Got the Harry Potter track jacket! *dork*

😀

Last chance for holiday cards! 😀 I really should have written them this weekend but I got lazy. Anyway, if you’d like to receive a card from me, please send me an email! They’re going out by the end of this week, I promise.

I got the chance to see Memoirs of a Geisha last Friday and I really, really liked it (it’s playing in select cities and yay, San Francisco is one of them). I read the book months ago but from what I remember, they kept all the major storylines and characterizations true to the source.

The young actress who played Chiyo in the beginning was so great. But I felt like I had no sense of the timeline. I know they had to cut out much of her childhood for length but it distracted me to not know how much time had passed and how old she was at certain parts of the movie.

Michelle Yeoh as Mameha and Gong Li as Hatsumomo (OMG, she’s EVIL) were phenomenal. Easily the 2 best performances of the movie for me. Sadly, I was disappointed with Ziyi Zhang. Maybe it was intentional but there were a few times where she had a very blank look on her face, like she didn’t really know what she was supposed to be feeling. As a whole, though, the acting was excellent — but I wonder how the film would have been had actual Japanese actors been cast. (Yes, I know they needed bankable “names” for the main characters and most of the movie-going public wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between various Asian actors but I’m still curious).

But the BEST thing about the movie to me was the music. There were times when I was just listening to the score. Not because the movie was boring or I couldn’t connect to it but because the music was that good. Really.

Go see this movie! And read the book!