Hi Stephanie. Little synchro moments I am waiting to watch Howl's Moving Castle for two weeks already. It's playing in the Cinemas here.

What can I say about Miyazaki's movies.. they are fantastic experiences impossible to reduce to analysis. Great everlasting effects . I always feel the legacy of Osamu Tezuka's "robot with a human heart", still lives in japanese anime. Some of these works are major works of art.

Regarding the distribution of these films in the U.S., It's a pity that instead of making the effort to dive into the narrative ways of a different culture, the moneymakers try to 'adequate' the films for an audience they assume is too lazy, or simply doesn't care about other cultures besides their own. Instead feeding them with the same old boring machinegun mantra. What a mindset? This is a rant, klar, but I simply don't like it. It was so infuriating to watch (I think it was the US version, I'm not sure) The Grave of the Fireflies with an end that simply annihilated the whole sense of the movie, perhaps because there was a brushstroke of japanese spirituality floating around, I don't know. Similar things have happened with other movies, like the korean low budget Wonderful Days, which I am told has such terrible translation that destroys the deep subtleties of the original dialogues, and instead focuses on the action only.

Anyway, have you seen Tokyo Godfathers?. I'm watching that one tomorrow during a pause. (I think I should do more Anime pauses instead of forum pauses, lol).

Javier