The Witch Movie Project. Oh my gosh, I still can't get used to that, Corina. That violin, a witch going... Man, it's just still, still scaring me a little bit. I actually have nightmares about that now.

Like, I hear that in my sleep. It might just be because I have a show on loop. I don't know. What were you going to say? It's attention grabbing, you know?

You're sitting in a doctor's office, that comes on. It's going to get the whole room excited for what you're watching. It is, it is. And what you're watching is The Witch Movie Project right here on Ride The Wave Media. I am just playing.

This is Courtney Pearl, host of Practically Magic, our witch expert here. Right? That's what you're here for? She dances over there? Always.

I'm a little bit worried when you start doing that. I'm like, is she having a good time or is she hexing something right now? Either way. Yeah, right? Now I'm kind of scared.

I even questioned it. I don't even know. I don't even know. It's powerful stuff. Dancing is.

What I do know is that this Witch Movie Project is leading up to an incredible event. October 26th at Novel by Daybreak by Crested Communities. At Novel Daybreak by Crested Communities. Yes. Tell me more, Courtney.

Tell me more. We got more. Oh, so excited. Land of a Thousand Hills has agreed to donate some prizes. So we are having a costume contest.

Dress up if you like dressing up as witches or anything from the witch movies that we've reviewed so far. I love that. And if you want to see your movie that you so much love and favor, you better vote. The polls are out there. We've got all the past weeks up.

Midsummer got a lot of votes. Suspiria got a lot of votes. But no surprise there. Yeah, no surprise because it was Suspiria versus Suspiria. Right.

So yeah. Yeah. What else we got to talk about? The event. Livcake parties.

Yeah. It would be decorating the event. This thing went from us just going to be showing a movie out in the parking lot. We're like, come watch a movie with us. And now we've gotten this.

It's turned into this to an actual whole event like Livcake Parties is going to decorate. It's going to be a haunted house looking thing theme with part which I don't even know what's going to happen. Yeah. Carla's amazing. She's going to make it look real.

She's going to set the mood for us. She's going to she's amazing at getting like a whole vibe going for an event. Right. Like the decorations that it's a journey. It's not just a party.

It's it's a journey. Is that her tagline or did you just make I just made that up? We got to send that over to Carla. She's a hire me to come up with tagline. Yeah.

Carla, if you're watching, Courtney needs some money on that right there to trademark. Okay. I'm just happy to promote Carla and her amazing skills. She's amazing. Exactly.

Exactly. Let's get to today's two movies slash three maybe bonus. Yeah, we're going to kind of add in that bonus movie because I just feel like we can't talk about these two movies without that third movie being mentioned. No, not at all. And I just got to say here that I kind of I was not really looking forward to this week.

I was not. I know it's it's it's anime. I've never been a big fan of anime. It's not one of those. I'm anti anime.

I just I guess I caught the stereotype of either you love it or you hate it. And I just never really gave it a chance. Honestly, I did watch a lot of anime years ago with a bunch of my buddies, Dylan and his name is old Toddy Locks now. Nice. I got some.

Yeah, there's some characters I've been I've had in my life. That's he's one of my favorite stuff. But I'm thinking about that those times now. I'm like, all right, I'm reminiscing. You got transported, transported.

I did. I did. But I put this off for for far too long. And I got to say that one reason was it was anime. Another reason was let me tell you how this happened because it was really messed up.

I was in Hollywood for a red carpet event. Yes, I'm toot my own horn. But as I was there, I was trying to prepare for for watching these movies. This was on my on my schedule. Now, I don't know if you've been into the hotel rooms lately, Courtney, but let me hit a little rant here because I got I left the red carpet red carpet event in Hollywood.

I didn't go to the after parties. I went back to the hotel room to watch our first movie, Kiki's Delivery Service. I put this off. Now, hotel rooms now, they they think they've made this easy, but they haven't. There's no more this cable in the room and all that.

And there's no more free HBO. Yeah, it's log into your own service. OK, cool. I can do that. Yeah.

My phone. 30 minutes of me trying to log into my account. Oh, I know. I can't get in. And what's even matter?

What's even make what even makes me madder is I'm looking at the building of the streaming service of my choice across the street. I could have walked over there and said, hey, I just want to watch this movie. I got a log in at the building. So I gave up. For a little bit, I finally gave this movie a chance.

And oh, my gosh, I had seen this a long time ago and realized when looking at the animation, there's the same director from Princess Mononoke. And that was a huge movie for me and my buddies back 20 years ago. Ah. Yeah. Hayao Miyazaki.

And let me tell you, let me preface this before we go any further. I know I have an accent. I promise you right now, when I try to pronounce these Japanese names, I am not poking fun. I'm not making fun. It's the way it's coming out.

Yeah. I got to put that out front. I got to put that out front. But Hayao Miyazaki, director of this movie and Princess Mononoke and our other movie, Howl's Moving Castle, which is incredible as well. Now, when I started Kiki's and this is with the plot, not even talking about anything, it's not long.

It's 30 seconds in when you basically you don't even think animate anymore. Yeah. Yeah. Not the way I had experienced anime. And I'm with you.

I feel like, you know, we're not too like hardcore anime fans coming in here talking about anime movies and like all this. I think it's important to note that we are two people. Me, same. I, my experience with anime was kind of the cheesy cartoons we grew up with in the 80s. There was that like racer show or even later on when like the Pokemon cartoons came out.

I was not a fan. I was not somebody that was like, yeah, I thought it was a little cheesy. I felt like the storylines are a little cheesy. I felt like, you know, you get that like the giant wide mouth when they're yelling and like the background is just like some blurred lines while they're like, you know, and I just never got into I was a Disney girl. OK, I'm all about like Little Mermaid, Cinderella.

That's what I watched 24 7. So I am with you. I had to actually like jump that hump to be like, I'm going to watch this movie and see what it's all about and see what people. But these movies have held up for 20 years. People love these movies.

And now I get why. What did you think about just I mean, how long did it take you to get past the anime part? Oh, like you said, within the first couple of seconds, the artistry and the director being an artist himself and having his artwork from these movies in galleries. Like, that's no joke. These movies transport you visually.

And I'm just like every time I watch them and I had to rewatch them to get ready for this, to like research it and really dive into it. And I was like, I love it even more. This the next time I watch it, I'm like just blown away at the visual, you know, Kiki on the Hill. It's kind of a, you know, it's never specific about what the setting is, but a lot of them are kind of northern European inspired places or setting, even though them being Japanese movies. Yeah.

Yeah. Which makes it you're not really sure where it is. And it's a part of your imagination. Like you said, if this thing transports you, it transports your imagination and really you become immersed. And not just this film, but pretty much any film he does.

Like that's kind of the story. The town of Kariko, where it starts, that's where we got a teenage witch. Yeah. One talking black cat, one broomstick. Yep.

She basically leaves her house to find her place in the world. And Kariko was, fun fact for you, was based off of Stockholm in Visby, British towns. So good call there on the European ones, but still not knowing where they're actually placed. Yeah, it's sort of vague. It's like generic, you know, even in like Howl's Moving Castle, you're never quite sure what time period we're in.

Because things are a little like they have like these steam locomotive trolleys that are going around the town and stuff. So it's like, I'm not really sure. It's just it does. It exists beyond time and space. I love that.

In Howl's, you don't even really know where you are when you jump inside of the Moving Castle because to me, and I had surround sounds. So there's there's bass going, there's all this and there's lots of noise in the castles moving. And I'm like, man, this is, they go inside, they close the door, it all stops moving and everything. I was like, yeah, that was still cool experience right there. Back to Kiki and Gigi.

That's the cat's name, Gigi. Yes, who is voice, the English voice, Phil Hartman. Yes, yes, absolutely. And I this just caused me to go into a deep dive because we know Phil's passing was tragic. And and I don't know what caused me to do it, but I started just going on a deep dive and I ended up following his daughter on Instagram.

Like, well, she's doing some amazing things over here. And I'm like, how sad and tragic for her to lose her parents so young. But then I'm like, wow, she's doing some cool stuff. So I would just start following her. And I'm like, what's she up to?

She has this whole Instagram. She's got some amazing photography. And yeah, well, I'll I'll tag that later. Well, yeah, we'll go on that tangent. I want to invite her out to the which movie project screening.

Yeah, it would be amazing, right. Be like, hey, in honor of your dad. I mean, I love Phil Hartman, loved everything he did. So anyway, that's a whole that's a whole side thing. But he voices the cat is amazing job there.

He did some voiceover work for cartoons and different different animated features. Yes, in his career. But what's interesting to know about the cast here, the English cast, right? Like it was dubbed in English by English actors, which is what I focused on. Yes, that's what I watched.

But a young Josh Hutcherson as Markle as a was in Howl's Moving Castle. Sorry, that was a different list of cast list. All right. I was excited. Josh Hutcherson.

Sorry. Sorry. I was excited. Oh, hey, you can you can think of girl. But it's OK, because to me, these are the same world.

It's the same. It's almost like, sure, it's different movies. You're in the same. You're in the same. Oh, but there's so much crossover here.

Right. And I was going to say, um, Tristan Dunst, young Tristan Dunst was a little kicky. And yeah, speaking of kicky, that's you. You're kicky today. I love that.

I just saw that. I just noticed that. Maybe I just look at you. I don't even know. So I pushed you a little bit out of your comfort zone today because we have been focusing quite a bit.

And I love horror movies, love the genre. But I thought if we're going to do a which movie project, we've got to at least acknowledge that there are role models for witches. And the director of this movie, these movies specifically does a great job of female role models that are really worth putting out onto the front center stage. Like, Kiki is 13. Yeah.

And in this in this make believe world, 13 is when young witches go out into the world and start their training, which in a real life world, I'm not sure any place on Earth where that would be safe or encouraged for a 13 year old to be like, I'm going out to make it in the world on my own. And this is why I love this movie. And I have to say some of the movies I've picked for this project have been more along the lines of let's highlight what a witch really is. And that's a woman in total control of herself. W.I.T.C.H.

In total control of herself. That's Kiki, right? She's like, I'm 13. I'm ready. Put me out there.

She gets on her broom. She's like packed her bags. She's flying into trees a little bit. Yeah, I love that part. Not quite confident on the broom.

And then she does a little dip off. Yeah. Oh, there she is. Yeah. And at one point in the movie, because we're going to skip around a little bit here today, but she kind of loses her powers when she kind of loses some some confidence in herself.

She realizes that she can't fly or she's lost that the natural ability to just take off on the broom. And there's a scene where she's like running down the hill and she keeps leaping into the air and then she falls. And I said, is this kind of like dreams you have of flying? I don't know about anybody else, but for me, when I have dreams of flying, sometimes I'm like, I know I'm supposed to be able to fly and I'm just like running and falling and like jumping. So you can interpret dreams.

What would that dream interpretation be? Well, I think as far as how it plays a part in the movie for Kiki, it really feels like it connects like that to me. Maybe it's like a message of my subconscious saying, you don't totally believe in yourself. You're thinking too hard, trying to make something happen when you really just need to let go of any expectation or any forcing it to happen and let it flow naturally. And that's when it will actually happen, which is how Kiki remembers how to fly is she's like, I've been in my head too much.

I've wanted it too much. And I need to remember what it was that allowed me to be able to fly in the first place. Tap into those powers. Now, she uses those powers earlier in the movie after after almost a near traffic accident and they end up in the bustling seaside town there. They've got Kiki meeting a son of a son of the maker's wife, I believe pregnant.

Right? Yes. Another independent woman in charge of herself, making success happen with a bakery. Love this. Love everything about this.

Yeah. Now, did we know if Miyazaki, did he make this with undertones of that of the building up the women and. He has been noted, I've seen a lot of reviews that it is noticeable that a lot of the themes that he is chosen and, you know, not that he wrote the script or anything, but he's chosen for his portrayal of women and girls and empowerment in their characters as the heroine of the story. Yes. So because I got I might cross the line here, but there's a little bit of the animation and stuff in there that it almost feels a little bit sexualized.

Different positions. They've got the art in and it's. Yeah, it could be perceived that way. And I will. And I have to note that, you know, when we first meet Tombo, the young boy who ends up being a good friend to Kiki.

I mean, so we'll forgive him for that. But in the beginning, he's a little pushy, right? He's trying to talk to her. I think he's just really excited that she's a witch and she can fly. And he is a aviation.

Obsessed. Obsessed. Yeah, person. So, yeah, he's he's like, oh, hi, my name is Tombo. Like, what's your name?

And like and she's like, please leave me alone. I'm busy. And he's like, well, I just want to talk to you. What's wrong with talking to you? I mean, he kind of like he's like that little dog in the cartoons.

This is like jumping around her and like kind of like, hey, just like I'm and I I have to I have to just point this out. The first time we watched this movie, I watched with my boys. All my boys are young. And I said, hey, I just want you guys to know that if a girl says leave me alone, you do it right away. Right.

OK. Consent, right. I'm teaching consent to my boys. We don't keep bothering people when they say, please leave me alone. They're setting a boundary and you need to respect it.

And so he kind of like wears on her. I mean, eventually throughout the movie, he shows up as I'm really just a friend here to help. I, you know, I just want to connect with you about flying. That's something we're both interested in. And it turns out he's a really good friend.

And that's great. Yeah. It's basically like she's starting to settle into her new life. Basically of normalcy. And then she's got this awkward friendship.

This boy that keeps showing up. But I mean, she's building these connections while she's trying to do her training. So she doesn't know what her specialty is going to be. She realizes flying is kind of the only thing she knows how to do. So she creates.

So she becomes the delivery service. And she people pay her to deliver things around town or into other towns and and also delivering bread for the bakery while she gets to have room and board there. I mean, she's really making her way little by little. As we were talking about earlier, off camera, off recording, we were saying business is made by relationships. And that's what Kiki is doing.

She's like, I'll do this for you if you'll help me out here. And she meets the little old ladies who helped her out with a job later. She yes, she's building these little relationships. And let me just throw this out there. When when when Tombo's introduced, there's there's a cameo.

Hayao Miyazaki himself is in the movie right there. There's a cameo. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. I need to watch it again now.

You're going to have to everybody else is going to have to go watch that. So Kiki hits some rough patches and then she works to, you know, get her confidence back. And she's basically she's one witch on a mission all the way to the climactic rescue of. Yeah, Tombo, her friend, her poor little goofy. Weird little friend.

She's she believes she's lost her powers at that point. So she's, you know, kind of in a depressed state. She stays in bed. She's sick for for one of the scenes. And then she just kind of doesn't.

She loses confidence in herself, as we all do from time to time. And and yeah, ends up having to rescue him because he's hanging from the what do they call it? It's a blimp. But they use a different word for it. Airship, I think, or something like airship, something like that.

Yeah. Yeah. Here she is bouncing off of like buildings on her broom. She has to like grab a broom from someone because hers broke, which when you talk about sexualizing, which is a little bit I do, I will just point out that the idea of Beesom's, which is the broom, the broom itself was called Beesom's and broom is a type of herb or grass that you use to make a Beesom with. So we all just call them brooms.

I actually just got together for the fall equinox with some of my I don't know if they would use the term witchy friends, but they are a little bit my witchy friends. And we made Beesom's for the fall equinox. So we burned the Beesom's from last year and we create new ones for the new year. And they they were used by witches to clean their house, literally clean the house, but also cleanse the house of energies and, you know, anything negative, just hanging out. But there is some correlation possibly with Beesom's and perhaps a kind of sexual connotation to brooms and what they might represent.

So I'll leave you with the imagination of what that might be. I see what you're saying. Now Beesom's, these aren't these ones that you you you packaged up or whatever you said back for the fall equinox. These are not stuff that you bought down at the hobby lobby. Is this what you were out forging in the forest of?

Yeah, well, I was using those to make witches torches. But yeah, we we just go out. We get some grasses and some leaves and some flowers and different things we want to decorate it with. We have a stick and then we wrap it and you can wrap charms and whatever kind of things you want in it. And it's just whatever intention you put into it, just like anything else.

I mean, it can be nothing. It can be a stick with a bunch of leaves on it or it can be this is me putting my intention of what I want for the new year and wrapping it up and like protection for my home, whatever you intend for it to be. Right. Love it. Let's go back to Kiki.

Yeah. I got to ask you about when she loses those powers. Did you think she actually lost the powers or was it just in her head? Because she can't even talk to the cat anymore. Like, Gigi.

So did she actually lose them or was it a. In her head type thing, like like you said, that she's had to get. Well, this is where her friendship with Ursula, who is the sort of artist that lives out in the cabin in the woods, which, by the way, I mean, we never point out that she's a witch as well. Yeah, she would know she would not name herself a witch. But I mean, how is Ursula not a witch?

She's out in the woods creating magic with her art. I mean, and this is where, again, the visual artistry of these movies comes into play, because when Kiki walks into that cabin and sees that Ursula has been working on a portrait of her in the sky with like a Pegasus, and it's just I mean, it took my breath away and it's an animated movie. I'm just like, she's making magic in the woods, sketching out this art and making art with, you know, with her skills. And and she explains to Kiki like, hey, you know, when I started when I started doing art when I was little, it's all I could do. It was all I wanted to do.

It's all I thought about all day long. But then she reached a point at some point where she started to doubt herself or she started to think too hard about whether her art was good or not. And she lost confidence and she didn't want to do it anymore. And she felt like everything she draw was crap, like it just wasn't working. And the end relating to how Kiki has lost her powers, I think you're right in saying it's in her head and it's also real.

Like she lost those powers because it's in her head. Right. She got him back. She fully integrates in this community, got confidence back. She's one successful delivery service, one broomstick, one talking cat, one happy witch.

Roll the credits. Right. Yep. Yeah. That's it.

And then that's it. And in that show, there you have it. Love it. What a beautiful, beautiful movie, though. And then you got Howl's Moving Castle to me in the same realm, same director.

Different premise, but you still got you got witches. Magicians, magical people. Tornapads. Yeah. Tornapads.

So I already kind of teased it because I accidentally said the wrong the wrong movie. But Josh Hutchinson in the cast in Howl's Moving Castle of the little boy, Markle, which was supposed to be Michael. But I think in the translation of how to say Michael, it didn't work out. So his name ended up being Markle. So that's how that came about.

But but Christian Bale. This is the second Batman to do voiceover work for the studios. Michael Keaton was in another movie of the same studios. Ghibli, Ghibli. There's a million ways to pronounce this.

Yeah, yeah, I think I say Ghibli, but I'm not sure if that's right, because again, we're not like super huge fan like. So the fandom of the studios can can forgive us maybe a little place. Yeah. Emily Mortimer playing the young Sophie. Yeah.

And this Christian Bale. Christian Bale is Howl. Yes, is Howl. Correct. Yeah.

Oh, and I mean, for all of those of Romanticie readers out there, Howl's Moving Castle is like right in there with like, you know, fantasy romance genre of like heroes with wings. Yeah. You know, strapping handsome men with fe magical powers can turn themselves into a bird. Like, it's all right up our alley. So we love it.

Go through the rest of those people that are voices in this. Yes, we've Jean. Let's see. Jean Simmons, old Sophie. In the Japanese version, the same actress does young Sophie and old Sophie, but in the English dubbed version, they have two different actresses.

Also, the same voice actress that played Kiki did Ursula in the first movie. She did the same. She did both voices. Wow. I was also saying Billy Crystal played Castle in Howl.

Yeah. I picked up his voice instantly. I was like, oh yeah, that's one of those that like, yeah. And I was just watching our third bonus movie Spirited Away last night. The cast was not quite as well known to me, but the voice of the guy that does the dragon.

And I was like, oh, that voice. So like before I looked it up, I was just listening to it going, that's so familiar. Who is that? Oh, that's I. Yeah.

So Billy Crystal, that's definitely one that you listen to when you're like, oh, I know that one. I know that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You got anything else on the cast there before we get into the movie? No, I think we'll get into Howl's Moving Castle.

We'll focus. Focus. We got this. Howl's Moving Castle is incredible. I mean, I really like I forgot how much I liked it.

And then I watched it again and I was like, oh, this movie is amazing. Again, animation right off the jump is incredible. Cooks you, brings you in. We got basically in the first little bit of the movie, you got Sophie. Sophie's a witch.

Or not. Yes. OK, so that's that's up for debate. However, I will say that this Howl's Moving Castle was it was inspired by a book. Howl's Moving Castle is a novel by Diana Wynn Jones, who wrote the book.

And in the book, Sophie has powers and she has a fire demon. I don't know if it's calcifer, but she has her own fire demon. So I haven't read the novel. I don't know how that works, but she does have powers of her own. And they decided when making the movie, they adapted it.

They changed some things. The author was still really incredibly happy with how everything turned out. She was very like supportive of them making changes. But that was one thing that was a little bit different. And when you watch the movie, it feels like Sophie doesn't have powers.

However, I would dare say that definitely she has powers. OK, OK. But it's not concrete. Like this is up for debate. It may not look like the way that Howl has powers.

It may not look like the way that the Witch of the Waste has powers, but she has influence in a certain way that is undeniable. Right. And several times they say things like she comes right in and she starts like, I don't know, kind of bossing calcifier around. She's like, do this, do this and, you know, here, move there, do this. And she shakes up the castle, Markle, calcifier, Howl that lived together there in the castle.

Like she shakes things up and they're like, wow, calcifier doesn't usually listen to anybody else. Yeah. Like. So how can you deny that she doesn't have some influence on how this all plays out? And calcifer is a fire demon.

So. If he is listening, then she's probably got some sort of supernatural control or something, right? She has some authority, for sure. And I want to point out, so we're going through the movie, we start out, so we have again. Sophie as a young in the beginning, she's a young girl.

She makes hats in her father's hat shop and and she's moving through the city. She gets cornered by some soldiers and they're harassing her. Yeah. So we have kind of a similar situation in what was going on with Kiki, where she's getting kind of bombarded by Tambo. And she's like, leave me alone.

But Sophie's not strong enough in herself yet to say something. She's very meek. You can see her kind of being scared and they're like, oh, what's the little mouse afraid of? Oh, she's even cuter when she's scared. And again, I had to point out, I'm like, hey, this is not OK.

Yeah. Yeah. We don't act like this to people. You know, it's cool. Those are grown men to a little girl, too.

Yeah. It's borderline uncomfortable to watch that part. Yeah. And I mean, it being a family movie, it's like, this is interesting that we're showing this kind of side of things where it can be like, this is how women feel all the time, as opposed to how Kiki feels confident, 13 years old, going out into the world to make her fortune, go out and do her thing. She's not scared at all.

But I mean, Sophie has reason to be scared. She's like, there's soldiers everywhere. There's there's a war. There's a war going on. Yeah.

And the war is pretty pretty big part of the movie, too. Yeah. Yeah. And right here, though, Sophie goes into the hat shop. We got to mention this is at the very beginning of the movie early on.

So lady walks in, tells her she's tacky, tells her she's the tackiest thing in there. She tells him to leave. And then she does this thing and basically whooshes through Sophie. And. It puts a spell on her and we find out that this is the witch of the waste.

And this spell turns her into an old lady. It basically she looks like a witch that you think would be a star of the witch, really. Yeah. And she looks similar to the witch in Spirited Away. There's a witch with like, I mean, kind of exaggerated wrinkles, really large nose, like that kind of look, which I love about the animation, too.

I just have to point out, I love the detail. I mean, just take a moment, freeze frame any part of this movie, any of these movies and look at the background. Yeah. Like the setting, the carpet, the rugs, the molding on the on the walls. Just everything is so detailed.

Before, you know, CGI was used, probably it was it's it's real art. I don't even mention Miyazaki's. He's an artist as well. He's not just the director like he's you know, that's an incredible talent to be able to put all that together and bring these worlds, this universe together, which that's what a lot of anime is. You mentioned earlier, Pokemon and all that, which you're going to make a lot of people mad there.

We're going to have some hate mail. That's OK. You go right ahead. My son already gives it to me every day. He's like, Mom, I love Pokemon so much.

And I'm like, yeah, it's great. You know what, though, I started thinking about this. I was like me saying, oh, I don't like anime. I'm a huge fan of The Legend of Zelda. I like I played those games.

That's anime. Yeah. That's anime. I've been playing that stuff for 20 plus years. Yeah, I think we're bigger fans than we think we are.

We are. I think it's I think it really got I don't want to go off on a tangent, but it got a bad rap somewhere along the way. And either it was polarizing it, maybe it's the same type of situation that certain fan bases have of stuff that it almost turns other people off to what they're doing. Yeah, I don't know. Well, I think what I'm trying to say is I'm happy to be wrong.

I'm completely letting my bias out there. I'm admitting that I had bias against it and it wasn't fair and that was wrong of me. And I apologize to all the anime and and fans of anime forever and ever because I'm like I'm I'm in now. I've been transformed by these movies. Same here.

She speaks for me out there. She speaks for me. And thank you to Max Max for for recommending me nothing but anime now because that's what it is across the it's all like you like that. Watch this next. I'm like, OK, I will.

And you better believe I will. Yeah. The detail. Back to how we have like the wrinkles in her face, the details and like just and and I will point out then you see old Sophie start this adventure. Old Sophie.

She's she wakes up. She's like 90 years old in her body. She can't even stand up straight. She's so old and crooked and bent. And and she's you hear her pain.

She's like, oh, this old body. And I'm actually I'm so impressed that she looks in the mirror. That first day and she's like, all right, yeah, we can work with this. I was like, really? Yeah, I woke up and I was 90 the next day.

I'd be like, oh, my gosh, what am I going to do? I mean, I'm a little bit vain. I'll just I'll be honest. I don't want to look young forever, but. I love this.

I love that she loves herself. Yeah, old. And you see a different Sophie from when she was the scared little mouse in the beginning. She becomes brave. She goes out and she starts this adventure.

She is not even afraid to jump on Howell's moving castle, which she thought was someone. And the rumors are that Howell eats the hearts of young girls like she eats their hearts and she's like, well, now that I'm old, I guess I have nothing to fear. And she just hops right in. And I love it. And not only that, but she moves in to the castle and just gets comfortable.

Like, yeah, things start to change. Like you said earlier, people start to listen to her and. You have you even have the witch of the waist moving in with her. Oh, gosh, that part of the movie. She kept saying, if I ever see that witch of the waist, I'm going to.

And she's like mad at her for cursing her. But by the end, when all the things have happened, we were, you know, the lots of lots of things have happened. But eventually, this poor witch of the waist was like, I don't know, senile by this point. And just like, I mean, then Sophie has such a good heart. She's like, well, I mean, she's not threatening anymore.

She has no powers anymore. I'm going to. There's the scene where she's spoon feeding her. Yeah. Did you see that?

Oh, you're talking about. She's helping a another. Which that took 70, 80 years off her life. And without even a question, helping just helping her and enjoy. Yeah, they welcome her into House Castle and there she is.

And at one point, how even says I'm having dinner with my sworn enemy, the witch of the waist. And, you know, everybody who's at that table and he's like, all right. He's like, I guess that brings me to this point. So this is Sophie's powers. OK, so we're talking about is she a witch?

Is she not? How, even though he is kind of the hero of the story, he's against the war that's happening. There's been a kidnapping of a prince in the neighboring kingdom. And now they're at war. War is happening.

This is very anti war novel or message and howls against the war. So he's kind of fighting against it. But he admits he's scared and he's been running. And the reason why he plays these different aliases and he has a moving castle is because he's scared and he's not really willing to face face up to responsibility for where he needs to do that. And he says, because Sophie goes in for him to see the king.

And he shows up and she's like, well, why did you make me go if you were going to show up anyway? And he's like, you gave me this confidence. You gave me the strength I needed to face my fears and come and face. This, you know, avoided anymore. And that's an incredible thing for to happen and be said.

It's a huge theme of the movie, really. Yeah. Facing your fears, not being scared. And yeah, it's an incredible theme. I think another theme, underlying theme is the fact that Sophie does take care of the witch of the waste.

And there's calcifer. It's to me. It's that when you're in high school, it's that outcast group. It's the clique. It's the people who are like, oh, that's the skater kids or the, you know, the goth kids.

But they kind of take on that themselves. And maybe that's why Sophie helped out the witch of the way. She's like, she's just as bad off as I am now. It doesn't matter that she did it to me. Yeah.

Like if I don't help her, no one will. And at the same time, it's a bonus to you know, so. Yeah. And you see this already in when they meet up at the castle to meet up with the king, the witch of the waste is there and she's not still not very kind to Sophie. She's, you know, talking to her.

And then they have to climb that staircase. Oh, yeah. Staircase scene is one of my favorites in the whole movie. Watching Sophie, this old woman just, you know, oh, bones creaking and she's just huffing and puffing. And then she carries, she goes back down and grabs the dog.

She's carrying the dog with her up the stairs. And then the witch of the waste is just sweating bullets. I mean, again, the detail in the animation here is fantastic. She's just, you know, you see, like her neck is melting into her body. It hits.

I loved this. I loved this whole scene. And then every scene after that showed the witch of the waste after she had been. Her powers were stripped of her. She looks completely different in her face.

And every scene where you see her face and she's just sitting there like, oh, with her little nose. And I mean, this is where anybody listening right now who hasn't seen these movies, please go see these movies. It is incredible. It's just both. All three of all three.

I didn't actually I haven't seen. What is it? Spirited Away? Spirited Away is our like third. We have to mention bonus.

Yeah, there is a witch in Spirited Away who owns a bath house for the spirits. OK, but the spirits come to relax and rejuvenate. And the movie is again about a little girl. So we have this little girl who's the heroine. She and her parents walk through a tunnel and it becomes a portal into another world.

And it's a spirit world. And unfortunately, the parents eat the food. And I guess you're not supposed to do that to spirit food because they turn into pigs. And they're kind of kidnapped by the witch in this movie. And I just briefly mentioned it because all of these movies have this sort of theme of transporting or, you know, going through some kind of portal into another world.

Almost every culture that I've come across in some way, shape or form has a mythology about another world. Right. Like Egypt has the underworld in Celtic folklore. It's the other world, the Anuvin or the fe world, if you will. And it's it can be the spirit world.

It can be a fe or magical world. But in a lot of folklore, in a lot of mythology, it's like you can step into it at any time. You may not have to go through a portal, but you may be walking in the woods and suddenly find yourself in a place where time and space don't exist. Like you could be there for what feels like a couple of days and then come back. And it's been seven years or, you know, or you go and you feel like you've been there for a decade or an entire generation.

And then you come back out of it and only a few minutes have passed in the real world. This is a very common thing you see. See, it is like Chronicles of Narnia and Stranger Things. We see this theme a lot. Right.

I've known some movies all have it. I've known some people that experimented with some drugs that have done that to them where they went. Some people, some people out there. I know some people. Yeah.

Yeah. Won't say who? No, I won't say who. Yeah. But isn't it interesting?

It is. I love I love that that take on Spirit of the Way. We got to wrap up Howes for anybody out there listening. We want to leave him hanging. Yeah.

Basically, he how has well, he has the confrontation with his former mentor, some magical duels. The bombs are going off. There's the there's the his internal battle basically with the demons. Castles attacked. Sophie saves the day.

There's a collapsing castle. Animation is all point here. It's wild. And all from the imagination of the director, by the way, because in the novel, Howes Moving Castle, it never explains how it's a moving castle. She doesn't describe it.

So that was all him. That was all him coming up with the like the legs and the like the whole thing moving like a robot kind of, you know, bits and parts that all move independently. The chicken legs is is a throwback to Baba Yaga's house, the witch who lives in the woods. Her house is on chicken legs. I just thought that was an interesting connection.

I love that. Good Easter egg that you found there. Yeah. Yeah. That's what I love that Baba Yaga.

You know, that's what you're here. I. The war going on. I want to also note that that was not in the novel. That's Miyazaki added added the war element later.

So as the bombs and stuff are blowing up, nobody dies. There's no bodies. It's like, yeah, which is, you know, it's so you just get the you get the the inference of this horrible war going on and how many people are dying and how how hard it is. Yep. You got Sophie's Journey into the House passed.

And basically what the curse is lifted at this point. Anything big in there that I missed? I mean, this is yeah, that's. That's yeah. Oh, just I'm like, how can I say enough?

But here's where I can kind of like wrap it all up. We'll tie it in a bow. I want to point out that throughout the movie, you see Sophie break the curse of being the old woman. She's not 90 the whole time. She you see youth brought back little by little.

And you see it kind of shift. Sometimes when howl sees her sleeping, she's young Sophie. And sometimes when she gets really passionate about something or she's really involved somehow, you see her like the wrinkles disappear and she's young Sophie again for a moment. And then she's back to old Sophie. So you see throughout that whole movie how she herself transforms and how she influences the transformation of howl and other people around her and that she breaks his curse as well as her own.

Yeah. And in both Kiki and in Howl's Moving Castle, these themes, I think, are really important for me to bring forward in this series we are doing, which movie project? Because, yeah, we're going to have a lot of fun with witches. We're going to have a lot of fun with seeing how they can show up in sort of evil ways. But I want to highlight that the true, true meaning of which is every person, especially women who empower themselves to be independent, to take care of themselves.

And this is where these two movies really like converge. I mean, here's Kiki and Sophie and like they're just women making it right like they're making their destiny happen. That's all it is. You can't say it any better than that. These movies are incredible.

They do. They do stand up the test of time. I mean, we didn't even mention Kiki is 1989. And the animation is still like, oh, it would totally hold a candle to any anything coming out. Not just the animation, but the message itself is very clear today.

All across the world, political environments, any kind of environment you want to think of is still very, very relevant. These two movies, though, I loved them. Once again, thanks for Max for recommending nothing but anime for me. There's Ponyo out there. There's all these other ones out there.

I love Ponyo. Yeah, yeah, Princess Mononoke, though. People got to go watch Princess Mononoke. That's an all time classic. The next one, doing that one.

Yeah. It's an all time classic there. Anything else before we wrap? Thank you for indulging in my little side quest here of some movies that maybe present witches in a little bit different light so that even people who would never have called themselves a witch or would never own that title. I didn't think I ever would either.

But after seeing a portrayal of witches in this light or in some of the movies we have coming up in our next few episodes, I'm proud to call myself a witch. And I hope more people will be proud to call yourself a witch. We'll leave it at that. Now, if you haven't seen, listened to all the other episodes, check out Ride The Wave Media on YouTube. I believe it's at Ride The Wave Media podcast.

That's our channel. You can see all of our videos only there. You can listen to this thing on all the major platforms, The Witch Movie Project. Got a couple more episodes coming up, all leading up to the big... Bennett Novel, October 26th, 6 p.m.

Get your tickets. We're going to have to limit the number of tickets, people, because it's indoors. So get your tickets early. They do have some windows over there, though. This is Novel, Daybreak by Crested Communities.

They got some windows. So we may have some people that we could put around the pool area or something. I don't know. Ooh, that would be fun. Yeah.

We're going to pack it out. Live Cake Party. Let's go ahead and name off our sponsors here. We got Live Cake Parties. Thank you so much.

It's going to be an incredible event over at Novel, Daybreak by Crested Communities, who is sponsoring the event too. Pure Sweat and Float Studio, South Jordan. Thank you so much for that. And also Land of a Thousand Hills Coffee Shop, our year-end Daybreak. Yeah, they'll be serving food and drinks when we have our event, because they're right there at Novel.

They're right in the center, their own little coffee shop. And then, you know, they're getting involved in this. So that's going to be awesome. But a costume contest. Don't forget to mention the costume contest.

You've got to dress up. These kinds of events are just more fun if you dress up. It's going to be incredible. I can't wait. See you guys there once again.

Thanks to our sponsors, Novel, Daybreak by Crested Communities, Pure Sweat and Float Studio, South Jordan, Live Cake Parties, and Land of a Thousand Hills. Thank you guys so much. We'll see you next week.