I’m re-watching Akira again, for the first time after having seen the first part of Megazone 23. It’s interesting to compare Megazone 23 Part 1 and Akira. Both came out within 3 years of each other – Megazone 23 in 1985, the year I was born, and Akira in 1988. Both have similar leads – biker punks who get in over their heads with sinister government conspiracies. Both series have hawkish military figures who overthrow the elected government in a coup, and both figures are certainly antagonists. However, it’s interesting to see how in Megazone 23, the military figures are clearly evil, while in Akira, the Colonel’s actions are given a stronger justification.
This is kind of a spoiler for Megazone 23, so don’t read further if you’re worried about having the story spoiled: Read more
Well, this month I’ve been swamped with school, but I have had a little time to watch a couple movies, and read one book, so I might as well give my thoughts on them. Specifically, I’ll be discussing the films Iron Man 3, Star Trek Into Darkness, and the Hugo Award nominated (and now Nebula Award Winning) science fiction novel 2312 by Kim Stanley Robinson.
This week I’m reviewing a little known film from the Shaw Brothers. How little known is it? So unknown that I couldn’t find an IMDB page for this film! Read more
This week I’m doing another film review – this time of a World War II Ensemble film – Is Paris Burning?
Naturally, this includes some discussion of this sub-genre as a whole. Read more
This week I’m taking a look at the 1991 Live action adaptation of the popular anime.
Apollo Z Hack and Obscurus Lupa‘s review of this film currently isn’t available online anyway, so I couldn’t have watched it before my review, whether I’d wanted to or not.
This week I’m returning to the world of the cinema, with a review of the John Wayne film “McQ” – a film that gives a glimpse of what Wayne might have been like as Dirty Harry.
Also, I’m going to be at Portland Retro Gaming Expo on Saturday 9/29/2012 & Sunday 9/30/2012. If you see me, say hi! Also, check out the 100th episode of the Dangerous Kids podcast on Saturday.
Last night I went to the Hollywood Theater for their monthly Kung Fu Theater night, and I wanted to give my thoughts on the theater and the films I saw.
Concert films tend to follow a very specific formula: Band does stuff before performing, audience eagerly awaits performance, band performs, band and audience leave. Buena Vista Social Club follows that formula somewhat, but with some tweaks that makes it stand out. Read more
Finding a “canon” of important works in any field is generally difficult to settle on. Do you go by popularity, artistic merit, influence on other works, early works of prominent creators, or a combination thereof?
The Rough Guide to Anime, by Simon Richmond – in Penguin Books Rough Guides series, probably has the best “canon” list of anime titles available, and certainly makes for the best English language primer to anime currently in print in the US, and makes for interesting reading for long-time fans and newcomers alike. Read more
In the anime portions of Gainax‘s OVA series Otaku No Video, there’s a sequence where the main character is being shown the various types of Otaku that the members of his friend’s club are part of. There’s the vehicle and mecha otaku, who is a geek about engines and how things work, and so on. One of the members of the club is an animation otaku, and he demonstrates his affinity for animation by pointing out the detail in an animated sequence (taken from the DaiCon IV video). I, personally, haven’t had many moments in animation where I felt compelled to freeze frame a video and stop to appreciate it – until I saw the OVA Area 88.
It’s been a while since I put a film review together, for something outside of a genre film for Bureau42. However, what better place to get back into the swing of things than the 1960s jidaigeki film Sword of Doom.
The film stars Tatsuya Nakadai as samurai Ryunosuke Tsukue, a sociopathic-at-best samurai, who cares for nothing but the improvement of his skill. The film follows Tsukue over the course of two years, as his violent tendencies slowly get the better of him .
The script does an excellent job of making it perfectly clear that while Tsukue is certainly the main character of the film, he is not a protagonist. Literally, the first thing he does in the film is to kill a defenseless old man in cold blood, and he proceeds through the film with a sense of clinical, cold detachment similar to later anime and manga characters like Duke Togo of Golgo 13 and Ogami Itt? of Lone Wolf and Cub, which likely took a certain degree of inspiration from novel this film was based on.
However, the sense of detachment is where the similarities end. While Itt? and Togo are certainly remorseless, compassionless killers, their opponents are often even more vile creatures then they are, to keep the audience on their side. On the other hand, as the film progresses, Tsukue never improves as a person. By the end of the film, guilt and fear have come to get the better of him, but even then they are unleashed in a psychotic episode comparable, in terms of violence, with the climax of Scarface. All of this is executed wonderfully by the writers and the director, as we see Tsukue’s sanity slip further, further and further.
The film is not without its faults. Originally intended as part of a trilogy, based on the absurdly long novel (about 1,533 chapters long) of the same approximate title as the film, several sub-plots are introduced that go just about nowhere. While they do intersect with the main plot in several points, they otherwise introduce what seem to be Chekov’s guns that turn out to be little more than display pieces. These side plots are significant enough that dramatically trimming them down could easily cut the film down from its current 2 hour run-time to closer to 90 minutes. These side plots could have been resolved in a sequel – however, we didn’t particularly get a sequel to this film.
All that said, the film is extremely well done, and a wonderful example of what this genre of cinema is capable of. If you consider yourself a fan of samurai films, you owe it to yourself to see this film.
