i'm going to completely steal what i already wrote in an email for this movie's review. totally cheating, but i am doing several of these in a row and it is 3am.

it was fucking bizarre. it would do these weird jump-cuts and it made no linear sense. it was all sort of staged like a kabuki/no play too and so it was all these big stages that looked like stages, with set design and everything. and then they would sing and then it would turn out to be magic or a dream and they'd be back where they were before but not really there either. and the princess tanuki kept dying and being brought back to life by this "frog of paradise" who sang in a high pitched girl-voice, "riiiiiiiibbbbbbit! riiiiiiibbbbbbit! believe in kanon!" so while there it had some boddhisatva action going on it also had italian and portuguese catholics at other parts.

odd? yes. zhang ziyi singing in japanese? not so believable. joe odagiri, the male lead, though is adorable. he was also just in this ninja movie i bought on ebay, 'shinobi', which is excellent and he is awesome in. ninjas!

jason and claudine fell asleep during it though. my friend candy and i kept looking at each other going, "what the FUCK is going on in this movie? was that really funny? i just don't know." and rachel was giggling at parts that i could tell she thought were funny but which i was suspicious of. possibly it was more parts where zhang ziyi was inexplicably speaking in chinese, and rachel is chinese so understood those bits. the italian and portuguese catholics spoke in italian and portuguese and no one understood them.

on the whole though, i enjoyed it. it was very pretty visually and it was odd enough to hold my attention without being too odd to make me irritated.