howls' moving castle

Amanda reminds me that we saw Howl’s Moving Castle on Saturday as well, on a lark, as it happened to be playing while we were in Green Hills – we thought it wasn’t even playing in Nashville yet!

I would easily put Spirited Away in my top 5 favorite movies, and we are generally huge fans of Miyazaki’s other stuff, so I was interested to see how this movie was, as it was based on a novel rather than anything Miyazaki wrote (or pieced together, as the case may be) And, unsurprisingly, I thought Howl’s Moving Castle was great – there has been some criticism that the ending sucked, and although I haven’t read the book, I wasn’t too impressed with the ending either, but it wasn’t terrible.

But as always the artistry in both the animation and the music is amazing, and for that it’s probably worth owning alone. The voice-acting was great, with the exception of Billy Crystal – don’t get me wrong, he did a great job. But .. he’s Billy Crystal. Talk about taking you out of the moment. Every time he spoke I instantly saw him in City Slickers in a Mets hat.

Worth seeing in the theatre before it goes away, and if you’re a fan of Miyazaki’s work and Hisaishi’s music, it’s probably worth buying when it comes out on DVD, too.