Loved this movie

Rating: 10/10 (8 August 2006)

Some of the things in the book weren't in the movie but if you've ever read a Diana Wynne Jones book you'll understand how hard it would be to animate. Her books always have more than ten things going on at once it seems and everything is always resolved at the end of the book never halfway through.
Anyway....
I have been a fan of Miyazaki's since last year really and fell in love with the movie Spirited Away thankfully TCM played most of his other movies as I am on a somewhat limited budget.
And I'd been a fan of Diana Wynne Jones for a couple of years. When I finally bought the book Howl's Moving Castle it had the promotional cover on it that simply said Now A Major Motion Picture (not with any artwork from the movie on the cover). I had a couple of days of wondering about that. I hadn't heard anything about Howl's Moving Castle being a movie. I thought maybe it was some sort of fluke and the printing press had accidentally gotten my hopes up.
And than by some mysterious force I found out who was doing the movie...Hayao Miyazaki! Imagine my surprise! I was ecstatic.
I love these movies more than the Disney movies I grew up with. My family has been doing art for years (in fact my dad told me that my great-grandfather worked on some backgrounds for Disney back in the day) And we've all been disgusted at the way Disney has become completely CGI and none of the original hand-drawn artwork.
So if you like the book or Hayao Miyazaki or even old time hand-drawn animation this would be the movie for you!