Exercising the Occipital Lobe

It's so very cold in Minnesota right now and today is the first day I have felt strep-free enough to actually go running. So being unable to do any aerobic exercise this weekend, I opted to work out my visual cortex by seeing Lost In Translation (yeah, I know it came out like 4 months ago) and The Triplets of Belleville. Both were a visual joy ride.

I really liked Lost In Translation. Bill Murry kicks ass. It's interesting how I won't sense the effect a movie is having on me while I'm watching it. I sensed my baseline, low-level depression while watching the Lost In Translation characters search for ways out of their boxes. But when the credits were rolling I was already thinking of the errands Emily had to do. Little did I know that I'd still be thinking about this movie over 24 hours later.

Any chronic, low-grade depression I felt watching Lost In Translation was remedied by The Triplets of Belleville. Go see it, even if you are not into animation. It was visually intoxicating. I loved the angular boats, cities, and skylines and there is a dog in the movie that is second to maybe Gromit in terms of loyalty and, well, animated devotion. It's a movie, for eye candy alone, that I would go see again. In an era of Pixar and other CGI, I felt a sense of nostalgia seeing a movie animated solely using line drawings.

Click here to visit the movie's homepage.