{"id":542,"date":"2004-12-17T01:06:19","date_gmt":"2004-12-17T06:06:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/flaminggeeks.com\/k\/blog\/2004\/12\/17\/\/"},"modified":"2005-10-19T00:42:22","modified_gmt":"2005-10-19T04:42:22","slug":"howls-moving-castle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/flaminggeeks.com\/k\/blog\/2004\/12\/17\/howls-moving-castle\/","title":{"rendered":"Howl’s Moving Castle"},"content":{"rendered":"
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So, spoilerific for the movie, though also perhaps inaccurate spoilers.<\/p>\n

Read More…<\/span>

It’s no secret that I’ve been desperate to see this movie since it was announced. The desperation has only increased since the film was actually released in Japan, back on November 20th. (It had been screened at some festivals prior to this, but was not in wide release.) However, once it had been released, I knew it was only a matter of time before a copy showed up on the internet.<\/p>\n

Last weekend, I managed to find one, after searching at intervals for weeks. I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone who isn’t as impatient as myself: it’s a low-quality mpeg video taken from someone seated in the theatre. Raw and not really centered, it’s definitely NOT the way the movie was meant to be seen.<\/p>\n

But I was past caring about that; I sat down today and watched it through.<\/p>\n

I have to say that my response at the moment is… mixed. I am not fluent in Japanese, but I understand enough and am familiar enough with the book to understand that while the movie resembles the book, faithful adaptation<\/i> is not a phrase that springs to mind. In fact, unlike the Lord of the Rings films, I came away feeling that the movie had in fact attempted to change the central point of the novel. It was much more like Sprited Away redone with a grown up Haku and Chihiro. As an adaptation, then, I would rank it down there somewhere with Chamber of Secrets and the most recent version of Vanity Fair.<\/p>\n

As a movie evaluated on its own merits, I think it was lovely, and I will probably enjoy it a great deal more when it’s a good quality copy and with a translation, so I don’t miss things when people start talking in paragraphs. The vision of the world was interesting, and the chopped and reassembled plot was, as far as I could tell, fairly coherent — if not resembling the book much at all. Howl and Sophie were both character designs I approved of. Not so much stuck on the scarecrow or the Witch of the Waste, who felt too reminiscent of past Ghibli films rather than their Book counterparts. Calcifer was great.<\/p>\n

The plot as I understood it was this: Sophie works in her mum’s hat shop, but has low self-esteem. One day while on to visit her sister, she’s harrassed by some soldiers and is rescued by Howl. The Witch dislikes this and comes to visit; Sophie reacts badly and she is left turned into an old woman. Sophie runs off and meets up with the helpful Scarecrow who leads her to the moving castle. She meets Michael and Calcifer and announces she will be the cleaning lady. Howl doesn’t put up much of a fuss and soon she’s travelling around with them. Howl is involved in the war in some fashion, and eventually Sophie is dispatched to Sullivan-sensei’s to meet with her. The Witch is there also and stripped of her powers. Sullivan tries to attack them all, but the Howl-gumi escapes back to the castle. Meanwhile it seems that Howl, perhaps as a result of the fire demon that he has made a part of himself, is becoming less and less human and more demonic the more he uses his powers.<\/p>\n

Sophie’s view of herself is central to the second half of the story, but she’s still wildly affected by how she thinks others percieve her — when she feels confident, she shifts back to a younger self, and when she feels embarrassed or made fun of or sad, she grows older again. The army begins to attack the moving castle, and Howl goes out to fight, telling Sophie to guard Calcifer for him. The Witch, who has moved in with them all along with Sullivan’s dog, sees her chance and tries to snatch the fire demon. In the ensuing fight the castle is wrecked and Sophie finds herself fallen apart from the others. She locates a door, a door to the past, it seems, and there she sees the young Howl making his bargain with Calcifer. She falls back into her own time to find the present-day Howl there in a bird shape, and he takes her and the Scarecrow back to the remains of the castle that are still staggering about the countryside. Howl there collapses and Sophie takes Calcifer back from the Witch.<\/p>\n

There are some Beauty and the Beast-style pyrotechnics, and then both Howl and Calcifer get their happy ending. And the Scarecrow turns into the prince.<\/p>\n

So, summary verdict: Good. Can’t say it’s great yet, but it’s possible. Do not expect the book story, just another story with some of the book characters.
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<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

So, spoilerific for the movie, though also perhaps inaccurate spoilers. Read More…It’s no secret that I’ve been desperate to see this movie since it was announced. The desperation has only increased since the film was actually released in Japan, back on November 20th. (It had been screened at some festivals prior to this, but was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[10,3],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/flaminggeeks.com\/k\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/542"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/flaminggeeks.com\/k\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/flaminggeeks.com\/k\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flaminggeeks.com\/k\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flaminggeeks.com\/k\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=542"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/flaminggeeks.com\/k\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/542\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/flaminggeeks.com\/k\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=542"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flaminggeeks.com\/k\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=542"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flaminggeeks.com\/k\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=542"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}