5/6/2006 Sat. We watched "Howl's Moving Castle". Very different from the popular CG style Animations created by American Studios, Hayao Miyazaki's Howl's Moving Castle presents a magical story in a fairytale style. I love many of Hayao Miyazaki's works a lot, for example, the classics: My friend Totoro, Kiki's delivery service. His works is not that straighforward thus evokes some thinking. As already presented in the previous work, Hayao pictured a world without war and pollution. It is a little weird to see the scenario of the movie in a late 1800s european city. But it feels fitted to the fairytale very well. As a strong contrast to the debut of modern technology showed by the steam vehicles and other machines or craft used in the war, "magic" is the power beneath the steel components, for example the moving castle was powered by fire demon Calcifer. And all the other magical thing that machine can do. However, more important is still the heart of human, who should be the lord of all these magic. Sophie was turned into a old lady by magic, but because of her heart, the way she face it shows the heart has power over magic. Another very important feature of Hayao Miyazaki's movies is the music, the music of Howl's Moving Castle was made by 久石讓, who is also the author of the Kikujiro no natsu.
Last, Ying found some funny thing about Howl's Moving Castle: the ten things Howl's Moving Castle teaches us.
