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Showing posts from June, 2005

Howl's Moving Castle

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"That was like a dream." said my brother as we climbed in the car after seeing Miyazaki's latest film. An apt description; the sheer amount of creativity and incredible vision Howl's Moving Castle presents is often only available in our dreams. But like our dreams, Miyazaki's movies tend to stop intead of end, leaving us scratching our heads and wondering what it all meant. Attempting to reconstruct the plot into a coherent whole is frustrating and futile. Yet why would we? Are our dreams any less beautiful because they lack a fitting conclusion? While I prefer watching Studio Ghibli films with the subtitles instead of dubbed voices, I can't imagine seeing Howl's Moving Castle without Billy Crystal's Calcifer. His wry, sarconic delivery perfectly suits the character and, like his performance as Mike Mike Wazowski in Monsters Inc., it just wouldn't be the same without him.