Miyazaki's Howl's Moving Castle Open in Japan

blamanj writes ""Howl's Moving Castle" (Howl no Ugoku Shiro), is the latest animated epic from Miyazaki's Studio Ghibli. In a departure from his usual sources, this time Miyazaki has adapted a story by British author Diana Wynne Jones. The reviews look good." CT: Apparently Howl's opened a few weeks ago.

Comments

The biggest concern...

[JossiRossi]

I didn't see anything on it, but have they done any dubbing? I personally prefer subtitles, but they may try to pull a "Must appeal to a wider audience" when they pull it over to the states. Will the English speaking version suck? Who knows.

It opened in November

[Glog]

I was in Japan in November and the movie was in theaters! How did you come up with "yesterday was the opening date"?

Re:Miyazaki's films always have a moral

[Scrameustache]

The moral in Sen to Chihiro no kamikaukushi ("Spirited Away") is basically "Don't destroy the environment" and "Children should learn manners".

Er, the moral is always "good little japanese girls work hard and don't complain".

Every, single, time.

He'll tack on additional morals, if need be, but "work hard" is the moral of everything I've seen with Miyazaki's name attached.

Re:I'll skip it

[MightyMartian]

I despise Disney, but I'll still watch it. Miyazaki is just too good for minor things like principles to get in the way. I finally got to watch Spirited Away last year, and as far as I'm concerned, it blows Pixar away (and I think Pixar's pretty awesome , too).

Re:Miyazaki's films always have a moral

[MightyMartian]

> I hate movies with a moral, I watch to be entertained, not talked
> down to with a tone that the director needs to educate me. If you want
> children to grow up with some morals, talk to their parents, not
> Hollywood.

Good grief. Most children's stories throughout history, heck most stories in general, have morals to them. That's rather the point, to entertain and educate.

I agree that the idiocy of American cartoons, where there are 22 minutes of violence (without bloodshed, of course), 7 minutes of commercials many of which advocate violence, and then a 1 minute value lesson:

"Grimy the Psychotic Robot helped his arch-enemy Bullwipe the Satanic Frog of Doom, so we should always help people."

However, Spirited Away's lessons were subtle and did not come off as preachy. I think it's much better to have films such as this then to have them watching endless volumes of violence on TV and in theaters. Nothing wrong with violence, but let's face it, Hollywood doesn't do a good job of showing the other side of it.

No, that's barely scratching the surface.

[DeadVulcan]

The moral in Sen to Chihiro no kamikaukushi ("Spirited Away") is basically "Don't destroy the environment" and "Children should learn manners".

Chihiro, at the beginning of the film, seems somewhat spoiled and incessantly whiney.

By the end, she has had to set her own goals, make her own decisions, accept responsibility, and carry through on a long-term plan. All without the guidance of her parents. It's the process of growing up and leaving the nest. Sorry, but "children should learn manners" just doesn't cover all that.

Re:No, that's barely scratching the surface.

[badasscat]

Chihiro, at the beginning of the film, seems somewhat spoiled and incessantly whiney.

By the end, she has had to set her own goals, make her own decisions, accept responsibility, and carry through on a long-term plan. All without the guidance of her parents. It's the process of growing up and leaving the nest. Sorry, but "children should learn manners" just doesn't cover all that.

Well, you're a bit closer than the post you're replying to, but still not quite right.

Spirited Away is about greed and gluttony. Now, learning to be humble and respectful and responsible and all that is part of that lesson about greed and gluttony, so you're not wrong. Spirited Away suggests a return to a more traditional way of thinking as part of the solution, but the main issue in the film is greed.

This does not quite come through in the English translation as well as it does in the original Japanese. Still, it's fairly obvious, I think, right from the beginning of the film (when her parents literally turn into pigs through their gluttony) until the end (when Sen's purity returns them to humanity).

The only Miyazaki film I'd say even specifically deals with the environment is Princess Mononoke. (I'm calling these films by their English names because I'm speaking English, btw - I don't really see the point in mixing languages up when there is a proper, official English title available.) Lots of his films are misunderstood in this country - Spirited Away has nothing to do with the environment at all, and even Nausicaa (another film people think has an environmental lesson) is an allegory for the real-life Cold War that was going on at the time, and what would happen if it turned hot. The environment is used in these films as a vehicle to make a point.

Obviously nature and the environment are common Miyazaki themes, but don't confuse his common themes with the message in any particular film. He uses things like nature, tradition, history, etc. to make his points - but they are rarely, if ever, the point in themselves.

Foreign Films

[MightyMartian]

> They're cartoons, and therefore for kids. That's a pretty definite correlation.
> If he wants the Japanese movie industry to be taken seriously like the
> American one, try making films with *real* actors and scenes. Oh, no, that
> would require a budget. Take a look at the movie listings at your local
> picture house ... see any Japanese films? Nope ... or maybe just one. Compare
> and contrast to the vast number of American films that make it out there.

Well, the US only has a relatively small fraction of the world's population, and believe it or not, these sorts of movies become huge successes making their producers and backers big bucks, even if some Yankee who's looking for the latest blow-em-up-real-good Hollywood splashganza doesn't even know they exist.

Miyazaki is an artist, and his animated films tell compelling stories in a manner that I doubt most Hollywood junkies could appreciate.

As to movie theatres in North America, they are pretty much dominated by the Hollywood system, and unless you live in a bigger community with theatres that can afford to run relatively unpopular films (foreign films, silent films and black and white films), the average movie-goer is sadly out of luck.

I've been watching a lot more older and foreign films lately. I watched Renoir's The Rules of the Game a month ago, borrowed it from my local library. What a brilliant film, but I doubt that most of my fellow Canadians and most Americans know it even exists. There's a whole ocean of great films out there, but the only way most North Americans ever know they exist is if Hollywood remakes it.

I'm not bashing American film making. I mean, Hollywood is perfectly capable of making great films still, but it's just very sad that someone like Miyazaki is condemned because he doesn't use live actors. What exactly does that mean nowadays in CGI filmmaking anyways. I mean, I consider movies like the Star Wars prequels to be basically cartoons. At some point in the not-so-distant future CGI will have evolved to the point that real-looking people on the silver screen will be completely constructed.

Whether it's animated, black and white, foreign and dubbed or subtitled into English, or a Hollywood film, I want a good story told well.

Re:Miyazaki's films always have a moral

[Lemmy Caution]

That's not the "moral," that's the background of Japanese culture from which it's created. It may be shocking to you, but working hard and not complaining are actual values (for both genders) that are very much embodied in Japanese child-rearing.

From the Japanese perspective, the moral of American media is "slack off and whine a lot."

Re:Miyazaki's films always have a moral

[Scrameustache]

There's more to it than that. Other themes I spotted: Evil is a matter of perception.

You betcha!
Aku, the "name" of the character who at first says he will help her escape, but later turns out to be (deceptively) cold and mean, is a japanese homophone that can mean "to become free", or "evil" (as in Samurai Jack's intro's last line "The evil that IS... Aku!").
: )

Re:Miyazaki's films always have a moral

[Anonymous Coward]

If he crams it down the audience's throat he's being didactic or even condescending.

Why did I immediately think of Terry Goodkind? I've got nothing against compositions having a message, or even against his particular message. But delivery is important. If the delivery of your message makes your piece un-entertaining, no one is going to read/watch it, and so no one will hear the message. Unfortunately, Goodkind's mind is closed to this kind of constructive criticism.

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Totoro?

[interactive_civilian]

so far, most of the dubs have been very good. The only exception, in my opinion, was Castle in the Sky, which had a pretty poor dub.

I'm guessing that either a.) you haven't seen My Neighbor Totoro (Tonari No Totoro) or 2.) you don't understand Japanese, because that was one of the worst dubs of any anime that I have ever seen.

The quality of the English voice-acting was terrible, and the things they were saying were nowhere near the original Japanese dialogue. I guess I can understand a little bit because a lot of things in that movie are VERY difficult to translate to English and a lot of things don't make much sense if you don't know anything about Japanese culture.

Don't get me wrong. I loved the movie. Totoro is one of my favorites. Howl's Moving Castle, on the other hand, was IMHO the worst Miyazaki Hayao movie ever made. It wasn't a bad movie at all, but his other movies are just so excellent and it doesn't even compare (saw it in the theater in Shinagawa last week).