howl's flying castle

...even his voice is dreamy

06.26.05

Back in the day, my friend Tasha was a movie reviewer for the Daily Iowan, and her love of the cinema has not waned an iota since those days. In fact, now she works in the AV Club of The Onion, and gets to watch better movies, and even interviews people like Denis Leary.

Earlier this month, she wrote about Howl's Moving Castle, which is a movie based on a book she loved as a child. Now, I love Japanese animation, and I love young adult fantasy novels, and pretty much anything media-based that Tasha's recommended in the past has always entertained me.

Plus, the English voice cast of the movie has Christian Bale playing the voice of Howl. As has been previously established, I adore Christian Bale in pretty much all forms - juvenile, chubby, scruffy, maniacal, militant, ecumenical, dragon-slaying, whatever.

So, I went to see the movie today, and it was totally awesome. The only remotely sucky thing about it was the fact that because it is technically a children's movie, or at least is billed as being such, there were noisy children in the theater, asking a lot of stupid questions throughout the course of the movie.

The first time the moving castle walked into view on the screen, the kid to the right of me, who had to be at least ten, asked his mother, "What's that walking building?"

Oh, I don't know... maybe it's THE MOVING CASTLE that the film title references. You know, the movie HOWL'S MOVING CASTLE.

I didn't say a word. I just clutched the arm of my seat a little tighter, and then took a long swallow of my $3.95 bottle of water from the concession stand.

I wasn't too terribly pleased with the child's relative proximity to my person in the first place*, and I knew it would go to a bad place if I opened my mouth.

So I didn't.

I just ignored the woman's running explanation of the entire plot of the movie to her idiot child, and focused on the loveliness of the film. I wish it had been a little longer, though. I'm sure there are things that the book explained more thoroughly, and I bet they would have been as glorious to see on the big screen as the rest of it was.

Despite the presence of noisy children, I enjoyed this movie so much that I am so totally buying it when it comes out on DVD, and I'll totally go see it again if anyone wants to go see it with me. I'd even see it on IMAX, if it were playing there.

In fact, I enjoyed it so much that it made me want to sprint across the street to Borders and buy a copy. Which I kind of did, after the film ended. However, according to Border's Title Sleuth, it is out of print and takes several days to arrive at the store.

I did take the opportunity to read the back of several other books by the author, and have decided that I would like to read pretty much all of them in the near future.

And in fact, when I got home from the movie, I ordered Howl's Moving Castle, The Castle in the Air, and the The Chronicles of Chrestomanci Vols. 1 & 2 from Amazon. Now I just need to get Mixed Magics : Four Tales of Chrestomanci and Conrad's Fate (Chrestomanci Books)**.

In summation, I recommend seeing this movie.
..........
* I mean, there were easily 2/3rd of the seats in the theater available, and yet this yappy woman and her yappy stupid child had to park their asses immediately next to me. I don't really like strangers sitting next to me in a full theater, so the whole sitting next to me when there is more than enough space for EVERYONE in the theater to comfortably have a vacant seat in between each and every one of them sort of rubs me the wrong way.

Strangers in close proximity during Batman Begins sneak preview, I accept. This invasion of space though? This rankles me.

**Hmm. I do have a birthday in like 13 days...