Cafe Lumiere third impression:

It lives up to its title; it's luminous and redolent of film through the years. I can definitely write a whole thesis, probably just about a scene if I had to. But I'm trying to watch it through with no 'strategy' this time, to let the film tell me what to notice and note and be unable to forget. Rather than read it like a book, or repeatedly ask the camera what is it telling me, I want almost to author this film for myself, imagine myself as creating and caring for the contents of the screen. Basically before I start building the structures in earnest I want to have the utmost sympathetic substance. The first and second time through I mostly just watched the camera, a bad habit, but this time I saw more nuance in the personalities and the family and social situations.

Tomiko's album second impressions:

I'm obsessed with morning glory, could listen to its chorus for eternity. Neither can I resist the opening with its glowy fade-up--same feeling of awakening and taking shape as the intro of the last song that so slew me, Ai no Kakera--nor the fierce coloring she gives all the sustained lows, which is probably my favorite thing her voice does.

Overall I would dislike this album as I do Thai food. With too many flavors I don't so much experience as try to decoct a thing. I like music that's simple and perfected. But I can appreciate that there's less format for a studio pop artist wanting to have a more 'mature' sound. It wouldn't do to follow the guitar-pop formula of DAI, and it's alright that a superior form didn't quite emerge and gain confirmation yet.