Let's Hitchcock it up.

Here in this wonderful portrait, Hitchcock is trying to impersonate Doctor Evil but is having a bit of trouble, namely using the wrong finger.

Anyway, I must say I was pleasantly surprised with Hitchcock's movies, because before now I had thought of him as some old director of bad horror movies (Psycho and/or The Birds). After seeing 3 of his movies, I can actually say that I really enjoyed them despite how old they are.

He has a very unique style that I really found interesting and I particularly liked his tendency to prefer suspense to surprise, and this was very apparently in Rear Window, when Girlie Sue is in Thorwald's apartment and we see him walking down the hallway to his apartment, I was genuinely wondering what was going to happen. This is obviously different from other directors because in their movies I know the main character is invincible and everything will be peachy in the end. Hitchcock changed that, and it was a very refreshing change of pace.

What kinda creeped me out is Hitchcock's disturbing obsession with stalking and "smart blonds". Hmmm...

Now the ghosts have top hats.

Well now. In Spirited Away I was trippin' out and wondering what in the name of jackassery was going on, but now in Howl's Moving Castle, I was wondering why time didn't matter anymore.

Take Girlie Sue, for example. She starts out at maybe 20 years old. Some amoeba/witch thing puts a curse on her and she wakes up at like 30,000 years old. We can see that this is somewhat possible assuming that witches can cast spells and stuff. It gets better, though. She becomes a very feminine wizard's cleaning lady at the request of the complete studmuffin/fire thing/garbage disposal/loudmouth above. Anyway, she randomly becomes younger, maybe 60 years old, doesn't hunch over to 2 feet tall anymore, and has a somewhat normal voice. Then, the wizard randomly walks into the closet and there she is, sleeping, 20 years old again. He runs away screaming (not really) and she becomes 30,000 years old again the next morning. This happens maybe half a dozen times in the movie and by the end she's back to her old self, except she has gray hair for no reason. Yeah. Don't ask.

Howl's moving castle has an enjoyable cast of confusing characters. We've got the same old ghost blob things, but this time they have top hats. (How cool is that?) We've got a scarecrow pogo stick turnip thing, we've got an old woman race to the top of stairs and one of them melts on the way up. There are also a squeaking, obese dog that can fly with its ears, an amoeba person, a feminine wizard who turns to goo when he has an emo attack, and awesome guys who run around carrying a blob in a box.

Case in point: Dubbya tee eff is going on here?

My purpose in life is now to find out what Miyazaki is smoking.

Go away, you damn ghost things!

Hayao Miyazaki's Spirited Away was trippy, dude. Far out. I know I'm going to be blasted as "racist" for this, but as far as I have seen, 99% of Japanese things are completely crazy and make about one atom of sense. Commercials, movies, game shows, you name it. It's all crazy and looking at it for more than a second or so would give nearly anyone a siezure. Spirited away was no different.

Basically, a girl, Chihiro, on a car trip with her parents, randomly finds an abandoned theme park and is transported to a very... interesting spirit world bathhouse thing. She then has to go on a quest to bring back her parents who were (of course) turned into pigs. There are chicken people, frog people, rolling decapitated heads, a cannibalistic blob who can spawn gold, and a skeleton who barfs up a junkyard and can fly. What else? Anyway, Chihiro outsmarts the evil witch who runs the bathhouse and is randomly transported back where she started.

Hayao Miyazaki obviously has a very "unique" style. Spirited Away is a great movie, I'll grant it that, but the setting was nothing less than a psychedelic wonderland and frankly it made no sense. I could easily sit here for several hours and tear the movie apart for that, but that was the purpose of the movie methinks. It's just an escape from having to have everything make sense.

On IMDB, Spirited Away got an 8.5 out of 10 and is the 56th best movie on there according to viewers. I'd say they agree with me that it's a damn good movie.