laceblade

This is the third movie I've seen by director/animator Makoto Shinkai [the first two being Voices of a Distant Star and The Place Promised in Our Early Days]. Shinkai is pretty neat in that when starting out, he worked on creating Voices of a Distant Star by himself every night when he came home from work. He eventually quit his job to focus on animating as his career. He wrote, produced, and directed VofDS on his Mac, and he and his fiancee did the voices. I admire Shinkai's passion so much!

5 centimeters per second is the speed at which cherry blossoms (sakura) fall through the air. Like people, they start out together and then, at that sometimes excruciatingly slow speed, drift apart. The film is split into three heartwrenching vignettes about different periods of time in the life of Takaki Tono. The things he faces are very common to all people: falling in love, developing friendships, struggling to find meaning in life. It's about people, living their lives. But it's the presentation that makes the film so beautiful and emotional. Compared to the other two movies I've seen by Shinkai, I think that his decision to remove sci-fi elements behooves him quite well.

Additionally, this movie was only an hour and two minutes, broken into three parts for easy viewing consumption.

Here is the trailer, which shows off the superior animation quality as well as the simple, poignant music.

Additionally, rilina uploaded a number of pictures in her write-up of the movie, which also prove how beautiful the movie was.

And yes, Boyfriend, I will watch it again with you.

I have updated my 101 Primer since its original posting two months ago. Nothing has been deleted, but more links have been added (mostly to communities), as well as a new section on "Race and Fandom."

The links to RaceFail posts are by no means even remotely exhaustive, but I tried to pick the ones I thought most appropriate for a 101 primer.

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I purchased the following today, for $.50 a piece!

A Free Man of Color by Barbara Hambly
Fever Season by Barbara Hambly
A Hunger for Home: Louisa May Alcott's Place in American Culture by Sarah Elbert
Toward a Recognition of Androgyny by Carolyn G. Heilbrun
The Female Man by Joanna Russ
Writing and Sexual Difference edited by Elizabeth Abel
The Wounded Woman by Linda Schierse Leonard
Beyond Anger: On Being a Feminist in the Church by Carolyn Osiek, R.S.C.J.

Doesn't that last one sound amazing?! From the back cover:

What happens to a woman who has a deep faith and ardent commitment to her Church, and yet who because of her honesty and openness to truth becomes more and more convinced of the validity of the feminist critique of insitutional religion?

They must undergo a conversion which will transform them. It consists in embracing the cross, not as passive victims, but as free agents capable of sustaining the liberating and redemptive suffering that is necessary in order that their continuing presence in the Church can effect needed changes according to the pattern of the Gospel.

OMF! Exciting preview for next week's Dollhouse, IMO.

( Spoilers, duh! )