3 July 2005, review update

If you can see the Japanese version with subtitles, do.  The voices are perfect, especially Howl's, whose voice matches the character 100% better than in the dubbed version and is really sexy too.  The story is also a little clearer with subtitles instead of dubbing (less need to match speech with mouth movements means a slightly more complex translation).

2 July 2005--the review!

First of all, I was delighted to see that the theater here in town is showing Howl in both the dubbed English version and the original Japanese version with subtitles.  I saw the dubbed version, but tomorrow if I have time I'm going to go back and see the subtitled version.  I don't know if both versions are available in all areas, but if we have both here then probably most other areas do too.

The movie stays remarkably close to the book in many respects, although when it does divert from the original it does so in a big way.  The fate of the Witch of the Waste, for instance, is a startling difference.  Basically, the plot is thus:  Timid Sophie, who thinks she's not pretty and is terribly shy, makes hats for her mother's hat shop for a living.  When she goes out to visit her sister across town one day, though, she meets a strange, attractive wizard who is being pursued by monsters.  Later on, Sophie is visited by the evil Witch of the Waste, who puts a curse on her that ages her to an old lady.  Sophie decides she can't stay at home as an old lady, so she runs away and ends up taking shelter in the the wizard Howl's giant castle, which walks across the countryside on mechanical chicken legs.  With nowhere else to go, she stays there as the cleaning lady, even after Howl returns and Sophie realizes he's the man she met earlier in town.  Oh, and there's also a war going on in the background.

If you haven't read the book, the story is going to seem very peculiar and sometimes illogical.  Sophie, for instance, shows no talent for magic in the movie the way she does in the book; it's her love for Howl that seems to have something to do with the way the curse on her slips in and out of focus.  But the movie's beautifully animated and gorgeous to watch, with a very English-countryside background; the characters are appealing and believable; and the revelation of Calcifer's and Howl's connection is wonderfully done (and very similar to the book if you've read it).  The music is typical Studio Ghibli background music, which I find generally forgettable but at least doesn't overwhelm the action and does lend the movie the usual quiet, contemplative air I like in Miyazaki's films.

As for the English dub voices, I thought everyone did a fantastic job except the guy who played Howl.  I tried very hard to like his voice, but it just didn't work.  Not only that, but I kept thinking "Batman," so by the end I wasn't a bit surprised to find that Howl's voice was dubbed by Christian Bale, the guy who plays the latest Batman.  I didn't think he did a very inspired Batman, either, and I'm disappointed that the English dub of Howl was so poorly handled by him.  I'm interested to hear how he compares to the original Japanese voicework by Takuya Kimura.

To sum up, this is a very fun film, certainly a gorgeous one and certainly one of Miyazaki's best.  I am a little disturbed by the "Disney" feel of the plot, where only the love of the (otherwise rather passive) heroine saves the hero; I can't entirely pin the cause as being from the original book by Diana Wynne Jones, since in the book Sophie develops her unsuspected magical talent during the course of the book--and in fact is cursed by the Witch not because of her meeting with Howl, but because of her magical ability--and uses it to save Howl at the end.  Still, I highly recommend the movie and I'm looking forward to seeing it again soon myself.

1 July 2005

Woot!  I just checked and Howl's showing in my city!  I wish I'd checked earlier today.  Anyway, we're going to see it tomorrow so expect a review around mid-afternoon!

24 June 2005

Howl moved to 202 theaters last weekend and took in just over $800,000 for a U.S. release total of $1.4 million, not bad considering how few theaters it's on.  Come ON, stupid art theater in my city, I need to see this movie!

15 June 2005

Howl earned nearly $428,000 at 36 theaters its opening weekend, not quite as high as Spirited Away.  You can go to imdb.com for a pretty good search engine for showings near you.  No luck for me unless I want to make the drive to Atlanta or Nashville.  Hopefully it'll open at even more theaters next week.

10 June 2005

You can find a list of theaters showing Howl this weekend on nausicaa.net.   The movie is only opening on 36 theaters today, but hopefully that will increase substantially next week.  If anyone knows the reasoning behind limited releases, please shoot me an email and let me know the secret.  Howl has been getting a good amount of publicity; I caught a positive review on Fresh Air today.

8 June 2005

There are more clips of Howl, and the trailer, up at Yahoo Movies.   Howl's voice is growing on me; it's just very different from what I always had in my head when reading the book.  The movie looks really outstanding, naturally enough.

3 June 2005

The L.A. Times has an article about Howl here, along with a new clip of the movie.  I still don't like Howl's voice.  Don't forget, just a week until the movie's released in the U.S.; on June 17 it will go into wider release.

2 June 2005

A clip from the movie is available here.  It looks very good and surprisingly similar to the same scene in the book.  I'm not sure I like Howl's voice, but it's hard to tell from a short clip.

28 May 2005

Hayao Miyazaki, director of Howl, and Toshio Suzuki, producer, will both be attending the New York screening on June 6.  The movie has received a U rating in the UK.

27 April 2005

The official page is up at last on Disney's site.

23 April 2005

Ain't It Cool News has a ton of links to the new English-language trailer for Howl.  It looks great, although I'm not sure I like Howl's voice.  There's also a very positive review of the movie (Japanese version) up at Cartoon Brew.  From the trailer, incidentally, it looks like the movie has been given a PG rating.

20 April 2005

Disney's El Capitan Theatre in Hollywood is now selling tickets to the North American premiere of Howl.  The release date is June 10, and tickets are also on sale for showings through June 23.  The showings will be in English.

Disney also has a coming soon webpage for the movie, here (find Howl's Moving Castle under Coming Soon), and you can see the movie poster either here or here.  It looks very interesting!

17 March 2005.

Nausicaa.net has a partial English cast list up, along with a little bit of other information about the U.S. release of Howl.  On June 10 Howl will be released in New York, Los Angeles, and San Francisco; on June 17 it will be released in 60 other cities.  Ultimately it will play on 700-800 screens total.  Peter Docter, who directed Monsters Inc., is in charge of the dubbing and editing of the English version of Howl.

8 March 2005

There's a rumor of a region 3 version release of Howl as soon as July 31.  Nausicaa.net carries that tidbit of information along with a bunch of other sort-of-Howl-related stuff.

6 March 2005

Anime News Network has updated box office results for Howl here, and some interesting comments on the box office here.

2 February 2005

Howl's Moving Castle will have its U.S. premiere on 10 June at El Capitan Theater in Hollywood, which also was the U.S. premiere theater for Spirited Away last year.   Howl was the highest grossing movie in Japan in 2004.

29 January 2005

Ain't It Cool News has a good, detailed review of Howl (subtitled) seen at the Rotterdam Film Festival.   The author appears to be familiar with the book, and says that the movie, while gorgeous and entertaining, doesn't do a good job of translating the characters.  They lack depth and their relationships are unclear; the ending is also apparently poor.   But it's still a positive review.  It's going to be a long wait until June.

25 January 2005

It looks like the official U.S. release date for Howl will be 10 June 2005.   There's no voice cast announced yet for the English dub, but Pixar's Pete Docter is in charge of the English translation.

19 January 2005

Howl is top in the French box office, taking in US$2.1 million in its first weekend.  It opened on 12 January there.  The movie is still top in the Japanese box office.

17 January 2005

Anime News Network has some information about a Howl's Moving Castle museum exhibition at Tokyo Museum of Contemporary Art.  According to the article, the exhibition explores "what happens to the characters after the movie's ending," and while the movie is a lot different from the book, I can't help but think that anyone interested in what happens to the characters after the events of Howl's Moving Castle can simply go read the book's sequel, Castle in the Air by Diana Wynne Jones.

12 January 2005

An updated release date list is up at imdb.com , and whie there's no change for the UK (it's still some time in 2005), the U.S. release is now listed as June 2005.  It looks like that will be a limited release, though.

11 January 2005

Howl's Moving Castle is still #1 at the Japanese box office, eight weeks after its release.  Pirated DVDs of the film have been available since December, unfortunately, so if you get the chance to buy the DVD of Howl's Moving Castle--don't do it.

4 January 2005

The late 2004 release of the film in Japan set box office records there, and reviews are generally very positive.  
Nausicaa.net has this list of release dates for the movie, which as you can see includes the U.S. and UK in 2005:

Japan - November 20, 2004
Korea - December 24, 2004
France - January 12, 2005
Switzerland (French) - January 12, 2005
Taiwan - February 5, 2005
Singapore - March 10, 2005
Hong Kong - March 17, 2005
Sweden - September 2005
Belgium - 2005
Israel - 2005
Germany - 2005
UK - 2005
USA - 2005

24 February 2003

Ain't It Cool News has a link to this page about Howl's Moving Castle.  The page is in Japanese, but you can see the design for the moving castle in the movie (which I also stuck up on this page for now).  It's a lot different from the book, but it looks pretty durn cool anyway.

27 December 2002

The Animation News Network has some translated excerpts from an interview with Toshio Suzuki that has some information about Howl's Moving Castle.  Apparently the movie will be set at the end of the 19th Century during a war.

15 December 2002

According to Countingdown.com , Toho Films has announced that Howl's Moving Castle will be released in summer 2004.  The movie will go into production in March 2003.

29 October 2002

Howl's Moving Castle is based on the book of the same name by Diana Wynne Jones.  DWJones is one of my favorite authors and I've read this charming book many times.  Recently, after seeing Spirited Away with Matthew (who also loves DWJones' books), we were talking over how Howl's Moving Castle would fare as a movie.  Matthew said that the book is awfully simple for a Miyazaki film, since Miyazaki seems to like to put lots and lots of stuff into his movies.  So we predict that the movie of Howl's Moving Castle will probably be a lot different from the book, and a lot more involved, but undoubtedly still fun and well done, since after all it's Studio Ghibli we're talking about.

Diana herself writes in a bulletin to her fans:  "The animated film of HOWL'S MOVING CASTLE is now supposed to be ready in 2003, but don't, anyone, hold your breath.  It seems to be taking a while."  She wrote this in April 2002, though, so half a year has gone by since then.  In an undated (but probably around spring of 2002) answer to a fan's question, she also wrote:  "The good news is that there will be an animated film of HOWL'S MOVING CASTLE in 2003, done by a superb Japanese animator, and you, in Toronto, will be among the lucky ones, because Disney, who are distributing this film, have so far not agreed to let it be shown in Britain where I live."  She reinforces this in another answer:  "The Japanese film makers have still not persuaded Disney to let the film be shown in Britain, although there is no problem with Canada or the USA."  All quotes are from the Official Diana Wynne Jones Website .  So anyway, it looks like Disney will not only be distributing the film, but it seems that there may be plans to dub and release it in Canada and the U.S. quite soon after it's released in Japan.

The book of Howl's Moving Castle is currently in print and readily available in bookstores (check the YA section), and I highly recommend it.  Basically, though, the plot is this--and keep in mind the movie will undoubtedly be a lot different:  Sophie, the eldest of three sisters and therefore, she thinks, always fated to fail, works in her stepmother's hat shop after her father dies.  But Sophie accidentally angers a powerful witch, who curses her so that she becomes very old.  Sophie sets off to seek her fortune, even though she knows it's inevitable that as eldest sister she'll fail, and on the way out of town she happens upon the moving castle that belongs to Howl, rumored to be a black-hearted wizard who steals the hearts of young ladies.  Since Sophie is no longer young she figures she's safe from Howl and makes Howl's apprentice take her in.  I'm not going to tell you anymore, though, since I don't want to spoil the book for you.  Go read it!  Incidentally, the book Castle in the Air is a sequel.
 

Links:
Nausicaa.net  
Anime News Network
The Official Diana Wynne Jones Website
Diana Wynne Jones Flash-Heavy HarperCollins site with no information to speak of

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