no cheesy (and superbly shitty) smashmouth-y covers, no bezillion dollar tie-ins, no fart jokes. just the damn funiest movie i've seen since toy story 2. and talk about suspense! my apologies to the neighbors; since i hear their conversations as if they were including me in their dialogues, i'm sure my guffawing (ralph fiennes was fabulous, and thank goodness they kept the original fella who supplies wallace's voice instead of finding some lunk hollywood-type) was quite evident. and this means i've seen two of the oscar nominations for animated film; the corpse bride -- as much as i hate to slag tim burton and his tribe of hot topic-doused followers -- was half-baked and a sad film-school-y copy of nightmare before christmas. and since howl's moving castle is anime (a genre i cannot possibly understand due to its...well...un-understandability and myriad plotmatic complexities), there's no way wallace and gromit can fail to pick up the honor....wensleydale?