Howl's Moving Castle

[Haggis Killer]

New Disney/Pixar english dubbed Miyazaki film, his latest. I've read the book, which it sort-of followed. Like a lot of his films, it's long, a bit slow but really beautifully designed and imaginative. With lots of interesting machinery.

Enjoyed it thoroughly. Will definitely give it another look, although at 2 hours and out of age range, it's an 'after benzilla bedtime' treat.

Miyazaki's pretty old now, and supposedly threatened to retire before making this film. Then made it anyway. So, who knows? Might be his last. Didn't get as much attention as Spirited Away, but I think I enjoyed it more. And I really liked Spirited Away. More than Shoshana did. But we both liked this.

[Drunk Monk]

Ok, I missed Howl's. I enjoyed Spirited Away and may have even reviewed it DOOM 2.0 or 1.0 or something. And believe it or not, I've never seen Totoro start to finish, but T tells me it's good.

But this is about Ponyo. If Spirited Away was Miyazaki's spin on Alice in Wonderland, then Ponyo is his spin on Little Mermaid. It's weirdly tangential and obtuse. My mom and T both liked it. My dad just said 'yup' which is about as much as he says about any film. I think my mom was delighted to have something distracting after losin gher brother last week. But after the film (and we never do this) there was a long discussion by us all ('cept my dad) deconstructing the plot of the film. It was a lot of "what was up with prehistoric fish?" "what was up with elixir?" "what was up with goddess of mercy?" which is to say that the film doesn't make a whole lot of sense. Nor is it stunning in the way that Spirited Away was. Nevertheless, it's distracting enough that most of these gaping plot devices go relatively unnoticed. It was one of those films that you kept wanted it to make sense and in the end, it doesn't really. Maybe we all just needed some distraction.

Ok, this review should really go in Movies, but I needed to break up CF's run of "LCF is away and I'm going to wallow in most depressing films" streak....

HK, where art thou?