Howl's Moving Castle

[HisaishiFan]

Hi, everyone. Has anyone seen Howl's Moving Castle yet? I can't wait! It is coming to the Kentucky Theater on June 17, but I'm may have travel out of state on that day! I called the KT to make sure they were going to show it longer than one day and they told me they thought it would be here for about a week. (KT is an art theater that runs old movies and esoteric movies so sometimes they only show a move for a couple of days.) Anyway, if you've seen it, what did you think? How did it deal with the Dianna Wynne Jones book? I haven't really liked any of her books that I've read, so I'm hoping the movie will be more Myazaki than DWJ. Here's the trailer, if you are interested:Howl's Moving Castle Trailer.

[termyt]

I think you are lucky to have such a theater in you neck of the woods. I'm trying hard not be too jealous

[Mangafanatic]

Must. see. movie.

They put in this freakin' huge Regal out West, so I'm praying that it'll play there. And yeah, Hisaishi, me=envious of you.

[mitsuki lover]

In this week's issue Time Magazine gives it a rather glowing review.
btw:Are you hoping to see the dubbed or subbed version?

[Mangafanatic]

btw:Are you hoping to see the dubbed or subbed version?

Personally, I am at peace with both parties.

I really have been somewhat impressed with Disney dubs. They always choose sage actors to voice the characters, and, IMHO, they generally do the characters justice. In short, I will be watching both, but I will not feel even a twinge of guilt watching the dub.

Rock on Howl!!

[Ichigo_89]

Hi, everyone. Has anyone seen Howl's Moving Castle yet? I can't wait! It is coming to the Kentucky Theater on June 17, but I'm may have travel out of state on that day! I called the KT to make sure they were going to show it longer than one day and they told me they thought it would be here for about a week. (KT is an art theater that runs old movies and esoteric movies so sometimes they only show a move for a couple of days.) Anyway, if you've seen it, what did you think? How did it deal with the Dianna Wynne Jones book? I haven't really liked any of her books that I've read, so I'm hoping the movie will be more Myazaki than DWJ. Here's the trailer, if you are interested:Howl's Moving Castle Trailer.

O_O IT'S COMING TO THE KENTUCKY THEATER?!! WOOOHOOO! That's only 25 minutes from me! I'm gonna drag my dad to this one, alright.

[redshade]

so excited melting in my socks i love all of miyazakis work the only bummer is its not playing near me EGAD!!! i only wish and in my town there are like zero anime fans UGH!!

[TrigunX89]

The nearest showing is a few hours away from me. So, no I'm not going to see it. I'll wait and buy it on DVD. Just like all the others. *sniff*

[redshade]

I cant wait its to hard im dieing NOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[RoyalWing]

I want to see it. Does any one know what it's about?

[Ichigo_89]

I want to see it. Does any one know what it's about?

All I know is it looks weird and wild (like spirited away) but better. And the animation is the next level up for Ghibli (or anime period; maybe...). Sry if that doesn't help.

[TrigunX89]

Spirited Away's animation amazed me, so this should prove to be pretty incredible. Oh, and Miyazaki's crazy stories are always good too.

[termyt]

I want to see it. Does any one know what it's about?

Well, it's about this castle. And it moves. And it belongs to Howl.

[HisaishiFan]

Are you hoping to see the dubbed or subbed version?

I am quite happy to see either. I sort of hope it is the dubbed version so that, if it isn't too scary, my older kids can see it, too. (I have to see it first, though!) But one isn't a reader and the other is a beginning reader so I don't think they'd be able to follow the subs. Of course, now that we know some of the movies so well, sometimes we just watch them in Japanese without subs. Then my daughter talks "in Japanese" for days. . . .

[HisaishiFan]

From Amazon.com, Sara Miller of White Plains Public Library says: Sophie Hatter reads a great deal and soon realizes that as the eldest of three daughters she is doomed to an uninteresting future. She resigns herself to making a living as a hatter and helping her younger sisters prepare to make their fortunes. But adventure seeks her out in the shop where she sits alone, dreaming over her hats. The wicked Witch of the Waste, angered by "competition" in the area, turns her into a old woman, so she seeks refuge inside the strange moving castle of the wizard Howl. Howl, advertised by his apprentice as an eater of souls, lives a mad, frantic life trying to escape the curse the witch has placed on him, find the perfect girl of his dreams and end the contract he and his fire demon have entered. Sophie, against her best instincts and at first unaware of her own powers, falls in love. So goes this intricate, humorous and puzzling tale of fantasy and adventure which should both challenge and involve readers. Jones has created an engaging set of characters and found a new use for many of the appurtenances of fairy tales, even league boots and invisible cloaks, among others. At times, the action becomes so complex that readers may have to go back to see what actually happened, and at the end so many loose ends have to be tied up at once that it's dizzying. Yet Jones' inventiveness never fails, and her conclusion is infinitely satisfying.

[Anime Dad]

I watched the trailer... the animation looks amazing. I wonder if it will be released in Australia?

*EDIT*
From http://www.nausicaa.net/miyazaki/howl/faq.html#release

When will the film be released in my country?

Japan - November 20, 2004
Korea - December 24, 2004
France - January 12, 2005
Switzerland (French) - January 12, 2005
Taiwan - February 5, 2005
Singapore - March 10, 2005
Hong Kong - March 24, 2005
USA - June 10, 2005
Israel (Hebrew sub) - July 23, 2005
Brazil - July 1, 2005
Israel (Hebrew dub) - July 7, 2005
Germany - September 1, 2005
UK - Sepetember 1, 2005
Australia - Sepetember 22, 2005
Sweden - September 2005
Finland - October 21, 2005
Belgium - 2005
The Netherlands - 2005

September huh? Oh well.

[Warrior 4 Jesus]

Semptember? That's a long time to wait. I guess its better than not getting it at all. I think that like Spirited Away it will only be shown at select cinemas (the more independent type).

[bigsleepj]

I expect it to arrive in South Africa 18 months from now like Spirited Away did. If it comes sooner I'll be very happy.

[Kisa]

Whats it about???? Ghibli right?

[Mangafanatic]

For any Miyizaki fans who are now in mourning (namely, myself) because Howl is not being released to a theater near you, Nausicaa.net says that it will be released to more theaters on the 17th of this month.

*Prays fervently*

[Kisa]

sounds a bit like beauty and they beast type story......?

[HisaishiFan]

New York Times (Part 1)
June 12, 2005
Where the Wild Things Are: The Miyazaki Menagerie
By A. O. SCOTT

NOWADAYS, when we think of feature-length animation, our thoughts turn immediately to "Shrek" and Pixar (or less fondly, to "Robots" and "Madagascar"). The animated world, we've learned, is round - created in three dimensions by teams of computer wizards and enlivened by noisy, knowing references to American pop culture, past and present. It may seem somewhat paradoxical, then, that the world's greatest living animated-filmmaker - a designation that his fans at Disney and Pixar would be unlikely to challenge - is Hayao Miyazaki, a Japanese writer and director whose world is flat, handmade and often surpassingly quiet. Not that Mr. Miyazaki, 64, is entirely indifferent to technological advances. Starting with his 1997 epic, "Princess Mononoke," he has used computer-generated imagery in his movies, though he recently instituted a rule that CGI should account for no more than 10 percent of the images in any of his pictures.

In an interview last week, on the morning before his latest movie, "Howl's Moving Castle," had its New York premiere, he spoke about the new technology with a mixture of resignation and resistance. "I've told the people on my CGI staff" - at Studio Ghibli, the company he founded with Isao Takahata and Toshio Suzuki in 1985 - "not to be accurate, not to be true. We're making a mystery here, so make it mysterious."

That conscious sense of mystery is the core of Mr. Miyazaki's art. Spend enough time in his world - something you can do at the Museum of Modern Art in Manhattan, which is presenting a sumptuous retrospective of his and Mr. Takahata's work - and you may find your perception of your own world refreshed, as it might be by a similarly intensive immersion in the oeuvre of Ansel Adams, J. M. W. Turner or Monet. After a while, certain vistas - a rolling meadow dappled with flowers and shadowed by high cumulus clouds, a range of rocky foothills rising toward snow-capped peaks, the fading light at the edge of a forest - deserve to be called Miyazakian.

So do certain stories, especially those involving a resourceful, serious girl contending with the machinations of wise old women and the sufferings of enigmatic young men. And so do certain themes: the catastrophic irrationality of war and other violence; the folly of disrespecting nature; the moral complications that arise from ordinary acts of selfishness, vanity and even kindness. As a visual artist, Mr. Miyazaki is both an extravagant fantasist and an exacting naturalist; as a storyteller, he is an inventor of fables that seem at once utterly new and almost unspeakably ancient. Their strangeness comes equally from the freshness and novelty he brings to the crowded marketplace of juvenile fantasy and from an unnerving, uncanny sense of familiarity, as if he were resurrecting legends buried deep in the collective unconscious.

MR. Miyazaki's world is full of fantastical creatures - cute and fuzzy, icky and creepy, handsome and noble. There are lovable forest sprites, skittering dust balls and ravenous blobs of black viscous goo, as well as talking cats, pigs and frogs. "Howl's Moving Castle," adapted from a novel by Diana Wynne Jones, features a garrulous flame, voiced in the English-language version by Billy Crystal; "Spirited Away" (2001) had its melancholy, wordless no-face monster; "Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind" (1984), the director's first masterpiece, was nearly overrun by enormous trilobite-shaped insects called Om.

Some of Mr. Miyazaki's creations seem to have precedents and analogues in folklore, fantasy literature and other cartoons. The porcine title character in the 1992 film "Porco Rosso," for example, is a dashing Italian pilot from the early days of aviation, and it is just conceivable that he might have a stuttering cousin somewhere on the Warner Brothers lot, looking for a pair of pants to match his blazer. But most members of Mr. Miyazaki's ever-expanding menagerie - including Totoro, the slow-moving, pot-bellied, vaguely feline character who has become the logo and mascot of Studio Ghibli - come entirely from the filmmaker's own prodigious imagination. In the interview, Mr. Miyazaki was asked where he thought his work fitted within the expanding universe of children's pop culture. "The truth is I have watched almost none of it," he said with a slightly weary smile. "The only images I watch regularly come from the weather report."

The director, a compact, white-haired man whose demeanor combines gravity with a certain impishness, was not just being flip. It is hard to think of another filmmaker who is so passionately interested in weather. Violent storms, gentle breezes and sun-filled skies are vital, active elements, bearers of mood, emotion and meaning. His monsters and animals, who share the screen with more conventionally human-looking animated figures - adolescent girls with wind-tossed hair, short skirts and saucer eyes, mustachioed soldiers and wrinkled crones - are an integral part of Mr. Miyazaki's landscape, but the most striking feature of his films may be the landscapes themselves.

The action in his movies - he has written and directed seven features since "Nausicaä" - takes place far from the cramped cities of modern Japan, and also from the futuristic metropolises that provide the dystopian backdrop of so much anime. His characters tend to live in hillside villages or in tidy, old-world towns where half-timbered houses huddle along cobblestone streets. As much as they can, in gliders, on broomsticks and under their own magical powers, these characters take to the sky; the evocation of flying, for metaphorical purposes and for the sheer visual fun of it, is one of Mr. Miyazaki's favorite motifs. But one reason he ventures aloft may be to offer a better view of earth and water, which he renders with cinematic precision and painterly virtuosity.

Even though his frames evoke the careful brushwork and delicate emotions of Japanese landscape painting, Mr. Miyazaki is very much a product of postwar Japan, and he sits at the artistic and commercial pinnacle of his country's churning, eclectic visual culture. Though he has, in the past 20 years, concentrated almost entirely on film, his earlier career includes television cartoons and manga (comic books). Animation, which arrived in Japan with the American occupying force, has since the war become at once the embodiment of the country's antic modernity and also, in the hands of artists like Mr. Miyazaki and Mr. Takahata, a vehicle for reimagining and preserving its history.

Mr. Takahata, whose clean-lined realism complements Mr. Miyazaki's flights of color and invention, does this explicitly in films like "Only Yesterday," in which a Tokyo office worker looks back on her childhood, and "Grave of the Fireflies," an almost unbearable chronicle of wartime hardship. Mr. Miyazaki's approach to the past is more mystical and elegiac. "When I talk about traditions, I'm not talking about temples, which we got from China anyway," he said. "There is an indigenous Japan," he added, "and elements of that are what I'm trying to capture in my work." The clearest expression of this impulse may be in those carefully drawn landscapes, many of which are overseen by local spirits and all of which vibrate with the feeling that nature is an active presence rather than a backdrop. It makes sense that the world's greatest animator is, at heart, something of an animist.

[HisaishiFan]

June 12, 2005 (Part 2)
Where the Wild Things Are: The Miyazaki Menagerie
By A. O. SCOTT

At the same time, though, Mr. Miyazaki's movies, whose settings variously evoke medieval Japan, 19th-century Europe and the antique futures of Jules Verne and H. G. Wells, cast a sorrowful, sometimes scolding eye toward the present. The antiwar implications of "Howl's Moving Castle," which opened on Friday, are as unmistakable as the ecological warnings in "Nausicaä" and "Princess Mononoke," and in nearly every film, technological hubris, political ambition and greed are the true roots of evil. His criticism of the modern world, though, seems less topical than philosophical; his movies do not represent a point of view, but rather present a way of seeing that is radically at odds with what usually meets the eye. It can hardly be denied that they are marvels of escapist entertainment, but this is in no small part because they offer escape from the noise and aggression that dominate so much other modern entertainment. (Not that Mr. Miyazaki is exactly an outsider to the global entertainment industry. "Howl's Moving Castle," which Disney is distributing here in both a subtitled and celebrity-voice dubbed version, has earned more than $210 million in other countries and is the third-highest-grossing film in Japanese box office history. Ahead of it are "Titanic" and "Spirited Away," which won the 2002 Oscar for best animated feature). His power to enchant can seem unlimited - the wizards, witches and sorcerers who bedevil, beguile and befriend his heroes are less his alter egos than his kinfolk - but it arises from and communicates an equally powerful sense of disenchantment.

It is not that Mr. Miyazaki's films are pessimistic, exactly; being fairy tales, they do arrive at happy endings. ("I'm not going to make movies that tell children, 'You should despair and run away,' " he said.) But the route he chooses toward happiness can be troubling, perhaps especially to an American audience that expects sentimental affirmations based on clear demarcations between good and evil. The division of the world into heroes and villains is a habit Mr. Miyazaki regards with suspicion. "The concept of portraying evil and then destroying it - I know this is considered mainstream, but I think it's rotten," he said. "This idea that whenever something evil happens someone particular can be blamed and punished for it, in life and in politics, it's hopeless." Like the natural world, which follows its own laws and rhythms - "it does what the hell it pleases," in Mr. Miyazaki's words - human nature is not something that can easily be explained or judged. "One thing you can be sure of," says a character at the end of the film - a fellow who has spent most of the movie as a mute scarecrow with a head carved from a giant turnip - "hearts change." In the Miyazakian cosmos, so do minds, bodies, rivers, forests, nations and everything else. Wizards turn into birds of prey; young girls are transformed overnight into 90-year-old women; greedy parents are changed into pigs; shooting stars mutate into fire demons. You can call this magic - a word reviewers of Mr. Miyazaki's films seem helpless to avoid - or you can call it art. But it may just be that he reveals, in his quiet, moving, haunted pictures, the hidden senses of the word "animation," which after all means not only to set things in motion, but also, more profoundly, to bring them to life

[HisaishiFan]

Oi, oi, oi! I've seen it. Now I desprately need to talk about it. The theater here played the subbed version instead of the dubbed version. I previewed it to see if I could take my kids, but even if they could read the subs (which they can't!), the themes are a bit mature for 5-6 year olds.

Should I start a new thread with a spoiler warning?

[Fireproof]

I saw it. It was awesome.

[HisaishiFan]

Hey, all, just realized that Howl's Moving Castle Opens Friday at the Cinemas has a movie discussion going on. You may want to go there to post questions and thoughts.

[Kireihana]

I really want to see it but naturally it's not playing in any theaters where I live, in this anime-ignorant town

Actually, I saw a poster it outside of Manns Chinese Theather when I was in LA last month. I was surprised that Hollywood would recognize an anime movie in such a way... but after all, it is Miyazaki.

In fact... here it is! (keep in mind I was trying to take this from a moving tour bus)

[HisaishiFan]

I can see Howl's head. That would be neat to see, large and beautiful!

[Kisa]

I finally saw a trailer for it and now I can't wait to see it! Yay Miyazaki!

[Jeikobu]

I saw it some time ago on my computer (downloaded a fansubbed cam-rip), so I know it's another Miyazaki masterpiece, however I'm dying to see it on the big screen. The dub looks very good (especially for a dub), so that makes it more encouraging, since sadly none of the theaters in my state are showing it subbed. I would've probably seen it by now but after vacation money is tight, so I have to wait. But once I can, I definitely want to see it on the big screen.