Do You Like Anime? And Want Something Refreshing?
Author: Ockshun Jockson
This is one of the most refreshing visual styles I have seen in anime in a long time.
The movie is called Tekkon Kinkreet which translates into "Black & White".
I *highly* recommend it. It's seriously impressive. Incidentally, a friend from Philly moved to Japan and is a part of the studio that made this into a film (Studio 4C). I didn't know they were reposnsible for the film until the credits rolled. So there's some Philly in this movie :)
But here's a great article. Definitely check it out:
Ping Mag Link
Thanks for the reminder, I've been meaning to check this out! Years ago, I read the manga that this movie's based on... and the comic is likewise a really unique piece, both in terms of style & story. (If you ever dug anything by Paul Pope (Heavy Liquid, 100%, THB, The One-Trick Rip-Off or some of the artsier Euro-graphic novelists (like Crepax or Hugo Pratt, say), the comic is much more in that type of vein than your "typical manga" vein.)
Has anybody seen Paprika?
Saw a trailer, I don't know where...
but it looked good.
Saw the Golden Compass last night, t'was
decent (esp dug the fighting Polar Bears - YEAHHH!). Well integrated CG in a
Narnia-like fantasy.
The bummer was it ran a little short and just ended... so obviously a tease for the next two installments. Felt like an even less satisfying end to
Empire Strikes Back
Apparently Christian groups are all up in arms because in the movie most of the cute companion GC animals (ala spirit animal) are the physical embodiment of ones soul. Interesting idea.
Bible thumpers are not so happy.
Going to see an advance screening of Sweeney Todd in about an hour -which I'll comment on later.
*** SPOILER ALERT ****
(For the books, not the movies; I'll be referring to some plot and thematic issues that the movies will almost certainly be skipping over.)
To be fair to the Christians, a lot of the hubbub goes back to the books, which unapologetically -- even gleefully -- channel a number of classic heresies into the plot. And turnabout is fair play -- when The Lion, The Witch & The Wardrobe premiered, Golden Compass author Philip Pullman quite outspokenly and even viciously assaulted the shortcomings of C.S. Lewis and critiqued the Narnia books' shortcomings as Christian propaganda. In a sense, Pullman's own series, which some see as the "anti-Narnia," can be perceived as Gnostic propaganda. And if you're a conservative Christian or a Catholic who regards the Gnostic theology not as a legitimate religion in its own right, but as a dangerous heresy -- than I suppose you've got a legitimate beef with the material at hand.
The books are shot through with Gnostic references. God Himself eventually figures into the plot and he is quite clearly something like Yaldabaoth, the Demiurge of Gnostic cosmogony, the "blind, idiot god" who fancies himself, quite wrongly, as the final authority in the Universe. And the main bad guys in the series are the human religious authority known as The Magisterium, a term which is co-opted directly from the Roman Catholic term for the teaching authority of the Bishops as a channel for divine, "infallible" Truth (capital T).
So: God is the Enemy, and the Bishops are his lackeys. Yeah, I can see how that would torque off certain individuals and institutions.
The film has apparently muted a lot of the more obvious and extreme elements... but the DNA of this series is an attack on institutionalized religious authorities of every stripe; it's anti-authoritarianism on a spiritual scale, a cosmic scale....
which is part of the reason I loved this series. Highly recommended. I'm a bit hesitant to see the movie, but from what I've seen, the casting is pitch-perfect to the characters in the novels.
Can't wait to hear about the Sweeney!
funny you mention paprika, monkey: that's the other movie i picked up alongside tekkon. haven't had a chance to watch it yet. i turned it on for 5 minutes cause i wanted to see what it looked like, and it looked gorgeous.
i also copped the entire samurai champloo series finally. i only had the 1st season (1-16) but they came out with 10 more and finished the series. this is by the guy that did cowboy bebop, by the way, and macross plus; a personal fav. another highly recommended series.
i just started watching all of Samurai 7; an anime "spin-off" of kurosawa's seven samurai. i say "spin-off" cause it's moreso inspired by. afterall, it takes place in an alternate future/reality with machines and samurai. but it's the 1st anime in a long time to pique my interest. so far it's really good.
and finally, i picked up the 1nd season of the ghost in the shell stand alone complex series ("2nd gig"). haven't gotten to that one yet, but the 1st season was off the richter so i'm sure this will be equally as fly.
and yea i wanna see golden compass. and i personally think this new dark crystal will be off the fucking chain. but that's just me.
OJ: What do you know about the Neon Genesis Evangelion stuff? I'm not usually much of a guy for anime, but I've heard interesting things about this series -- how it kind of mutates from a more dramatic take on space opera-mecha themes and then starts going off in some bizarre metafictional / quasi-mystical direction. Have you seen it? Is it worth the effort for a noob to try to parse this thing?
ink, neon genesis is in my top 5. it gets soooo fucking crazy. and the dub is very good if you're not into watching 26+ episodes of subtitles.
there are also 2 movies: one is a "mashup" of events leading up to the finale. and then there's the final "episode" which itself is a full-fledged movie, aptly titled "end of evangelion".
i try to recommend eva to as many people as possible. it's definitely not for everyone, but it's among anime's best imo.
Thanks, Ockshun.... especially for explaining how the movies tie into the series, as I was a bit confused about that. NGE will definitely be floating closer to the top of my Netflix queue.