Howl's Moving Castle (DVD)

Wow! After seeing Howl's Moving Castle I can now officially say that this years Oscar race had three powerful contenders. I do believe Wallace and Gromit was the rightful winner, but I can still remember the days when I thought Corpse Bride was going to take it all, but Howl's Moving Castle is now my official runner-up. This movie is fantastic!

It would be pointless to go too in-depth as far as the synopsis goes since this one is, as Pixar guru John Lasseter put it, "unique". In fact it is endlessly unique, but at the same time it is extremely comfortable. The film revolves around war, sorcerers, witches, gooey henchmen and so much more, yet it is a world you find yourself falling into quickly. So quickly in fact that time goes by and before you know it, two hours is up.

The film is a mixture of CGI and hand-drawn animation, and it is a comfortable mixture. The CGI is used when necessary, it is there to be helpful, not as a means to wow the audience - the hand drawn animation does enough of that. I think my next step is to now go buy Miyazaki's Oscar-winning flick Spirited Away, this guy certainly knows what he is doing.

So there, the film is fantastic, but the DVD. But wait! There is something I should point out.

This is a 2-Disc DVD. This DVD is so far off Disney's normal path that I am surprised it is actually a Disney DVD. When I think of Disney DVDs I think of heritage, history and making-of featurettes worth watching, but this DVD just has that feeling of giving up. This is not to say that there wasn't some obvious work that went into making this bad boy, because disc two must have been a bitch to put together, but you know what - I wasn't at all interested.

This disc two that I refer to has the entire film in storyboard format accompanied by either the Japanese or English language soundtrack. Guess what, storyboards get old before I even begin watching them. Okay, great, these storyboards were drawn by animation master Hayao Miyazaki. Well, whoop-de-doo, to me that just means different pictures by a different guy. For those of you that think I am being cruel here - I don't like museums either, so take that into consideration when you are deciding if this second disc is for you or not.

So what about the first disc? Well, this is where you have the more traditional features, but guess what - still no making of featurette. Oh yeah, so we get to see Miyazaki visit Pixar studios and introduce the world premiere of the English language version of his film. There is an interview feature with Pete Doctor, who directed the American actors as they worked to match up the dialogue with the characters that are actually speaking Japanese. This disc is more focused on the American side of things and since the film was created by a Japanese film crew and in Japanese all the cool things that usually accompany animated DVDs from Disney are nowhere to be found.

So there you have it. A phenomenal film with crappy special features. Buy the DVD for the film, you will enjoy it. If you must, go ahead and watch the special features but there isn't much you will get too excited about.