drive or the wait for the DVD. I walked away utterly captivated - and so will you.

From the very first scene, the awesome sweep of the film bowls you over. As the music swells and a symphony of sea life - led by a colony of jellyfish - rises from the ocean's depths, a mermaid toddler leaves her kaleidoscopic, blue-green home behind to befriend a boy playing on the shore. Their plutonic affection - at times paralleling the bond between child and pet - leaves the young fish obsessed with becoming human. Stealing the magical potions of her father (the King of Sea) to sprout arms and legs, she returns to the surface world not as a sprightly, smiling, sprinting little girl. Against all odds, a friendship is born.

It's a wild, imaginative variation on the Hans Christian Andersen fable "The Little Mermaid," but what sets "Ponyo" apart from the Disney musical is a sense of calm and quiet, and a sense that young characters are coming into their own as they rise to the challenge of a new situation.

These are themes that have punctuated all the works by director Hayao Miyazaki, widely considered to be one of the most creative and important filmmakers working around the globe today. He is best known for his imagination and mastery of hand-drawn animation, creating entirely new realms of existence where often young children and mystical creatures coexist. After decades of working in Japan's anime industry, he started attracting the attention of international audiences with such titles as "Kiki's Delivery Service" (1989) about a teenage witch-in-training and "Princess Mononoke" (1997), the story of an epic confrontation between rural Japanese residents who have ravage the forest and the otherworldly guardians of the Earth. It was with "Mononoke" that studio Miramax decided to release an English version, landing the film on several year-end top-10 lists in America. In 2002, "Spirited Away" won the animation Oscar. "Howl's Moving Castle" followed two years later and was nominated.

"Ponyo" has been adapted into English as well, this time by Disney, and it emerges as a clear challenger to "Up" for this year's animated film Oscar. Charting this little girl's escape from the ocean's depths, and her father's uprooting of the seas in a mad search for her, the story builds to a stormy climax where the roiling oceans threaten to submerge the island on which she has decided to have a sleepover with her new best friend. As the water drenches everything in sight, these two young children must fend for themselves, learning how to move beyond the comforts of home to be comfortable with themselves.

If the story is affecting, the look and pulse of the movie are nothing short of intoxicating. The colors, the sounds, the meditative calm - even between the words of a sentence, Miyazaki finds a way to pause the action to underscore the importance of a revelation, consideration or freakout. There's an ebb and flow to his movies that has the feel of a dreamscape.

If you have never before heard his name, then consider this the first of a half-dozen films you must see as soon as possible. Once you've lost yourself in a Hayao Miyazaki film, you'll never be the same. My first encounter with the Japanese filmmaker was in Minneapolis in 2002 after I had heard some great buzz about a new animated fantasy called "Spirited Away." I woke up one Saturday morning to catch a nearby noon screening and was so entranced by the mystique of Miyazaki's fantastical-yet-familiar universe - where a train chugs along the surface of a lake, where a young boy routinely morphs into a flying dragon, where an array of spirits and monsters lounge through their days at a quaint bathhouse - that I found myself returning back to the same theater every weekend for a month, sometimes still in pajamas.

"Spirited Away" became part of a new weekly routine - awaking just before noon, driving across the Mississippi and drifting in and out of consciousness, unsure of where my dreams ended and the big-screen fantasy began. I have returned to that vision regularly ever since, going on to become enamored with his other titles as well. "Ponyo" is a coming-of-age lullaby about plutonic love, the precious moments of self-discovery and the bond of family that lingers even with those children who struggle to swim free of their parents' grasp.

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