Antonia's Line

I finally watched Antonia's Line this evening. What a treat. Sad, but beautiful, wonderful. It's a sweet tale, but a powerful one too, about living life, about what's important, about love and death, about being yourself no matter what. It's Dutch, so it has that wonderful rhythm European films have that I love so much. The characters have so much, well, character, and there's magic in the air. If you haven't seen it yet, treat yourself. If you have, remind yourself.

And as this long chronicle reaches its conclusion, nothing has come to an end.

Once

Oh wow. And wow again. I've had the soundtrack to Once for months but hadn't seen the movie until tonight. Actually, I'm only 30 minutes in and I had to stop to listen to the soundtrack again. I'm falling in love with this movie in a long-term, passionate way and it is 85% because of the music. The other 15% is the wonderful acting and emotion portrayed by the characters, which so far is definitely worth watching and promises to only get better. But the music, especially the primary song Falling Slowly, is just so beautifully haunting it makes me want to cry with the enormity of the emotion. It's like a direct hit to the heart. If you haven't seen this movie or heard this soundtrack, do yourself a favor and get a hold of it as soon as you can. You won't regret it, I promise.

Follow up note, 1/17/08: I finally was able to finish the movie this evening. As promised, it was FANTASTIC. This is one to own!