Favorite Film Friday #3: Howl's Moving Castle

 

Remember how I said that book to film adaptions are always awful? Well, this is an exception.

One of my favorite parts of the book/movie is that Sophie is a milliner. It just makes me so happy.

 Miyazaki's (wonderful) movie is very different from the book and that's a good thing. What usually upsets me most about adaptions is they are either too far away from source material or too close to it. This movie is clearly inspired by the book, but it's far enough away that I can enjoy both without one being ruined by the other.

 I very rarely re-read books, but I've read Howl's Moving Castle (and it's first sequel, Castle in the Air) many, many times.

My copy does not have this on the cover.

Diana Wynn Jones is brilliant and I love what Hayao Miyazaki did with her story. The English dub cast is fantastic. We've got Christian Bale, Emily Mortimer(!!!), Jean Simmons, Josh Hutcherson, Lauren Bacall, Blythe Danner and Billy Crystal! Will Friedle even has a teeny cameo!

I know a lot of purists like to listen to the original dub with subtitles, but Disney's team does such a fantastic job gathering talent for these movies, it seems wrong not to listen to it at least once or fifty times! 

Here's one last picture of Sophie being a milliner.

Ok... I'm going to go watch it again.
Happy Friday!