Posted on by Alexander Case

Anime Review: Record of Grancrest War

One of my favorite works of anime fantasy is Record of Lodoss War. It’s a show that I try to watch at least once a year, and due to my appreciation of that, I’ve sought out the various works by its creator, Ryo Mizuno, which have gotten a US release, from the Lodoss series onwards. In any case, when Record of Grancrest War was announced, and that even more it was related to a tabletop RPG that Mizuno had created, I was definitely onboard to check this out.

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Posted on by Alexander Case

Movie Review: Terror in Beverly Hills (1989)

When it comes to bad action movies, there are some names in action films that can be reasonably taken as a warning sign that the film you are approaching is a stinkburger. Frank Stallone is one of those names. Frank Stallone started his career as a musician and composer and has had a reasonably successful career at that. However, as his older brother Sylvester became one of the action juggernauts of the 1980s and ’90s, Frank kept also getting action movie roles, presumably on the basis that he looks enough like Sly, that if you put “Stallone” in large enough letters on the poster, people won’t look closer and recognize that it’s actually Frank. Read more

Posted on by Alexander Case

Anime Review: Akiba’s Trip – The Animation

Akiba’s Trip: Undead and Undressed was an interesting RPG & brawler with something of a novel concept –  that it was set in a re-creation of Akihabara with a level of detail that was just short of being on par with the level of detail that the Yakuza series puts into not-Kabuki-cho – by which I mean that there were some loading screens dividing up areas of the game, not much in terms of real-world alcohol to drink (because your protagonist is underage), and sadly no playable arcade games. Read more

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Film Review: Stop Making Sense

Live music is theater. Yes, live music is often seen in a theater, but they the act of performing music publically is, in some manner or another, theatrical. It’s a performance that seeks to tell a story or convey an emotion through music. Some genres of music try to lean away from this, like folk or punk (though arguably punk leans so far away from theatricality that it ends up accidentally leaning into theatricality). Others, like metal, prog, and some parts of pop lean into it, either through telling a deliberate story or through the presentation. Stop Making Sense definitely fits into the latter category. Read more

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Anime Review: Darling in the FranXX

So one of the things I did not know until recently is that A-1 Pictures is one of the anime studios that has benefited from the exodus from former Anime industry titan GAINAX (in addition to other studios like Trigger and Khara popping up in the wake of this as well). Consequently, a lot of discussions I encountered on the lead up to the anime series Darling in the FranXX started out as a discussion of the series as a Trigger joint, before moving on to talking about it as a sort of GAINAX reunion. I’d consider that analogy not that far off. The series feels something like the Anime equivalent of the Led Zeppelin reunion concert – the band getting back together to revisit their old hits (in this analogy, the newer staffers from A-1 Pictures and Trigger would represent Jason Bonham). Read more

Posted on by Alexander Case

Film Review: Stray Dog (1949)

Stray Dog is one of the earlier film noir styled films from Akira Kurosawa. It’s an interesting example of the genre, and it also makes for an interesting snapshot of post-war Japan. The premise has Toshiro Mifune playing a rookie homicide op whose weapon is stolen by a pickpocket while on the bus. The detective ends up being partnered with a veteran detective as they make their way through Tokyo’s underworld to find the gun. Read more

Posted on by Alexander Case

Movie Review: The Searchers

I never really watched many western films with plots based around Native Americans when I was a kid. Not even The Searchers. I kinda knew, at a fundamental level, that most of those films had something of a simmering undercurrent of racism that would leave a bad taste in my mouth. Even after I got older, and started hearing people talking about The Searchers in particular as one of the best Westerns, if not one of the best films of all time, I couldn’t quite quell those lingering doubts. However, after much deliberation, this year I decided to get around to watching this movie. Read more

Posted on by Alexander Case

Movie Review: Fate/Stay Night – Heaven’s Feel – Part I, Presage Flower

It is important to say this out of the gate, even more so than with Fate/Apocrypha – this is a film for people who have been watching Fate/Stay Night from the beginning. This, to a large degree, has to do with the structure of the original game. Heaven’s Feel is the third route of the game, played after (in order) the Fate and Unlimited Blade Works routes. Consequently, the story of the route has a lot less focus on explaining the Holy Grail War, Servants, or mages, because you’ve played through the game twice already. Read more

Posted on by Alexander Case

Film Review: Point Break

Cops & Robbers movies have been a part of cinema for as long as there has been cinema, though prior to the 1990s, the general tack was to either have the robbers be the good guys (going back to various western films), or to have the cops be the good guys, but with a few exceptions generally not really both. Read more

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Film Review: Touch of Evil

Touch of Evil is considered one of the best Film Noir of all time, for a lot of reasons – from the very gritty narrative with a driving thrust based around police corruption and racism, to a protagonist being a more upstanding police detective who as the film goes on becomes more morally compromised. However, it has its issues as a film. Read more

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Legends of the Force: Vlog – Solo: A Star Wars Story

The next Star Wars Story installment is out, and I talk about this film’s depictions of Han and Lando, and how they compare to what we’ve seen in the Legends continuity thus far – with the Han Solo and Lando Calrissian Adventures novels in particular.

Opening Credits: Star Wars Theme from Super Star Wars on the SNES.
Closing Credits: Chiptune Cantina Band from Chiptune Inc. – https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCvJtiGFudFlvYMfjiU1NKJg

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Posted on by Alexander Case

Film Review: Eyes Without A Face

Eyes Without A Face is a very engaging, but bleak horror film. Not bleak in the sense of the horror exploitation films of the 1970s, where the endings erred on the side of “Nobody survived and this is going to happen again” or even just “None of our protagonists survived” as was the case of Night of The Living Dead. The film’s ending does have a true sense of catharsis, and if it was narratively framed differently, it would end on a much more upbeat note.

To get into this, I’m going to have to get into spoilers for a film from 1960. If you want to come in cold, consider this your warning. Read more

Posted on by Alexander Case

Anime (Video) Review: Carnival Phantasm

This week I’m taking a look at one of the few Type Moon anime *not* to come to the US.

Tokyo Otaku Mode’s Fate section is here: https://otakumode.com/shop/label/Fate%20Series

Please support my Patreon: http://www.patreon.com/countzeroor
Buy me a coffee at Ko-Fi: https://ko-fi.com/countzero
Member of The Console Xplosion Network: http://www.theconsolexplosion.com/
Watch my Live-Streams on http://twitch.tv/countzeroor/

Posted on by Alexander Case

Film Review – His Girl Friday

His Girl Friday has aged poorly.

Let’s start off with the fundamental premise – Newspaperman Walter Burns (Cary Grant) has divorced from his reporter wife Hildy Johnson (Rosalind Russell) at some point prior to the beginning of the film. She’s stopped by the newspaper to announce that she’s remarrying, to insurance salesman Bruce Baldwin (Ralph Bellamy), and is going to leave reporting – having been burned out by the cynicism. However, this happens on the eve of the execution of a man named Earl Williams (John Qualen) for murder. Read more

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TV Special Review: Jesus Christ Superstar, Live

I’m not the biggest fan of musicals. I’ve liked some of them, but I don’t really get into the genre as a whole. One of the Musicals that has always worked for me is Jesus Christ Superstar by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice – with the musical probably being one of the two’s best collaborations. The musical recently got a new stage adaptation, performed live on NBC, and I watched the archive of the show on Hulu. Read more

Posted on by Alexander Case

Anime Review: Fate/Apocrypha

Let’s make this clear from the beginning – if you’re looking for a gateway to the Fate universe – this isn’t it. While Fate/Apocrypha is set in an alternate timeline which would, in theory, free it from some of the baggage from the original work, this is not even remotely the case. I’ve discussed the first half of the series a few months ago, but now it’s time to talk about the series as a whole. There will be spoilers – so if you haven’t decided to watch the show yet, read that review first. Read more