i love it when i'm right.

so, i just got back from mirrormask, and it was all of the dreamily abstract things i'd hoped it would be. it is geared towards the young ones a bit, so don't go if you're apt to be disappointed by a lack of challenging subtext, but if you can shush your insistently adult and analytical mind for about an hour and a half you'll be enchanted. the things neil gaiman and dave mckean absently ponder while they're brushing their teeth must make my most outrageous hallucinatory escapades look like 1950s hygiene films. lucky bastards. don't read any further if you'd rather not know more about the movie than you already do, but for the rest of you, here are the three moments that most made me tap my toes on the floor and grin big as a five-year-old faced with a wading pool full of gumdrops:

1. helena, the main character, spends most of the movie in an angular, rust-colored cityscape whose streets are crawling with sphinxes in the place of stray cats. the sphinxes are very much like cats, temperament-wise, but have lurid paper-mask man-faces and rainbowy wings, and speak with classy london accents. at one point a group of them gathers at her feet and demands cake. they look up at her, all cat even with their flat people eyes, and very calmly say exactly what any cat, and certainly my cat, would say in this situation: "hungry." half the audience died laughing, presumably the half who have shared their homes with cats.

2. helena (for reasons i probably shouldn't disclose, in case you're thinking of taking my very good advice and going to see it for yourself) finds herself in a room filled with hexagonal clock-topped boxes. these things

pop out of them and proceed to sing the most brilliantly, chillingly gorgeous version of the carpenters' "close to you" that one could ever hope to hear. i already miss it, in fact, and will probably end up buying the soundtrack just for its sake. the scene reminded me of the bit in legend where the shadow-girl dances lily into that fabulous black dress. i didn't want to go to my prom, and when my friends tried to coax me into it i told them that i would go if and only if they found a way for me to do it wearing that dress. so, i spent a fulfilling spring evening watching a friday the 13th marathon on usa and trying (in vain) to make s'mores in my living room with hershey miniatures and a yankee candle. neither here nor there.

3. this one's special on a just-for-me level, but i can tell you, because it's okay for us to have secrets: helena falls through a hole in the floor and lands in the middle of a circle of creatures of indeterminate anthropoid origin. she tells them her name, and they respond just enough for her to understand that there are about a dozen bobs... and one malcolm. when the shadows come for her, someone flies her to safer ground—and it ain't bob.

why do birds suddenly appear?

good night, my darlings. because you're good babies, and because you like me too, dream something you didn't know you could dream.