MOVIE: Howl's Moving Castle

Prettey Groovey. Personally Princess Mononoke is still my fave for it's themes of nature and progress as well as what I find the most realistic and coherent environments being set in historical Japan. Howl's is set in Japanese interpreteted early 20th century Europe with plenty of influence in costume and architecture of earlier Victorian and continental European influence.

The story revolves around Witches and Wizards, who are in a Japanese mold - prayer papers, and no wand's or incantations. The opening premise of the main charachter, Sophie's curse I felt was left under explained and under-resolved. Part of the reason for this is because that storyline soon became supplemental to the story of Howl's curse and Sophie's part in lifting it. I was irked by Sophie's early and repeated confession to Howl, and by making the storylines sequential both simplified the concepts but dampened the ultimate climaxing resolution.

The animation of course was superb and included several intricate hand animated crowd scenes, especially early in the film. Use of 3d was sparing but effective. Most impressive was the distinctive colour palette utilised for the film, resplendent with bright primary pastels, which lent to the film's warm and charming atmosphere. Spirited Away also made great use of colour within the bath-house, but contrasted to the intense shadows of that film. I was glad to see that although there are many similarities to previous Miyazaki films in terms of design, they were for the most part changed significantly so as not to rehash previous imagination completely.

The English translation was as professional as I have come to expect in the previous Studio Ghibli works and featured Christian Bale as Howl, Lauren Bacall as the Witch of the Wastes, and Billy Crystal as Calcifer.