Saw "Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence" last night. GITS finally opened yesterday in movie art houses for its US distribution. This is another Japanese mecha anime movie. Directed by Mamoru Oshii, it was wildly popular in Japan. If you like the American computer generated movies (Shrek, Toy Story, Nemo, etc.), the Japanese movies are different. Where the American movies try to attain ultra-realism (a breeze moves the individual hairs in an animal's fur), the Japanese movies use a flat comic-book manga look and develop instead the complexity of characters and story. GITS has many elements from dark gothic movies. The storyline is practically borrowed from Bladerunner, along with many images and scenes. The two detectives are like Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, or Joe Friday and Bill Gannon, his partner, who walk through crime scenes and throw platitudes at each other, from Descartes, Pascal, the Bible, Zen, and many others. The website is at www.gofishpictures.com/GITS2/ and it's a great example of anime websites. The website is pretty cool to look at. It's in Japanese with subtitles. yrs, andreas www.andreas.com ------------------------------------------------------------------ To change your Lit-Ideas settings (subscribe/unsub, vacation on/off, digest on/off), visit www.andreas.com/faq-lit-ideas.html