Alas, my hours of mindless video game playing have finally been curbed by intrusions from the real world. Some intrusions have been annoying, like writing applications for TAing positions and grading the final exams from my course. But other intrusions have been pretty good. Sparrow-sitting for example. Turns out Trev’s advisor has a soft spot for just about every living creature on the face of the Earth, and so when this little baby sparrow needed some help, he took him in. But then he had to leave town, and our dogless, catless, and ratless home seemed a good place for him to spend his final days before release into the wild. Not that I’m wholy convinced that he’s ever going to be quite ready for that–he’s exceedingly tame. I guess we shall see.

His Highness, Sparrow William

Another pleasant intrusion: seeing the new anime film from Satoshi Kon, Paprika. I actually didn’t expect to like this film all that much, since even the most positive reviews seemed to just say the movie was trippy and visually interesting, even if it didn’t make any sense. I generally don’t prize artsy over coherence. But honestly, I didn’t think it was that confusing, or that weird really. It was weird. But it was about dreams, so in a way, for all it’s weirdness, it was actually more believeable to me than a lot of other more mundane films. And it was actually visually really interesting, in both really good ways and in disturbing ways. I can, however, understand that people who have never seen an anime film before might be really lost. The film definitely draws both on Kon’s earlier work, as well as on a lot of tropes that are standard in anime, but just plain weird if you’ve never seen them before. And personally, I would have ended the film a little bit earlier. It’s not that the there’s anything especially wrong with the ending, but I feel like it al ties up neatly at one point and then just goes on to belabor some of the main points for a little longer. Overall though, I thought it was a really interesting and generally satisfying film. So ha to all you critics who say I never like any movies! ;-)

Okay, back to watching William and maybe sneaking in some FF. Later!