So yesterday was Halloween, and as of about noon, we had no plans at all. See, we have a costume party for a friend's birthday *tonight*, so dressing up might have seemed a little redundant (plus, I would have wanted to save my costume anyway). There were several things we could have done, but not really grabbed our interest.

Still, it didn't seem right not to hang out with one's friends on the 'Ween, so we decided we'd get together & do...something. It ended up like quite a few of our weekends, but that's not a bad thing. We went out to eat at Cootie Browns, headed over to Mr. K's to see if anything looked interesting, and then went back to Nick's place to watch a movie.

Our cinematic choices for the evening were a horror movie called The Descent and an anime called Steamboy. Despite the fact that it *was* Halloween and one can make a strong case for the watching of scary movies on Halloween, we decided to watch Steamboy. Ginger & Sheri aren't overly fond of scary movies on the whole, and decided I'd rather watch the anime as well, so, despite some attempts to count a vote for Abby, I think it was decided our way 3-2.

I think I give Steamboy about 3.5 stars. It was quite beautifully drawn, and the camera-effects emulation (sweeps & pans, etc) looked really cool. The story was interesting (if not overly deep) and I liked the fact that most of the movie kept you unclear as to who were the 'good guys' and who were the 'bad guys'. Also, it was about the most steampunk anime I've ever seen, and we've been conversing a fair bit out steampunk recently.

Still, it had some typical anime flaws. Character development was a little shallow (not surprising as it usually takes a series about 12 episodes to established a character). Also as Nick pointed out, a couple of the characters had more than their fair share of monologues - often in their own static timestreams (ala "hurry up get out of here! - but let me give a 15 minute soliloquy first!"). A couple of the more villainous characters seemed to pop in and out - seeming very important in some short scenes, but completely insignificant (and absent) for the bulk of the movie. And, perhaps the most typical aspect: exceptionally bizarre and wildly inaccurate interpretations of thermodynamics. But those are *fun* and hey, it's a movie.

So while we did enjoy poking fun at it, I still enjoyed the movie for what it was.

~PS