Fantasia!

after seeing two of tyhe most horrendous movies ever, namely the thai thriller"zee-oui" and the gothic lolita anime "le portrait de petit cossette", i was ecstatic today after "the taste of tea" a magical realism filled feel good japanese movie. let me, however, dwell on the crappiness of the two former before moving on to the latter:
1) zee oui. the story revolves around this mildly mentally retarded chinese young man who gets to thailand after his family dies as a result of WWII. there, he suffers from the abse and discrimation of the population. due to varios events of his life, he believes that murdering children and takign their hearts to make soup will heal his tuberculosis. a female reporter gets on his tracks while the murders of children multiply... although the storilyne could have given rise to a rather gruesome thriller, the results were awful. the dialogues of the characters were nothing but evident and clichéed platitudes. the acting was awful. this movie also hinted the practice of cannibalism in rural china in the 1920s. you never know... ( i must google this right now.... i never laughed so hard while watching a movie lately, i was even crying when zee oui got a seizure or something. for this it should deserve at most one star *
2) le portrait de petit cossette (or it should tather be "petite"). i left after the first 2/3 (only to meet with a close friend and his other friend who was on painkillers due to wisdom teeth removal and then go for sushi, sake and green tea cheesecake. guys you rock.)this story basically revolved arund a curse emerging form the fact that this small girl, cossette d'auvergene who looks 10 yrs old was murdered by her fiance who looks lik he's 30. this was a major turn off, especially to hear a 10 yr old speak of love. how the heck should she know what is the meaning of love between a man and a woman? and then the incoherence and the boredom took over me and i left.
3) the taste of tea, was simply amazing (although one of the strangest movies i got to see in my life, siilarly to bubbahotep, but in a cute way, not in a crazy strange way). it tells of the lives of a small family in the japanese countryside: the animator mother, the father who seems to be a doctor (i missed th forst 10 mins), the daughter who has a giant twin of herself following her around, the son who has this crush on the new girl in class, the sound mixer uncle who comes to live with them and the grandfather who is the insanest character of them all. their activities get intertwined throughout the movie as we see them try to resolve various of their problems, all being told with humour and simplicity. the characters were simply attaching and very human too (although pretty weird). a must see *****.
well that's it for now... the movie critic in me is a bit tired... blarght. back to looking up hotels in quebec city...