on saturday mrs. noz and i took a break from packing to see howl's moving castle. it gets a hearty noz recommendation. even though the plot doesn't completely make sense, it was lots of fun and beautiful on the big screen (like every hayoa miyazaki film is)
i still think one of miyazaki's prior movies, princess mononoke, is best attempt by any film to deal with the tough question at the heart of the environmental movement--how do you preserve the advances that have come at the expense of the environment, while still preserving the natural world. howl, at its heart, is an anti-war picture. but it doesn't deal with that issue as well as mononoke did with the environment. the reasons for the war in howl are distant and unexplained. maybe that was the point. but when the motive for going to war is unexplored, being against it is easy and really dodging the harder question.
but still. ya just gotta see it. and all miyazaki's work, for that matter. the pretty pictures alone are worth the price of admission.
