It's possible that I'm feeling what I'm feeling right now because I (again) slept very weird hours (yesterday from 5-8 pm and this morning from 4-8 am) and that this is all the product of a few weeks of sleep deprivation, but I have to write it anyway.

Wonderful Days is fucking sublime.

And just what the hell is Wonderful Days?

It's the most expensive Korean film made to date. It combines 2-D animation, 3-D computer graphics, miniatures, and live action photography. Its storyline has something to do with the future and energy sources and evil guys and a red-headed chick and a dark-haired hero and stormtrooper-like guys in gray uniforms and a biker rebellion and love in a world where it is always raining or cloudy. It is so stunningly beautiful that I simply don't have the words to describe it. I seriously felt like crying after I saw it because it was so amazing.

The storyline is murky and leaves a lot to be desired, the characters are all characters we've seen before, and even some of the images quote very directly from previous films (especially Star Wars), but that doesn't stop the movie from being shatteringly beautiful. I know, I know, I keep repeating myself, but it's like the movie and the music had a direct line to the part of my brain that appreciates beauty. I feel like I haven't seen anything so amazing in years, like any images I considered to be beautiful in the past absolutely wither in the face of this movie.

I read in the New Yorker (thanks, Dave and Steph!) yesterday that "the brain responds physiologically to dramatic swoops in range and pitch," otherwise known as "the money note." (When Celine Dion sings the third verse of "My Heart Will Go On" -- "You're heeeere/ There's nooooothing I feeeear" -- in a different key, that is the money note.) The money note "brings you up short in the supermarket and transports you from the price of milk to a world of grand romantic gesture."

Wonderful Days was two hours of money notes. I could not take my eyes from the screen. As if I were shooting up on all the love that went into the making of each scene, each graphic, each vista. It's unreal how beautiful this movie is.

All this, about an animation flick?

Yes!

I've seen some Pixar movies (Monsters Inc., Finding Nemo), and I've seen a highly acclaimed example of Japanese animation (Princess Mononoke), and Wonderful Days is nothing like them. The closest comparable film is probably Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, which I saw part of a few years ago. I remember being awed by the graphics then, but imagine the leaps forward since then. I'm not a gamer, but I'm pretty sure even video game connoisseurs would appreciate the artistry of Wonderful Days.

Yes, it's really that amazing.

I think it was made with a mind to distribute in the U.S. -- two co-producers are American, the main characters' names include a David and a Simon, and all the signs in the movie are in English -- so I hope, hope, hope that it'll be out soon near you. You'll either be blown away or you won't understand what the hell I'm talking about, but you won't know til you see it, so go, 'cause I think there's a good chance that it'll render you speechless. Or babbling like an idiot. Like me.

I'm gonna shut up now and leave with the caveat that I had a strange day today: up til 4 am at a friend's house, where three of us slept over; two hours talking with my language exchange partner, who suggested I think about living in Korea for the long haul (there's a thought); listening to a friend of mine tell me that according to her faith, everyone who doesn't believe in Jesus is going to hell; eating nachos and salad in an Irish pub; and then this movie.

Now don't forget, before you see this film, chant to yourself, "hk was smoking something when she wrote all this, and the film is not all that, because there's nothing worse than having really high expectations of a film and then being disappointed because it was great, but not the earth-shattering experience you'd been led to believe it was and ironically probably would have been for you had your sleepless in Seoul dork of a friend hk totally built it up for you like it was sliced bread."

Don't forget, now.

Today was Constitution Day in Korea.