After seeing "Snakes On A Plane" last weekend, I felt that I needed to regain some karmic cinematic balance, and so I changed things up with "The Illusionist."
1) I generally dislike period pieces even if they are good movies. There is just something about the costumes and pagentry that seems so staged, which causes me to then distance myself from the action and emotion of the production. This movie, however, sucked me in pretty well after the initial adjustment to the surroundings.
2) Edward Norton is simply one of the best actors working today. He's still young, but he's already turned in some top-notch work in "Rounders," "Fight Club," "Primal Fear," "American History X," and others. He doesn't disappoint here, and the movie doesn't take off until he enters the fray. 
3) Luckily, Paul Giamatti is also in the film as it's always a good time to watch two very good actors play against each other. 
4) I thought Jessica Biel might be blown away by these two leads, but she held her own. I've always thought very highly of her looks, but her actual acting ability was questionable (let's not forget she was in that horrible piece of garbage "Stealth" fairly recently). This role wasn't large, and but she still performed better than I expected.
5) This is one of those movies with a bit of a mystery and a gotcha moment. It doesn't really succeed that well in this regard as the conclusion is fairly obvious for a large part of the film. Despite knowing what will likely happen, I was still engrossed along the way.
Overall, "The Illusionist" was a very good, but not a great film. It was definitely a nice antidote to the big summer productions, however, and easily worth a matinee admission for the acting alone as I would pay $6 to watch Norton and Giamatti read the phone book to each other.
That last statement is not entirely true, but you get the point.
-BDS
Maybe i don't watch enough TV, i haven't heard of this movie either. Who am i kidding though, i love TV and watch such fine shows at Big Brother and When Animals Attack ;)
Miss Ash - This was a smaller movie that is just now being released in Austin, so it might just take awhile longer to get to you. I think "When Animals Attack" is up for an Emmy tonight - but I could be mistaken.
Jackie - I've heard that about Sunshine, and I probably will go see it. I'm not going to address the relative merits of being sandwiched between Carrell and Kinnear.
I just saw "Little Miss Sunshine" and was about to post about it! I am curious to see which is better "The Illusionist" or "The Prestige" I would think maybe the latter, but I'm biased toward the Hugh Jackman/Guy Pierce combo. I do like Ed Norton and Giamatti, so we'll see. Funny how these similar themed movies always seem to come out together..hhmm
I am going to have to see a little 'Sunshine' and it is uncanny how movie plots/themes run together as I've heard about "The Prestige."
There's also another movie about Truman Capote coming out this fall, which isn't the best timing considering Hoffman won an Oscar last year for the role.
I gotta watch this .. wanted to last week but couldn't as I was out of state. I heard it's pretty nice and ofcourse Edward Norton is in it :)
Nearly any movie with Norton is worth catching as he doesn't usually take bad roles in crap films.