Ghost In The Shell, The American Movie, A Review.

If you have seen my blog you can tell that I like Masamume Shirow’s Ghost In The Shell series. Actually, I like Shirow’s work. I also like the original Ghost In The Shell movie, the second movie, the TV series and the original manga and the subsequent follow up manga. So when I heard that Spielberg was making a live action version, I was a bit ecstatic. I didn’t get a chance to see it in the theatres and I just got the DVD.

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Spirited Away Coming To Theatres In US

For two days in December at select theatres.

Tickets Here:
http://www.fathomevents.com/event/spirited-away-15th-anniversary

Spirited Away is considered Miyazaki’s best film.  A great thing to take the kids to.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spirited_Away

Some music

 

And in some important news, Miyazaki is doing another film.

http://www.theverge.com/2016/11/14/13621108/hayao-miyazaki-last-film-boro-the-caterpillar

Using The Right Tools

One of the things I like least about many movies, TV Shows and anime is that supposedly expert military or police forces will bring the wrong tools for the job they are expected to do. Here’s a case in point.  This is from the anime Bubblegum Crisis, which was produced in the late 1980’s.  The bad guys are humanoid robots loaded with advanced weaponry and armored with exotic materials.  The heroes, or heroines in this case are four ladies with heavily armored power suits.  Typical anime stuff.  Here’s the opening sequence.

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Two Videos About Miyazaki

Ran into these two wonderful videos about how Miyazaki approaches his work. I don’t have much to add.

I’ve put a bunch of Ghibli stuff up on this blog and I will be putting up more, I suspect.

https://theartsmechanical.wordpress.com/category/ghibli/

https://theartsmechanical.wordpress.com/2015/07/10/studio-ghiblis-hayao-miyazaki-hard-at-work-on-first-ever-cg-short-%e3%80%90newsflash%e3%80%91/

https://theartsmechanical.wordpress.com/2015/11/05/the-ghibli-that-no-one-knows-former-animators-book-offers-inside-look-into-famed-anime-studio/

https://theartsmechanical.wordpress.com/2015/11/11/spirited-away-anime-review/

https://theartsmechanical.wordpress.com/2015/12/15/studio-ghibli-unveils-new-animated-film-set-for-release-in-japan-next-year/

https://theartsmechanical.wordpress.com/2015/05/05/spring-walking-event-provides-guided-tour-around-totoro-forest-loved-by-hayao-miyazaki/

https://theartsmechanical.wordpress.com/2015/07/30/a-tribute-to-miyazaki-in-3d/

You can read about how Miyazaki creates in his two memoir volumes, Starting Point.

http://www.amazon.com/Starting-Point-1979-1996-Hayao-Miyazaki/

And Turning Point.

http://www.amazon.com/Turning-Point-1997-2008-Hayao-Miyazaki/

As wonderful as Miyazaki’s films are, they don’t actually represent the full scope of his story telling. The videos barely mention Miyazaki’s manga, you can’t ignore it and understand where the themes for a lot of the movie stuff comes from.

Plastic model based on Hayao Miyazaki’s as-yet unreleased manga “Teppo Samurai” goes on sale

Miyazaki was drawing anthromorphic pigs long before Porco Rosso. Of course the manga and films are not the only homes for Miyazaki’s pigs.  They can also be found somewhere in the Ghibli Museum, looking strangely like Miyazaki himself. But I’m not going to say where in the museum the tableau is. You will just have to find it for yourself.

https://theartsmechanical.wordpress.com/2015/02/13/the-ghibli-museum/

But plan your trip carefully this year as the museum is closing from May 9 to July 15 this year for maintenance.

Heads up—Japan’s Ghibli Museum will be closed for two months as of this May

 

The New Ghosbusters And The Biggest Screams

Now I remember the first Ghostbusters when it came out in 1984.  It was a cool movie in a time when it seemed that a new cool movie came out just about every week.  To a memorable movie in the mid 1980’s took real effort and the Ghostbusters pulled it off.  To make it clear what I’m talking about, here’s the trailer from 1984.

Never mind the movie, the trailer is funny and you are laughing right from the start.  The trailer did it’s job and sold the movie.

Now the new Ghostbusters movie.  I hadn’t been paying any attention because  frankly I wasn’t that interested.  I did think that a woman Ghostbuster team could be made to work, but I didn’t pay any attention to the buzz.  Then the trailer came out.

Now I don’t know if the women in this thing are smart and funny.  A lot of people seem to think that they are.  None of that showed up in the trailer.  It’s as if marketing was going out of their way to sabotage this movie.  Along with the movie’s writers.  Frankly if what I’ve seen so far is indicative of the writing in this more than likely huge turkey, then the writers should give their pay back. Frankly I can’t see a stereotype or trope that wasn’t used. I’m sorry, I know a lot of women scientists, engineers and Subway workers and none of them act like this.  Everything here is just wrong.  It’s stuff so old that it’s not even funny.

What’s funny is that a lot of feminists were making a twitter fest about how this movie was sticking it to the patriarchy.  Well if the trailer is any indication, the movie is sticking it  to somebody and it’s not the patriarchy.  Especially since the NAGs seem committed to try to defend this in the face of just how bad it is. There’s a book  out about how the John Carter movie was sabotaged by Disney’s marketing people.  If that was sabotage this is self detonation.

The movie won’t be out for months and this trailer  has already shown us that that it’s full of unlikeable stereotypes where we expect funny characters and given almost nobody except the feminists any entertainment.  A group that I doubt is large enough to pay the $500 million that’s going to be needed to make this turkey fly.  I suspect that Mr. Fieg’s career is over. I hope that the writers’ careers are over and I hope that Columbia fires the marketing team that came up with this before they do even more damage.

The biggest screams?  Those of the harpy brigade as they chase after any and all that the said this trailer with their usual charges of male privilege, sexism and misogyny.

Before Star Wars Was Big

It’s hard to believe now, but there was time, just after the movie was released that Star Wars was not a big deal.  I know by the time the movie came to my town in 1977 it was already a phenomenon.  Going to see it was the first time that there was a line for the theatre that I could remember.  But when the movie was released it was only in 40 theatres nationwide.

It’s interesting to see these reviews before the movie made the splash that it did.

http://ratter.com/ratter/all/heyday-in-tabloids/213950-what-is-star-wars

It’s interesting to note that to the Movie execs, “Damnation Alley” was the new big SF film for 1977 and “Star Wars” was the quirky little movie that nobody gave much of a chance.  The ability of Hollywood execs to pick the winners hasn’t changed much