diana wynne jones' howl's moving castle
after reading this pretty negative review (via bookslut) of the movie, i decided i had better reread the book and see what i'd forgotten (it was book 6 last year, and obviously i've read a lot of other stuff since then!). sigh. miyazaki did sort of make a mess of things by taking out sophie's sisters--in jones' version, the family drives the plot and makes it much more entertaining than all the war stuff miyazaki threw in. sophie is also a lot funnier in the book, more rash and hardheaded and not so fluttery.
not that i didn't enjoy the movie, but it doesn't quite do justice to the book. i can't really understand some of the changes he made--there were plenty of adorable things in the book, so why did he change some of the major characters to make them so cute? and i can see why he left out the black door stuff from the book (though i'd have loved to have seen his take on it) but to leave out all the fairy tale stuff with the three sisters? i guess they have very different sorts of stories in japan so maybe it wouldn't have translated well, but that was one of my favorite parts of the book . . .
oh well--here is my original review from last year:
i read somewhere recently that miyazaki is working on his latest film, an adaptation of this book. a quick check on amazon revealed that it was probably a book i'd like, plus i totally trusy miyazaki's taste in fiction! and the day after i picked it up, neil gaiman mentioned the author in his blog, so i knew it would be high-quality. i love the large number of amazing young adult books coming out lately, and i'm glad i can still enjoy a good fairy tale. or in this case, a twist on the fairy tale world. the main character, sophie, is the eldest of three daughters and knows full well that the eldest of three daughters never fares well. sure enough, she gets cursed by a witch shortly after the book begins, leading to a story full of magic and adventures, curses and fire demons, and so on. it had a good number of surprising twists and although the last couple of pages bordered on the cheesy, it was ultimately a satisfying read. and it'll be a GREAT miyazaki movie. man, i wonder how long those take to get to america.
funny--the end hardly seems cheesy at all after seeing the movie version. :)
5 comments:
did you see the slate article called, "the british genius behind miyazaki's new film"?
"batman begins" RAWKED.
jordon
ooh, i hadn't--i'll go read that now.
i actually saw batman begins on friday and liked it more than i thought i would. one of my friends pointed out that katie holmes only talks out of one side of her mouth, and then i had trouble concentrating on anything else. but the rest of the casting was great--especially morgan freeman and, of course, michael caine. i especially liked how they explained how he got all his gadgets and showed him being inept at first--it didn't feel forced in and made me a happy little fangirl.
Heya, do you still have that book? Can I borrow it for ALA if you do? Thanks :)
yup, i own it! i'll get it to you next time i see you. :)
I liked batman, but after Spiderman, it seemed to take itself way to serious. I know it was supposed to, but somehow by being less serious the Spiderman movies have more emotional weight than I thought the new batman had. Why did Christain Bale talk like that when in his suit?
The movie could have used a lot more of Cillian Murphy.
I have noticed that Katie Holmes talks that way. She is like George Bush. In many ways.
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