Earlier this year, I heard that Microsoft engineers were preparing server capacity for OpenAI’s next-generation GPT-5 model, arriving as soon as late May. After some additional testing and delays, sources familiar with OpenAI’s plans tell me that GPT-5 is now expected to launch as early as next month.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman recently revealed on X that “we are releasing GPT-5 soon” and even teased some of its capabilities in a podcast appearance with Theo Von earlier this week. Altman decided to let GPT-5 take a stab at a question he didn’t understand. “I put it in the model, this is GPT-5, and it answered it perfectly,” Altman said. He described it as a “here it is moment,” adding that he “felt useless relative to the AI” because he felt like he should have been able to answer the question but GPT-5 answered it instantly. “It was a weird feeling.”
GPT-5 had already been spotted in the wild before Altman’s appearance on This Past Weekend, fueling speculation that the next-generation GPT model was imminent. I understand OpenAI is planning to launch GPT-5 in early August, complete with mini and nano versions that will also be available through its API.
I reached out to OpenAI to comment on the launch of GPT-5 in August, but the company did not respond in time for publication.
Altman referred to GPT-5 as “a system that integrates a lot of our technology” earlier this year, because it will include the o3 reasoning capabilities instead of shipping those in a separate model. It’s part of OpenAI’s ongoing efforts to simplify and combine its large language models to make a more capable system that can eventually be declared artificial general intelligence, or AGI.
The declaration of AGI is particularly important to OpenAI, because achieving it will force Microsoft to relinquish its rights to OpenAI revenue and its future AI models. Microsoft and OpenAI have been renegotiating their partnership recently, as OpenAI needs Microsoft’s approval to convert part of its business to a for-profit company. It’s unlikely that GPT-5 will meet the AGI threshold that’s reportedly linked to OpenAI’s profits. Altman previously said that GPT-5 won’t have a “gold level of capability for many months” after launch.
Unifying its o-series and GPT-series models will also reduce the friction of having to know which model to pick for each task in ChatGPT. I understand that the main combined reasoning version of GPT-5 will be available through ChatGPT and OpenAI’s API, and the mini version will also be available on ChatGPT and the API. The nano version of GPT-5 is expected to only be available through the API.
While GPT-5 looks likely to debut in early August, OpenAI’s planned release dates often shift to respond to development challenges, server capacity issues, or even rival AI model announcements and leaks. Earlier this month, I warned about the possibility of a delay to the open language model that OpenAI is also preparing to launch, and Altman confirmed my reporting just days after my Notepad issue by announcing a delay “to run additional safety tests and review high-risk areas.”
I’m still hearing that this open language model is imminent and that OpenAI is trying to ship it before the end of July — ahead of GPT-5’s release. Sources describe the model as “similar to o3 mini,” complete with reasoning capabilities. This new model will be the first time that OpenAI has released an open-weight model since its release of GPT-2 in 2019, and it will be available on Azure, Hugging Face, and other large cloud providers.
Microsoft is in the security hot seat again
Microsoft made security its top priority last year, following years of security issues and mounting criticism after a scathing report from the US Cyber Safety Review Board. The company has been working to improve its “inadequate” security culture ever since. But this week, we were reminded of Microsoft’s challenges once again.
A major security flaw in Microsoft’s on-premises versions of SharePoint allowed hacking groups to exploit a zero-day vulnerability and breach more than 50 organizations — including the US nuclear weapons agency. Security researchers discovered the vulnerability was being exploited on July 18th, and Microsoft issued an alert a day later. Microsoft engineers then spent all weekend working on patches and released updates for SharePoint Subscription Edition and SharePoint 2019 late on July 20th. A patch for SharePoint 2016 servers was released on the morning of July 22nd.
The previously unpatched flaw appears to have originated from a combination of two bugs that were presented at the Pwn2Own hacking contest in May. Microsoft has linked the attacks to two hacking groups that are affiliated with the Chinese government, but the company hasn’t disclosed exactly how hackers were able to bypass its patches to create a zero-day exploit.
The security flaw was only exploitable through on-premises versions of SharePoint, so the Microsoft 365 version of SharePoint Online was unaffected. This certainly limited the scale of damage, but the targeted nature of these attacks will be hugely concerning for Microsoft and the company’s customers. It’s also likely to accelerate a move away from these older versions of SharePoint, which are in the extended support phase until July 2026.
Complicating the concern around Microsoft’s security practices is a new report from ProPublica that warns of a little-known Microsoft program that could expose the US Defense Department to Chinese hackers. Microsoft has been using engineers in China to help maintain the department’s computer systems, with digital escorts that reportedly lack the technical expertise to properly police foreign engineers. It’s a troubling development after the Office of the Director of National Intelligence called China the “most active and persistent cyber threat to US Government, private-sector, and critical infrastructure networks.”
On the same day the SharePoint exploit was discovered, Microsoft’s head of communications, Frank Shaw, responded to the ProRepublica report and announced changes to “assure that no China-based engineering teams are providing technical assistance for DoD Government cloud and related services.”
Sources tell me that Microsoft’s escort program has now been locked down to only US-based employees for its government cloud data centers in Fairfax, Virginia. Microsoft’s entire threat protection teams were warned about the change on July 23rd, and there are “no exceptions” to the lockdown.
Still, it’s surprising that such a program even existed, and Microsoft will now face some big questions around why it was using China-based engineers to maintain Defense Department systems. Sen. Tom Cotton has already asked the secretary of defense to look into Microsoft’s practices, and I’m sure Microsoft’s security teams are about to be busier than ever this summer.
- Microsoft wants to fix ‘slow or sluggish’ performance in Windows 11. I’ve regularly heard complaints about Windows 11 responding more slowly than Windows 10 or that gaming performance feeling degraded. Now, Microsoft is looking for feedback on “slow or sluggish” performance in test builds of Windows 11. Windows Insiders can automatically submit performance logs, allowing Microsoft to find the root cause of issues ahead of its 25H2 update later this year.
- Microsoft suddenly kills its movies and TV store on Xbox and Windows. I have to admit I’m not surprised to see the Movies & TV store on Xbox and Windows disappear, but I was surprised at how abruptly Microsoft handled it. There was no warning of a closure, and suddenly, you can no longer purchase new movies or TV shows from the Microsoft Store on Xbox or Windows. You’ll still be able to access previously purchased content on your devices, but this will really impact Microsoft’s most loyal customers, who have been building up a library of purchased content instead of pirating it, buying physical copies, or subscribing to a streaming service. Microsoft is now leaving it up to Amazon, Netflix, Apple TV, and the many other streaming video services to offer movies and TV shows on Windows and Xbox.
- Nvidia and MediaTek reportedly delay Arm-based CPUs due to Windows hurdles. Nvidia’s long-rumored Arm-based CPU looks like it might not debut this year after all. A new report from DigiTimes claims Nvidia and MediaTek are facing delays in getting their Arm-based chips ready for Windows due to “a combination of delays in Microsoft’s operating system roadmap, ongoing chip revisions at Nvidia, and weakening demand in the overall notebook market.” Previous rumors had suggested an Nvidia Arm-powered gaming laptop would launch later this year with Alienware.
- The Outer Worlds 2 will no longer be Microsoft’s first $80 Xbox game. Microsoft is no longer pushing ahead with $79.99 Xbox games this holiday season. The Outer Worlds 2 was supposed to be Microsoft’s first, but Obsidian announced a price drop back to the top $69.99 pricing. Refunds will be issued to those who preordered the game, but it’s clear that the $79.99 pricing hasn’t gone down well with gamers. I’m surprised that Microsoft picked The Outer Worlds 2 to test its new pricing model, and now it feels like an experiment gone wrong. It’s not clear what will happen to Xbox game pricing beyond the holidays, but Microsoft’s plans are on hold for now.
- GitHub launches its AI app-making tool in preview. Microsoft-owned GitHub has launched a public preview of GitHub Spark, a new tool for Copilot Pro Plus subscribers that lets developers build apps simply by describing their ideas. It’s vibe coding to the max, with the ability to generate everything you need without writing a line of code.
- Maingear’s Retro95 combines ’90s-era PC design with modern specs. I love Maingear’s new Retro95 prebuilt system. It’s a horizontal beige desktop with modern components inside that tugs at nostalgia. If, like me, you reminisce about the days of Windows 95, floppy disks, and LAN parties, then the Retro95 can be configured with AMD’s latest Ryzen 7 9800X3D, an RTX 5080, and even 96GB of RAM. Prices start at $1,599, but if you want a full-spec version, with multiple SSDs, then it will set you back more than $7,000.
- Microsoft’s new Intel-powered Surface Laptop 5G arrives in August. Microsoft will start shipping a new Surface Laptop 5G version on August 26th. Powered by Intel’s Core Ultra Series 2 processors, this 5G version of the Surface Laptop 7 will include an NPU capable of delivering Microsoft’s latest Copilot Plus AI features. The Surface Laptop 5G is very similar to the existing 13.8-inch Surface Laptop 7 model, except Microsoft has made some internal changes to accommodate a 5G modem and support for a physical nano SIM on the side of the laptop, as well as eSIMs. Prices start at $1,799 for businesses, and the top of the range model, with a Core Ultra 7 processor, 32GB of RAM, and 1TB storage, will be priced at $2,699.
- Xbox cloud games will soon follow you across Xbox, PC, and Windows handhelds. Microsoft has started to test a new play history section of the Xbox PC app and Xbox console home UI that will display cloud games as part of the recently played titles list. This will roam across Xbox consoles, PCs, and handhelds, allowing you to pick up games where you left off across multiple devices. Cloud-playable games are also now starting to show inside play history or the library on the Xbox PC app.
- Windows 11’s new update will add a bunch of AI features. Microsoft has started rolling out a bunch of new AI features in Windows 11, including its Copilot Vision tool that can scan everything on your screen. Qualcomm-powered Copilot Plus PCs can also now access an AI-powered agent within the Settings app, letting you search for specific settings with natural language queries. Click to Do is getting more useful, too, allowing Copilot Plus PC owners to quickly complete actions like summarizing a paragraph by holding down the Windows key and left clicking on an app, text, or website.
- WhatsApp is dropping its native Windows app in favor of an uglier web version. WhatsApp has been one of the best examples of a modern Windows app, complete with WinUI design elements that make it feel part of Windows 11. All that is going away soon, though, as Meta has decided to switch back to an uglier web version that’s just a wrapper for the WhatsApp web service. It’s a disappointing change that will mean WhatsApp will not only look different on Windows, but the neat Settings interface will be gone and notifications won’t work in the background.
- You can now lock your Windows 11 PC from your Android phone. Microsoft has issued a new update for its Phone Link tool that will allow you to remotely lock your PC with the tap of a button. My EV lets me lock my doors remotely if I’m forgetful enough to not lock them with my key fob, and being able to lock my laptop from afar will be equally useful if I’m using it in a shared space. Windows offers a dynamic lock feature that can automatically lock your PC if your phone is connected over Bluetooth, but this new Phone Link feature can be triggered manually and doesn’t need a Bluetooth connection.
- Microsoft poaches more Google DeepMind AI talent. Microsoft has hired more than 20 employees from Google’s DeepMind AI team in recent months, according to the Financial Times. Amar Subramanya, the former head of engineering for Google’s Gemini chatbot, revealed on LinkedIn that he has recently joined Microsoft as a VP under Mustafa Suleyman’s Microsoft AI team. Suleyman cofounded Google DeepMind and is now leading Microsoft’s consumer AI efforts. Jacob Andreou, who spent eight years at Snap, also joined the Microsoft AI team recently, leading product, design, and growth.
- Windows 11 is getting a new shared audio feature. Microsoft has been greatly improving its audio support in Windows 11 in recent years, and now a shared audio feature is coming soon. Windows watcher phantomofearth has discovered references to the shared audio feature in the latest test builds of Windows 11, and it should let you play audio through multiple output devices or different collections of speakers.
I’m always keen to hear from readers, so please drop a comment here, or you can reach me at notepad@theverge.com if you want to discuss anything else. If you’ve heard about any of Microsoft’s secret projects, you can reach me via email at notepad@theverge.com or speak to me confidentially on the Signal messaging app, where I’m tomwarren.01. I’m also tomwarren on Telegram, if you’d prefer to chat there.
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![‘Millennium Actress’ Will Always Be My Favorite Satoshi Kon Film
Director Guillermo del Toro once compared watching a movie for the first time to going on a blind date. The first date is flirtatious with promise; the second go-around is the proper date. By the time you rewatch a movie three or four more times, you’ve graduated to marriage. In all my years watching anime for work and leisure, there’s no film I’ve felt married to as much as I do toward Satoshi Kon’s finest film, Millennium Actress. Unlike Kon’s showier film, which pushes animation to the forefront with adult themes by front-loading its opening moments with dreamlike imagery that provokes you into unease and awe-struck wonder, Millennium Actress‘ brand of phantasmal imagery doesn’t flourish in magical realism, horror, or yuletide merriment. Millennium Actress blossoms in the hazy-bright subjectivity and romanticization of memory. Namely, the memory of former showbiz actress Chiyoko Fujiwara (JP: Fumiko Orikasa, Mami Koyama; EN: Abby Trott, Erin Yvette, Cindy Robinson). When a reporter and his cameraman make a pilgrimage to Chiyoko’s home for an interview recounting her career, they wind up traveling through her memories and films. Chiyoko regales her guests, reminiscing about being a child during World War II, the mysterious man she helped flee from police officers, the promise they made to each other, and how his sudden disappearance led her to pursue stardom in cinema. Her hope was that she’d be so successful they’d have no choice but to reunite someday by the sheer gravitational force of her star power—if he’s even still alive. With her storied career behind her, Chiyoko’s life is spent longing forever and a day for a reunion that may never come.
[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mWGRmtTUkvg[/embed] While the surface-level intrigue of a journalist interviewing a subject isn’t lost on me, given my vocation, the 2001 film feels like my personal cinematic Amigara fault; what perpetually strikes me about Kon’s film is how it takes its otherwise pleasantly banal story on the page and breathes vibrant life into it through artistry the likes of which the anime industry may never see again. Kon’s blocking and camera work have already been praised to death, and rightfully so, as the stuff film students study to understand scene setting, and Studio Madhouse’s creative efforts with Millennium Actress are no exception. What gets me invigorated about Millennium Actress whenever the film crosses my mind in my day-to-day is how it plays with memory as an active, living tapestry over the static, absolute depictions of it I’ve encountered in other media.
As Chiyoko recounts the chapters of her life—her humble beginnings in film, the trials and tribulations she faced to become a household name for a time—her audience in both viewers and the journalists who’re guests in her home are struck with the poignant sense that her life is one of pyrrhic victories. No matter how big she got, the goalpost was to be big enough that her assumed paramour would find her from her own clout, and they’d reunite in the most saccharine way imaginable; it never manifests as the reward at the end of her hard-earned journey—a journey that rivals the millennia her visage graces immortalized in celluloid. It’s Sisyphean, and the pain of being trapped recounting her trek up to this point feels less like a trip down memory lane and more like a prison behind the guardrails of her all-encompassing dissatisfactions. © Madhouse/GKIDS/HBO Max Then something magical happens. In the way memory isn’t us replaying events exactly as they occurred but reconstructing them from our own fallibly human recountenances, Chiyoko breaks free from the script of her own memory, transforming it into a lucid dream where her agency is superimposed over the roles she played, giving her the power to pursue the man she spent years waiting for. This, in turn, transports both the journalists and audiences into the fabric of the fantastical roles she’s played, referencing a pastiche of real-life cinema, including Akira Kurosawa’s Throne of Blood, Ishirō Honda’s Godzilla, and Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, as Chiyoko flips the script on the very fabric of her life’s narrative to arrive at her truth.
Along that journey, Kon weaves a stirring, imaginative, sobering tale integrating the universal pang of life, life’s regrets, and what we make of what’s left when we approach our final curtain calls, looking back on the journey we faced to get to our final destination. And the answer Chiyoko arrives at as the film bookends itself, as she’s sat in the cockpit of a space rocket set for the stars, is etched in my soul forever. I treasure Millennium Actress so much that I nearly went into orbit myself when I interviewed Lady Snowblood actress Meiko Kaji during a Japan Society retrospective event earlier this year celebrating her 60-year career. It took nearly every fiber of my being to maintain my cool as my prepped questions for our Zoom interview made me realize I was put smack dab in the same scenario as Millennium Actress‘ journalists. Like them, I was interviewing and guffawing at the answers I received, which landed beyond the scope of what I could’ve ever hoped for from an actress whom I had the awesome responsibility to encapsulate a career that doubled my own lifetime. Like Chiyoko, Meiko never intended to be an actress at all. But through stubborn determination woven within the woman behind the character actress, she made a way out of no way. That shit means something to me, man. [embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wfnRYdTpzbs[/embed] Whether it’s Wong Kar-wai, Studio Ghibli, or the late-great dreamscape auteur, Satoshi Kon, everyone’s got their favorites from an eclectic creative’s body of work. Sometimes those favorites coincide with their indelible effects on both pop culture and their status as poster children for their visual ethos—your In the Mood for Love, Spirited Away, and Perfect Blue.
But my favorites of the bunch tend to be those with middle-child syndrome in their remarkable films. I’m enamored of how Kar-wai reverse-engineered the quantum Zeno effect of doomed romance and yearning in Happy Together; how Studio Ghibli told a timeless tale of environmentalism against industry and love caught in the crossfire in Princess Mononoke. But most of all, I’m moved by Kon’s beautiful tale of an actress reminiscing over her years spent hounding after an unattainable goal not to reach it, but for the thrill of the chase. Millennium Actress is streaming on HBO Max. Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel, Star Wars, and Star Trek releases, what’s next for the DC Universe on film and TV, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who. #Millennium #Actress #Favorite #Satoshi #Kon #FilmAnime,GKids,Madhouse,Millennium Actress,Satoshi Kon](https://gizmodo.com/app/uploads/2026/07/Millennium-Actress.jpg "‘Millennium Actress’ Will Always Be My Favorite Satoshi Kon Film
Director Guillermo del Toro once compared watching a movie for the first time to going on a blind date. The first date is flirtatious with promise; the second go-around is the proper date. By the time you rewatch a movie three or four more times, you’ve graduated to marriage. In all my years watching anime for work and leisure, there’s no film I’ve felt married to as much as I do toward Satoshi Kon’s finest film, Millennium Actress. Unlike Kon’s showier film, which pushes animation to the forefront with adult themes by front-loading its opening moments with dreamlike imagery that provokes you into unease and awe-struck wonder, Millennium Actress‘ brand of phantasmal imagery doesn’t flourish in magical realism, horror, or yuletide merriment. Millennium Actress blossoms in the hazy-bright subjectivity and romanticization of memory. Namely, the memory of former showbiz actress Chiyoko Fujiwara (JP: Fumiko Orikasa, Mami Koyama; EN: Abby Trott, Erin Yvette, Cindy Robinson). When a reporter and his cameraman make a pilgrimage to Chiyoko’s home for an interview recounting her career, they wind up traveling through her memories and films. Chiyoko regales her guests, reminiscing about being a child during World War II, the mysterious man she helped flee from police officers, the promise they made to each other, and how his sudden disappearance led her to pursue stardom in cinema. Her hope was that she’d be so successful they’d have no choice but to reunite someday by the sheer gravitational force of her star power—if he’s even still alive. With her storied career behind her, Chiyoko’s life is spent longing forever and a day for a reunion that may never come.
[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mWGRmtTUkvg[/embed] While the surface-level intrigue of a journalist interviewing a subject isn’t lost on me, given my vocation, the 2001 film feels like my personal cinematic Amigara fault; what perpetually strikes me about Kon’s film is how it takes its otherwise pleasantly banal story on the page and breathes vibrant life into it through artistry the likes of which the anime industry may never see again. Kon’s blocking and camera work have already been praised to death, and rightfully so, as the stuff film students study to understand scene setting, and Studio Madhouse’s creative efforts with Millennium Actress are no exception. What gets me invigorated about Millennium Actress whenever the film crosses my mind in my day-to-day is how it plays with memory as an active, living tapestry over the static, absolute depictions of it I’ve encountered in other media.
As Chiyoko recounts the chapters of her life—her humble beginnings in film, the trials and tribulations she faced to become a household name for a time—her audience in both viewers and the journalists who’re guests in her home are struck with the poignant sense that her life is one of pyrrhic victories. No matter how big she got, the goalpost was to be big enough that her assumed paramour would find her from her own clout, and they’d reunite in the most saccharine way imaginable; it never manifests as the reward at the end of her hard-earned journey—a journey that rivals the millennia her visage graces immortalized in celluloid. It’s Sisyphean, and the pain of being trapped recounting her trek up to this point feels less like a trip down memory lane and more like a prison behind the guardrails of her all-encompassing dissatisfactions. © Madhouse/GKIDS/HBO Max Then something magical happens. In the way memory isn’t us replaying events exactly as they occurred but reconstructing them from our own fallibly human recountenances, Chiyoko breaks free from the script of her own memory, transforming it into a lucid dream where her agency is superimposed over the roles she played, giving her the power to pursue the man she spent years waiting for. This, in turn, transports both the journalists and audiences into the fabric of the fantastical roles she’s played, referencing a pastiche of real-life cinema, including Akira Kurosawa’s Throne of Blood, Ishirō Honda’s Godzilla, and Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, as Chiyoko flips the script on the very fabric of her life’s narrative to arrive at her truth.
Along that journey, Kon weaves a stirring, imaginative, sobering tale integrating the universal pang of life, life’s regrets, and what we make of what’s left when we approach our final curtain calls, looking back on the journey we faced to get to our final destination. And the answer Chiyoko arrives at as the film bookends itself, as she’s sat in the cockpit of a space rocket set for the stars, is etched in my soul forever. I treasure Millennium Actress so much that I nearly went into orbit myself when I interviewed Lady Snowblood actress Meiko Kaji during a Japan Society retrospective event earlier this year celebrating her 60-year career. It took nearly every fiber of my being to maintain my cool as my prepped questions for our Zoom interview made me realize I was put smack dab in the same scenario as Millennium Actress‘ journalists. Like them, I was interviewing and guffawing at the answers I received, which landed beyond the scope of what I could’ve ever hoped for from an actress whom I had the awesome responsibility to encapsulate a career that doubled my own lifetime. Like Chiyoko, Meiko never intended to be an actress at all. But through stubborn determination woven within the woman behind the character actress, she made a way out of no way. That shit means something to me, man. [embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wfnRYdTpzbs[/embed] Whether it’s Wong Kar-wai, Studio Ghibli, or the late-great dreamscape auteur, Satoshi Kon, everyone’s got their favorites from an eclectic creative’s body of work. Sometimes those favorites coincide with their indelible effects on both pop culture and their status as poster children for their visual ethos—your In the Mood for Love, Spirited Away, and Perfect Blue.
But my favorites of the bunch tend to be those with middle-child syndrome in their remarkable films. I’m enamored of how Kar-wai reverse-engineered the quantum Zeno effect of doomed romance and yearning in Happy Together; how Studio Ghibli told a timeless tale of environmentalism against industry and love caught in the crossfire in Princess Mononoke. But most of all, I’m moved by Kon’s beautiful tale of an actress reminiscing over her years spent hounding after an unattainable goal not to reach it, but for the thrill of the chase. Millennium Actress is streaming on HBO Max. Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel, Star Wars, and Star Trek releases, what’s next for the DC Universe on film and TV, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who. #Millennium #Actress #Favorite #Satoshi #Kon #FilmAnime,GKids,Madhouse,Millennium Actress,Satoshi Kon")
![‘Millennium Actress’ Will Always Be My Favorite Satoshi Kon Film
Director Guillermo del Toro once compared watching a movie for the first time to going on a blind date. The first date is flirtatious with promise; the second go-around is the proper date. By the time you rewatch a movie three or four more times, you’ve graduated to marriage. In all my years watching anime for work and leisure, there’s no film I’ve felt married to as much as I do toward Satoshi Kon’s finest film, Millennium Actress. Unlike Kon’s showier film, which pushes animation to the forefront with adult themes by front-loading its opening moments with dreamlike imagery that provokes you into unease and awe-struck wonder, Millennium Actress‘ brand of phantasmal imagery doesn’t flourish in magical realism, horror, or yuletide merriment. Millennium Actress blossoms in the hazy-bright subjectivity and romanticization of memory. Namely, the memory of former showbiz actress Chiyoko Fujiwara (JP: Fumiko Orikasa, Mami Koyama; EN: Abby Trott, Erin Yvette, Cindy Robinson). When a reporter and his cameraman make a pilgrimage to Chiyoko’s home for an interview recounting her career, they wind up traveling through her memories and films. Chiyoko regales her guests, reminiscing about being a child during World War II, the mysterious man she helped flee from police officers, the promise they made to each other, and how his sudden disappearance led her to pursue stardom in cinema. Her hope was that she’d be so successful they’d have no choice but to reunite someday by the sheer gravitational force of her star power—if he’s even still alive. With her storied career behind her, Chiyoko’s life is spent longing forever and a day for a reunion that may never come.
[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mWGRmtTUkvg[/embed] While the surface-level intrigue of a journalist interviewing a subject isn’t lost on me, given my vocation, the 2001 film feels like my personal cinematic Amigara fault; what perpetually strikes me about Kon’s film is how it takes its otherwise pleasantly banal story on the page and breathes vibrant life into it through artistry the likes of which the anime industry may never see again. Kon’s blocking and camera work have already been praised to death, and rightfully so, as the stuff film students study to understand scene setting, and Studio Madhouse’s creative efforts with Millennium Actress are no exception. What gets me invigorated about Millennium Actress whenever the film crosses my mind in my day-to-day is how it plays with memory as an active, living tapestry over the static, absolute depictions of it I’ve encountered in other media.
As Chiyoko recounts the chapters of her life—her humble beginnings in film, the trials and tribulations she faced to become a household name for a time—her audience in both viewers and the journalists who’re guests in her home are struck with the poignant sense that her life is one of pyrrhic victories. No matter how big she got, the goalpost was to be big enough that her assumed paramour would find her from her own clout, and they’d reunite in the most saccharine way imaginable; it never manifests as the reward at the end of her hard-earned journey—a journey that rivals the millennia her visage graces immortalized in celluloid. It’s Sisyphean, and the pain of being trapped recounting her trek up to this point feels less like a trip down memory lane and more like a prison behind the guardrails of her all-encompassing dissatisfactions. © Madhouse/GKIDS/HBO Max Then something magical happens. In the way memory isn’t us replaying events exactly as they occurred but reconstructing them from our own fallibly human recountenances, Chiyoko breaks free from the script of her own memory, transforming it into a lucid dream where her agency is superimposed over the roles she played, giving her the power to pursue the man she spent years waiting for. This, in turn, transports both the journalists and audiences into the fabric of the fantastical roles she’s played, referencing a pastiche of real-life cinema, including Akira Kurosawa’s Throne of Blood, Ishirō Honda’s Godzilla, and Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, as Chiyoko flips the script on the very fabric of her life’s narrative to arrive at her truth.
Along that journey, Kon weaves a stirring, imaginative, sobering tale integrating the universal pang of life, life’s regrets, and what we make of what’s left when we approach our final curtain calls, looking back on the journey we faced to get to our final destination. And the answer Chiyoko arrives at as the film bookends itself, as she’s sat in the cockpit of a space rocket set for the stars, is etched in my soul forever. I treasure Millennium Actress so much that I nearly went into orbit myself when I interviewed Lady Snowblood actress Meiko Kaji during a Japan Society retrospective event earlier this year celebrating her 60-year career. It took nearly every fiber of my being to maintain my cool as my prepped questions for our Zoom interview made me realize I was put smack dab in the same scenario as Millennium Actress‘ journalists. Like them, I was interviewing and guffawing at the answers I received, which landed beyond the scope of what I could’ve ever hoped for from an actress whom I had the awesome responsibility to encapsulate a career that doubled my own lifetime. Like Chiyoko, Meiko never intended to be an actress at all. But through stubborn determination woven within the woman behind the character actress, she made a way out of no way. That shit means something to me, man. [embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wfnRYdTpzbs[/embed] Whether it’s Wong Kar-wai, Studio Ghibli, or the late-great dreamscape auteur, Satoshi Kon, everyone’s got their favorites from an eclectic creative’s body of work. Sometimes those favorites coincide with their indelible effects on both pop culture and their status as poster children for their visual ethos—your In the Mood for Love, Spirited Away, and Perfect Blue.
But my favorites of the bunch tend to be those with middle-child syndrome in their remarkable films. I’m enamored of how Kar-wai reverse-engineered the quantum Zeno effect of doomed romance and yearning in Happy Together; how Studio Ghibli told a timeless tale of environmentalism against industry and love caught in the crossfire in Princess Mononoke. But most of all, I’m moved by Kon’s beautiful tale of an actress reminiscing over her years spent hounding after an unattainable goal not to reach it, but for the thrill of the chase. Millennium Actress is streaming on HBO Max. Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel, Star Wars, and Star Trek releases, what’s next for the DC Universe on film and TV, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who. #Millennium #Actress #Favorite #Satoshi #Kon #FilmAnime,GKids,Madhouse,Millennium Actress,Satoshi Kon](https://i3.wp.com/gizmodo.com/app/uploads/2026/07/Millennium-Actress.jpg?ssl=1 "‘Millennium Actress’ Will Always Be My Favorite Satoshi Kon Film
Director Guillermo del Toro once compared watching a movie for the first time to going on a blind date. The first date is flirtatious with promise; the second go-around is the proper date. By the time you rewatch a movie three or four more times, you’ve graduated to marriage. In all my years watching anime for work and leisure, there’s no film I’ve felt married to as much as I do toward Satoshi Kon’s finest film, Millennium Actress. Unlike Kon’s showier film, which pushes animation to the forefront with adult themes by front-loading its opening moments with dreamlike imagery that provokes you into unease and awe-struck wonder, Millennium Actress‘ brand of phantasmal imagery doesn’t flourish in magical realism, horror, or yuletide merriment. Millennium Actress blossoms in the hazy-bright subjectivity and romanticization of memory. Namely, the memory of former showbiz actress Chiyoko Fujiwara (JP: Fumiko Orikasa, Mami Koyama; EN: Abby Trott, Erin Yvette, Cindy Robinson). When a reporter and his cameraman make a pilgrimage to Chiyoko’s home for an interview recounting her career, they wind up traveling through her memories and films. Chiyoko regales her guests, reminiscing about being a child during World War II, the mysterious man she helped flee from police officers, the promise they made to each other, and how his sudden disappearance led her to pursue stardom in cinema. Her hope was that she’d be so successful they’d have no choice but to reunite someday by the sheer gravitational force of her star power—if he’s even still alive. With her storied career behind her, Chiyoko’s life is spent longing forever and a day for a reunion that may never come.
[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mWGRmtTUkvg[/embed] While the surface-level intrigue of a journalist interviewing a subject isn’t lost on me, given my vocation, the 2001 film feels like my personal cinematic Amigara fault; what perpetually strikes me about Kon’s film is how it takes its otherwise pleasantly banal story on the page and breathes vibrant life into it through artistry the likes of which the anime industry may never see again. Kon’s blocking and camera work have already been praised to death, and rightfully so, as the stuff film students study to understand scene setting, and Studio Madhouse’s creative efforts with Millennium Actress are no exception. What gets me invigorated about Millennium Actress whenever the film crosses my mind in my day-to-day is how it plays with memory as an active, living tapestry over the static, absolute depictions of it I’ve encountered in other media.
As Chiyoko recounts the chapters of her life—her humble beginnings in film, the trials and tribulations she faced to become a household name for a time—her audience in both viewers and the journalists who’re guests in her home are struck with the poignant sense that her life is one of pyrrhic victories. No matter how big she got, the goalpost was to be big enough that her assumed paramour would find her from her own clout, and they’d reunite in the most saccharine way imaginable; it never manifests as the reward at the end of her hard-earned journey—a journey that rivals the millennia her visage graces immortalized in celluloid. It’s Sisyphean, and the pain of being trapped recounting her trek up to this point feels less like a trip down memory lane and more like a prison behind the guardrails of her all-encompassing dissatisfactions. © Madhouse/GKIDS/HBO Max Then something magical happens. In the way memory isn’t us replaying events exactly as they occurred but reconstructing them from our own fallibly human recountenances, Chiyoko breaks free from the script of her own memory, transforming it into a lucid dream where her agency is superimposed over the roles she played, giving her the power to pursue the man she spent years waiting for. This, in turn, transports both the journalists and audiences into the fabric of the fantastical roles she’s played, referencing a pastiche of real-life cinema, including Akira Kurosawa’s Throne of Blood, Ishirō Honda’s Godzilla, and Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, as Chiyoko flips the script on the very fabric of her life’s narrative to arrive at her truth.
Along that journey, Kon weaves a stirring, imaginative, sobering tale integrating the universal pang of life, life’s regrets, and what we make of what’s left when we approach our final curtain calls, looking back on the journey we faced to get to our final destination. And the answer Chiyoko arrives at as the film bookends itself, as she’s sat in the cockpit of a space rocket set for the stars, is etched in my soul forever. I treasure Millennium Actress so much that I nearly went into orbit myself when I interviewed Lady Snowblood actress Meiko Kaji during a Japan Society retrospective event earlier this year celebrating her 60-year career. It took nearly every fiber of my being to maintain my cool as my prepped questions for our Zoom interview made me realize I was put smack dab in the same scenario as Millennium Actress‘ journalists. Like them, I was interviewing and guffawing at the answers I received, which landed beyond the scope of what I could’ve ever hoped for from an actress whom I had the awesome responsibility to encapsulate a career that doubled my own lifetime. Like Chiyoko, Meiko never intended to be an actress at all. But through stubborn determination woven within the woman behind the character actress, she made a way out of no way. That shit means something to me, man. [embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wfnRYdTpzbs[/embed] Whether it’s Wong Kar-wai, Studio Ghibli, or the late-great dreamscape auteur, Satoshi Kon, everyone’s got their favorites from an eclectic creative’s body of work. Sometimes those favorites coincide with their indelible effects on both pop culture and their status as poster children for their visual ethos—your In the Mood for Love, Spirited Away, and Perfect Blue.
But my favorites of the bunch tend to be those with middle-child syndrome in their remarkable films. I’m enamored of how Kar-wai reverse-engineered the quantum Zeno effect of doomed romance and yearning in Happy Together; how Studio Ghibli told a timeless tale of environmentalism against industry and love caught in the crossfire in Princess Mononoke. But most of all, I’m moved by Kon’s beautiful tale of an actress reminiscing over her years spent hounding after an unattainable goal not to reach it, but for the thrill of the chase. Millennium Actress is streaming on HBO Max. Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel, Star Wars, and Star Trek releases, what’s next for the DC Universe on film and TV, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who. #Millennium #Actress #Favorite #Satoshi #Kon #FilmAnime,GKids,Madhouse,Millennium Actress,Satoshi Kon")
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