DVD Review HTF REVIEW: Howl's Moving Castle - VERY HIGHLY RECOMMEDED (1 Viewer)

[Bill Hunt]

Great review as always, David. I loved this film in theaters and I'm looking forward to finally watching the disc tomorrow.

 

[TheLongshot]

Considering that DWJ was happy with the film, I don't take an issue with it. It would have been nice if Howl was more of a jerk, like in the book, but I was more or less satisfied.

Certainly not one of Miyasaki's best efforts, but even a lesser effort by him is better than most.

Jason

 

[DaViD Boulet]

A compliment from Bill Hunt...woohoo!

:b

Bill, I'll be very curious as to your impressions of picture and sound.


Also wanted to let anyone who was wondering know that the English Dubs are a translation of the English audio and not a "literal" translation directly from the Japanese language track.

 

[Ed Speir IV]

Purchased it on the release date, but haven't had time to watch it yet. That will be remedied this weekend.

Excellent review!

 

[Brent Hutto]

David,

Sorry to have commented in the wrong threads on this subject. Should have read the Howl thread before talking about it in the Whisper and Totoro threads. The only one I've seen yet is Howl's Moving Castle and there are many places where the English subtitles don't match the English dialog. Not speaking a bit of Japanese I can't say for sure how closely they track the Japanese dialog although there certainly were some certain nouns that matched up well.

Please don't take it as an insult to bring up the remote possibility that you saw the English closed-captions by mistake...I've done that before myself.

 

[DaViD Boulet]

Hey Brent,

Help clarify for me...

I think I selected "Subtitle 1, English" and randomly skipped through the movie for about 5 minutes and it seemed to match up 100% of the time when I did it.

Did I have the right subtitle track and just missed the parts where it was different or is there another English Subtitle track that's different altogether? I know that I saw CC info "like (Loud Explosion!) etc. so I'm sure I was watching the CC version...didn't realize if there was another English vesion!

Let's clarify so I can get the review accurate. Thanks!

dave

 

[Brent Hutto]

Dave,

That explains it. I believe the closed-captions got you. I'm not near my DVD player so I can't say for 100% certain but "Subtitle 1, English" is the closed-captioned dubtitles on the Howl DVD. When you go in the DVD menu, the closed-caption is listed first, then the English subtitles that correspond to the language track. That I remember for sure. So I'm guessing that with the SUB button on the remote you have to go past the dubtitle to get to the real subs.

The sound-effects should have been the give-away, I guess, but I missed where you mentioned that earlier. As I said, I've ended up with the same kind of CC titles before.

As you know, it is very enlightening to put up a good transliteration of a foreign-language soundtrack while listening the English-language interpretation. I guess the person writing the new track (Doctor in this case, I believe) gets to take a lot of artistic license.

 

[Bill Hunt]

As soon as I get the chance to take a look at it, hopefully later this afternoon, I'll let you know.

Cheers!

 

[Adam_S]

I've seen this twice in theatres, once in Japanese and once in dub, both times with a half-Japanese friend who's been speaking both English and Japanese since childhood.

According to her, the dub is excellent, some subtleties are lost (in Japanese the same actress does old sophie and young sophie, they cast two actresses for the english dub) because of how certain things can be implied emphasized etc with Japanese, but both were really good, the subtitle translation was okay, as always, they slightly simplify dialogue to make it readable in a short burst, only a handful of «wince» translations for her. She also liked the dub, especially Christian Bale's work, She does NOT like the dub of Spirited Away, as she says, "Haku's voice is too old and Sen's voice is too young!" She's never been 100% happy with a subtitle translation, and usually has to retranslate at least one or two things each movie because they frustrate her.

My biggest problem with the dub is calling 'Cabu' "Turnip Head' It's so much easier to say Cabu, and it's a fun word sound that can be played with, but Turnip Head is just so unevocative. I believe Cabu just translates directly as Turnip, but I think theatrically, most of the time the subtitles just called him Cabu, which is his name, Turnip Head is just so clumsy by comparison.

Both of us preferred Calcifer in the Japanese version, but Billy Crystal was a great choice because of the particularly grating voice of the character. I think the character was less 'loud' (not in an audible way, but Loud like hawaiian t-shirt) with the Japanese voice.

I'd be pleased watching either, which is also true of Totoro, but not of Spirited Away (a good dub, but I love the Japanese performances too much; for me, the OSL:dub::Blu-ray: DVD on Spirited Away, there's a big jump in quality if you know how to 'hear' it ).

 

[ChristopherDAC]

Where did you see a subtitled print? There wasn't a single one shipped to Texas as best I was able to find out — second largest state in population, we passed New York at the last census, home of the longest-running anime convention in the US, and the movie companies treat us like a backwater. :frowning:

 

[DaViD Boulet]

(CDac, Yeah...the print I saw in the U.S. was dubbed too)



Adam_S,

Allow me to personally thank you for posting one of the most valuable contributions of the year...at least as far as translated movies go.

I had been wondering "wouldn't it be cool if..." the exact scenario you were able to share...a viewer who speaks both Japanese and English who's able to "get" the context of both languages and judge each according to its own merits and compare. But I had resigned myself, of course, to never really considering it a possibility.

Then I saw your post...

Thank you so much for taking the time to share in such detail. Your comments are just the sort of information that many interested Miyazaki fans who don't speak Japanese would want to better understand.

That's JUST the kind of member-contribution that makes "DVD Review" threads at HTF so valuable...and unique...in the internet world.






p.s. in particular I was wondering how Billy Crystal's Califer compared to the Japanese version.



Was the character as comedic in the Japanese language?

 

[Justin W]

great post adam!

pixar has done a fantastic job with these ghibli films. i wonder if they'll be revisiting mononoke, castle in the sky, or kiki's delivery service.

 

[Adam_S]

Glad you liked my comments DAvid. I saw this in a subtitled print at the Loew's Beverly Center theater and in adubbed print at a campus midnight movie.

Calcifer was definitely a funny character in Japanese, but he was also more kawaii (pronounced Ka-wai-ee), which I think matches the particular style he's drawn in, Crystal is 'being funny' which is different from Calcifer who seemed a bit more dangerous and occasionally grumpier in the Japanese version.

Oh I found the Witch of the Waste a much more impressive villain on the Japanese track, and the 'old fat lady' version definitely worked better at the climatic end in Japanese.

On the other hand, the woman who trained Howl (Lauren Bacall in the dub, right?) was preferrable in English. I could go either way with Howl, I REALLY love Christian Bale's voice work there, sort of like Spike in English or Japanese in Cowboy Bebop, just a fantastic matchup.

Sophie I definitely prefer in the Japanese, in retrospect I think she had a different characterization due to the Japanese voice work, definitely more complex, much funnier (in the humorous moments) better interaction with the other voices and just a subtly superior performance at every level.

Adam

 

[Joel C]

No, Lauren Bacall did the Witch of the Waste. I like her performance better; I think the Japanese dub is a man.

 

[Brent Hutto]

My wife and I were just talking about the characterizations over supper tonight, especially Sophie...

What Pete Doctor changed in his version of Sophie, in our opinion, was to make her more submissive, weaker and fearful at the beginning and then allowed her to develop into a stronger girl by the end. That's a Robert McKee style "character arc" in which the protagonist is supposed to experience growth and change over the course of the story. In the Japanese dialog and voice acting, Sophie was very composed and [I need a word here for the ability to remain true to ones own nature, maybe "centered"] from the very beginning and stayed steadfast in the face of fantastic events, even being turned into a 90-year-old woman. In fact, I think that's why using the same voice actress for young and old Sophie was the right choice.

I also thought the Japanese dialog and voice acting did a great job with keeping a discernable thread of the same character in the Witch of the Waste while rendering her outwardly almost infantile after she was stripped of her powers. Christian Bale's work is hard to fault, he was at least as good a Howl as the Japanese actor. I found Adam's point very interesting about Calcifer, in the Japanese version he didn't engage in as constant a stream of ironic asides as Billy Crystal. I'd like to understand the connotations of kawaii.

 

[ChristopherDAC]

Wouldn't be surprised. Boys are generally voiced by grown women, and old women's voices may be done by men, particularly if the intent is to produce a kind of unsettling effect [McCarthy uses the phrase "pantomime-dame", which will mean more to a British audience]. I think the Witch qualifies for that position.

 

[Adam_S]

Thanks Christopher, you said it better than I could. Not that calcifer is cute, but there's a style to the simple elegant lines around his face, and the eyes that reads as slightly more kawaii when matched to the japanese voice than when matched to the Crystal. Ah, I got it, Calcifer in Japanese is more huggable (is fire huggable?); can you imagine hugging Billy Crystal the fire?


Ahh that makes sense, a much bigger role, I wasn't paying close attention to the dub credits and just glimpsed Lauren Bacall's name.

Love your comments Brent! Great insight into the dub direction versus the original soundtrack.

Like David I also enjoy watching dubs because you do get a better appreciation of the visuals, but I've also found after watching enough foreign films that I can grab one line of subtitles in about an eighth of a second, so it rarely seems to detract too much.

I would like to disagree with David on the 'emotional' qualities of a performance being better in a native language; I've personally found it to be the opposite, one can understand more of the emotions and content of a scene from hearing the original language, EVEN IF there is NO translation. In fact I'd argue that our understanding of the emotional content of voice performances is heightened when it's not in our native language, our other 'senses' for determining/judging/analyzing others have to compensate for the lack of words, and our brain works harder to try to interpret the totality.

Can anyone really imagine an American voice actor actually transferring all the emotional content of Toshirô Mifune's vocal performance if someone tried to dub Seven Samurai?

Adam

 

[Brent Hutto]

When we first saw Spirited Away it was at the multiplex with the English-language dialog. In fact we saw it twice during the theatrical release. When we first got the DVD we watched it in Japanese with subtitles and liked it even better (and in any language it's among our very, very favorite movies). Then back to the English track for the next viewing.

Finally, after having seen it repeatedly we watched it once in Japanese but without the subtitles. Heck, we knew most lines by heart anyway. Not having to read the subtitles and not actually knowing the words does indeed let you tune in to the emotions better. The Catch-22 is it only works on movies you like well enough to have watched several times but it's a cool effect.

 

[DaViD Boulet]

I'm thrilled with the great discussion here and the variety of well expressed opinions. Good show!

The great thing about owning a film like this on DVD is that you have the *choice* to listen to whatever soundtrack you wish...or better yet...watch the movie more than once with different language options so that you can experience the film differently each time...

 

[ChristopherDAC]

After a little more consideration, I think that I can make a little better description of "kawaii". In a sort of general way, it's applied to small, well-formed, and passive things, such as girls or cats; more active, but still small and well-formed things, are termed "genki" (energetic or frisky), such as boys and dogs. Yes, it sounds like a strange way of dividing things into categories, but this is a foreign language we're talking about. An example of kawaii in the Japanese media which I saw referenced somewhere was the way the Japanese media went ga-ga over twin sisters, something like 115 years old, who were the oldest people in Japan. Anyway! As I have remarked, I do as a regular thing what Brent Hutto tried with Spirited Away, and I find the effect very pleasing. I agree with David Boulet that, for the foreign-film fan, one of the great benefits of the proliferation of DVD is that the option of doing this becomes more generally available — multiple language support is something which was sometimes, but not always, avaiable on LaserDisc, but of course it was never available on VHS.