Some thoughts on Miyazaki's latest film:

http://journals.aol.com/noelbotevera/MyJournal/entries/1040

Excerpt:

Hayao Miyazaki's version of Diana Wynne Jones' "Howl's Moving
Castle" doesn't look as good on DVD as it does on the big screen.
That opening shot, of mysterious fog through which the castle
suddenly lurches into sight (a gigantically mutated armor-plated
version of the Baba Yaga's chicken-leg house, complete with gun-
turret eyes and goldfish fins (is Miyazaki familiar with Russian
folklore?)), loses much of its impact on the small screen. But as
with most of Miyazaki's projects, there are other pleasures to be
had.

It's an encyclopedically monstrous patchwork compendium of his
previous films, if you want to see it that way--the castle moves in
the same sliding-plates manner he developed for the Ohmu
in "Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind;" clouds and airships loom
over grassy hills as they do in parts of "Laputa, Castle in the
Sky;" tarry spirits menace our hero and heroine the way they did
in "Princess Mononoke" and "Spirited Away;" a fire demon quips from
his grate, much like the cat does in "Kiki's Delivery Service." Even
some of the aerial battleships recall, in design and movement (metal
fins or cilia rowing in the air), mechanical versions of some of the
more bizarre monsters you find in the thousand-page manga version
of "Nausicaa."