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Japanese Aside: Howl's Moving Castle!
Diana Wynne-Jones's Howl's Moving Castle has been anime-tised! I'm really excited about it because she's one of my favourite children/young adult writers (thanks to Dr S. Ang from the Lit department of NUS), and after I went away and thought about it - it's really fantastic that her best story (IMHO) to date has made it to film. After I thought about it some more - and I said this to Mei Yen - I think Japanese anime is the right medium for the very fantastical story.
Adapted and directed by Hayao Miyazaki, the guy who gave us famous stuff like Princess Mononoke and Spirited Away, I think this will be another runaway hit, and will hopefully spark and spur interest in Diana Wynne-Jones's books, which are excellent beyond belief. After seeing the shots of the movie (which is going to be released in Japan on November the 20th - oh why oh why did I not stay a while longer?) I think all her books should be anime-tised - they don't fit the typical white-man narrative style, which seems to be Japanese anime narrative written in English. What most traditional filmmakers would see as "impossible to adapt" material, Japanese anime filmmakers would see possibilities. Did anyone catch A Tree Of Palme a couple of years back in the Singapore Film Fest? That was bizarre, but DWJ's books are something like that. Hexwood, for example, was a book that was structurally designed for two readings - you HAD to read the book twice in order to understand it fully. Very unusual for a kid's book, but there you go - that's DWJ for you. (I'll put in the links later, I'm tired now.)
[Japanese Aside: Howl's Moving Castle!]
Sngs Alumni @ 17.11.04 { 0 comments }
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