[wao]

I really enjoyed SPirited Away and Mononoke Hime, and I believe Spirited Away deserved the award - but certainly not Howl's. I was very disappointed by it; I felt they edited the story in the wrong way entirely (and no, I did not read the book before the show so I went in with absolutely no expectations except having watched Miyazaki's previous films). If they wanted to focus on Sophie and Howl's time together that would have been perfectly fine - no need to throw in the whole war stuff and all the other things. Argh.

I've watched Wallace and Gromit too, it may not have seemed as deep or visually striking or imaginative(?) as Howl's, but I think it had a huge plus point in that it didn't try to be something else which it couldn't be. Yeah I know there's the view that it's bad to keep sticking to what you can do, but here I mean that they wanted to - or it seems to me that they wanted to - create a kid's show that could be enjoyed as a light film by adults. And they kept to that without trying to throw in other things, which is why the product felt much more effective and enjoyable. Furthermore it's not like it had bad production designs by any measure...

So I think Wallace and Gromit definitely deserved the award.

I'm glad the producers played it safe and didn't try to hype up the film. Here in Singapore I believe they didn't advertise it as much as Spirited Away... Even out of my friends who had seen both they all agreed that Howl's didn't match up, and out of the few who've seen all of Ghibli's movies they said the same thing. Including my Chinese teacher. (Although that is most certainly not a necessarily accurate estimate of what everyone though of it!) If they hyped it up I think there'd have been more sourness at the whole issue...