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Library books!

-Shigeru Naoya short stories in an adapted-for-insufficiently-literate-children edition
-A book about Abe no Seimei
-Books on fantasy and 'techno-gothic' (gothic and cyberpunk, hm?) by Kotani Mari, feminist SF critic and translator of Joanna Russ's "How to Suppress Women's Writing" into Japanese
-A history of Japanese children's literature
-"Almost Transparent Blue," by Murakami Ryuu, because I thought I should. It's about junkies. There's a scene with a cockroach and eeeew.

(And I ordered some new books from the online Japanese bookstore, because they sent me a 500-yen gift certificate).

It was a good day until I sort of backed into someone in a parking lot. No damage done, but very distressing nonetheless--totally my own fault.

I am once again distressed that living a non-hermit life requires a skill that is both hard and likely to be fatal and expensive when you do it badly.

(Upon further consideration, this has nothing, no, nothing, on the time Middle Sister drove an expensive car [Mercedes, maybe?] into the limousine of a minor relative-of-a-diplomat [if I remember correctly] in Paris, which she spent much of the next year paying for, so, eh, I'm not going to continue feeling that bad about it any more. Sibling rivalry: sometimes it's depressing. Sometimes it's positively wonderful).

The Illusionist

Here's the thing about twist endings:

When you don't see them coming, and you like the movie, you're never sure whether it's really a good movie or you're just impressed with the twist.

When you do see them coming, and you like the movie, you're never sure whether it's really a good movie or you're just impressed with yourself for figuring out the twist.

I read too many short-shorts as a child so I can often see a twist coming from a mile away; The Sixth Sense didn't surprise me. And neither did The Illusionist. But I can say it's a movie that absolutely plays fair with its audience. It's called The Illusionist! It's sleight-of-hand from beginning to end! It's like the YA novel The Thief: when you see a narrator deceiving everyone, you'd better believe he's going to deceive you too.

Aside from that: Pretty Edward Norton good, soft-focus love scenes bad. (Not wholly the fault of Jessica Biel, though I don't actually think she's capable of acting. It's just... melodrama. Enh.) And "pretty" isn't really fair to Edward Norton, who just about carries the whole movie with his acting alone, and I'm not the kind of person who usually notices acting unless it's really bad.

There's more than enough plot to build a very solid movie even without any kind of twist ending; and I liked that the twist ending wasn't just an opportunity to be clever about fooling the audience, but very much a case of structure and plot working together.

Thanks for the recommendation, Meaghan!