You Have Been Watching

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Share your latest viewing here.

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Turns out Ronny Cox really was playing Trump in his various corporate / political bastard roles over the years.

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njerry, Todd, Uncle Retrospective, lorcan_nagle

lorcan_nagle wrote:

Sam Altman is a proven liar and this is more of his bullshit.  The for-pay version of the AI models are either exactly the same as the “free” ones or only a minor improvement over them.  They’re attempting to do the stage of… ugh… disruption where they throw scads of investor cash at a service to offer it to end users for cheap or free so when they raise the prices to the point that it’ll turn a profit enough people are on the hook that they have no choice but to continue using the product.

I’ll have to take your word for that. I didn’t simply believe Altman, mind you (or pay that much attention to what he said in the first place, to be honest), but this is what I took away from a conversation with a friend who is a professor for IT security at a university here and who works a lot with AI in coding (and is also desperately trying to figure out what to do with this when it comes to teaching and training students).

Some shows are back again like DD Born Again, Boys, and Euphoria starts tomorrow.

Last time it was set as the cool kids in high school and the show went viral. This season is a time jump of 5 years and picks up where they all are now in their lives. Most likely it will be the last season as season 2 was a long time ago, times have changed, no longer set in high school, and most of the cast got very popular and moved on to movies and other projects.

I’ve started watching Don’t Trust The B In Apartment 23, which is a delight. Unfortunately, I got about halfway in in before I realised Disney+ has got the episodes out of order (they’ve gone with air date order and ABC showed them in a seemingly random order it seems). It completely messes up the running plot threads, the build up of relationships etc. I can see why anyone watching it at the time would have been thrown by that and how it could have led to its cancellation. You know, like it did for Firefly. It’s almost like airing shows out of order is never a good idea or something.

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lorcan_nagle, Uncle Retrospective, njerry

Martin Smith wrote:

It’s almost like airing shows out of order is never a good idea or something.

I watched the first season when it aired and gave up because I had no idea what the fuck was going on.

What the fuck is wrong with these people?

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Martin Smith, lorcan_nagle

That show is criminally underrated, I love how it’d jump from just standard sitcom to demented and back

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Martin Smith, Uncle Retrospective

Uncle Retrospective wrote:

Martin Smith wrote:

It’s almost like airing shows out of order is never a good idea or something.

I watched the first season when it aired and gave up because I had no idea what the fuck was going on.

What the fuck is wrong with these people?

You’d think that people who work in television, of all people, would understand the importance of being able to coherently follow a TV series, and yet…

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Uncle Retrospective, lorcan_nagle

I’ve been watching Blue Lights after many recommendations and it is very good but it is notable mostly for including an actress drawn by Frank Quitely.

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Andrew, Christian, Uncle Retrospective, Todd, Martin Smith, Ben, njerry, lorcan_nagle, Tobias Radesäter

garjones wrote:

I’ve been watching Blue Lights after many recommendations and it is very good but it is notable mostly for including an actress drawn by Frank Quitely.

I still maintanin that Rosie Huntington-Whiteley looks like Frank Quitely was trying to draw Cameron Diaz.

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Christian, Martin Smith, lorcan_nagle

I’ve been buying a lot of stuff from Japan recently. Mainly Beast Wars tat, video game stuff (GameCube controllers in Japanese exclusive colourways but also a complete copy of Kid Icarus for the Famicom Disk System. I do not have a FDS), but also blu-rays of the Ginger Rogers & Fred Astaire canon.

I first watched them all around 2012, when BBC filled the resultant void of putting all its kid programming only on the dedicated channels with old movies, and really loved them. Ginger Rogers especially is a brilliant comedic actress. Weirdly, of the 9 films Rogers and Astaire did together, the only one that’s had a blu-ray release in the West is Swing Time, in the Criterion Collection. I rented that a few years back and was surprised by how much I remembered being in it wasn’t. In Japan though, most of them have been release on blu-ray by IVC. I took a punt on getting one in my first proxy shopping shipment and it turned out to be region free, so I’ve scooped up most of the rest (can’t find a copy of Top Hat unfortunately and I might just get the Criterion release of Swing Time, as the restoration on these Japanese releases isn’t stellar).

I watched Shall We Dance last night, and turns out, all the stuff I’d thought was in Swing Time – the dance on roller-skates, Let’s Call The Whole Thing Off, Fred dancing with loads of women wearing creepy masks of Ginger – it’s in Shall We Dance. Which is fine, just a fluke of my poor memory. But it does make me question even more why Swing Time is the only one that got the nod from Criterion. It can’t be a rights issue, because all but one of them (which they did for MGM years after all the others) are in the RKO catalogue, so have the same ownership. So they must have purposefully picked Swing Time, even though it’s not the most famous (Top Hat), arguably not the best (Top Hat or Shall We Dance) and has a whole blackface dance routine they have to acknowledge. Or maybe that’s it. Maybe they picked it *because* of the blackface routine so they could do the commentary and special features about it.

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Todd, lorcan_nagle

lorcan_nagle wrote:

That show is criminally underrated, I love how it’d jump from just standard sitcom to demented and back

Yeah, that show was great. Too bad there wasn’t more of it.

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lorcan_nagle

I finally saw 28 Years Later, and it was really great, I felt. Once again, what starts as a pretty typical post-apocalyptic zombie movie turns into something entirely different at some point (while still being that, of course). This movie was far more loving and tender than I expected it to be.

Very much looking forward to The Bone Temple.

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Dave, njerry, Uncle Retrospective

Wow, what an immensely satisfying finale to The Capture‘s second series.

Rarely have such a bunch of deserving bastards been so screwed over.

Of course, the terrifying aspect that looms over all of it is the technology is scarily plausible.

Christian wrote:

I finally saw 28 Years Later, and it was really great, I felt. Once again, what starts as a pretty typical post-apocalyptic zombie movie turns into something entirely different at some point (while still being that, of course). This movie was far more loving and tender than I expected it to be.

Very much looking forward to The Bone Temple.

I felt the same, it was much better than I expected and surprisingly emotional in places. Parts of the story I found really moving from both a parent and child perspective. Jodie Comer and Ralph Fiennes were both great in it. I need to see the new one too.

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Christian, njerry

Christel wanted to see The Devil Wears Prada 2, because she loves the original. The sequel is mediocre at best and doesn’t come close to the original. You can tell they struggled to come up with viable reason these characters would get back together. At the same time, it introduces a bunch of new characters that have no development whatsoever. There are a lot of cameos that feel like they’re there for sake of having the cameos. If you want to see it, definitely wait till it hits streaming.

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Andrew

The Capture Series 3

Apparently three series was always the plan, which is odd given how this series ended. Unless you view the set as a modern noir tale, as then it works better.  In more than a few ways it’s a darker UK riff on Person of Interest, sans any reassurance.

Watching Widow’s Bay on Apple. It’s a fun horror / comedy, with some good gags and some good scares.

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Todd, Dave

At a loss for stuff to watch on the long weekend I decided to put on War Machine on Netflix, and… yeah. Opening in Iraq with two brothers who are in the army, the older is a mechanic repairing a Humm-vee in the younger brother’s platoon in the field, they had a dream to join the Rangers but that’s fallen by the wayside and now the younger brother convinces the elder to try again.  And then everyone gets blown up!  The elder brother survives and goes to Ranger School despite having PTSD, and we get… some interminable amount of fellating of the US Special Forces and it’s fucking amazing to subject yourself to that level of privation TO BE A MAN! (Yes, even the women, because we’re all about people of all genders murdering brown children). Anyway, the elder brother is put in charge of a trainee platoon for their last training mission, and they get attacked by an alien mech.  The movie turns into an action/horror thingy as the Ranger trainees are picked off while they try to escape and/or fight back.

I was told the action was great, but to be honest I wasn’t impressed.  And there’s not much to this aside from testosterone poisoning, an obscene amount of pro-US military propaganda, and an odd level of dehumanising of the cast.  Literally three characters have names, two of them being the sergeants you see leading the training, and everyone else is either referred to by their role in the movie (Jai Courtney is credited as “Squad Leader”, or their assigned number in the training platoon.  The only person to get any characterisation is the elder brother (number 81), and it’s not particularly complex, he’s got survivor’s guilt because he tried to get his brother back to base but collapsed and when they found him his brother was dead.   The story unfolds as you’d expect, I didn’t enjoy it.

 

I went on to watch the recent movie of The Fall Guy, which was a lot more fun.  Ryan Gosling plays Lee Majors and Emily Blunt plays Heather Thomas, who are a stuntman and camera operator who are in a burgeoning relationship while working together on big-budget movies.  Gosling’s character breaks his back in a botched stunt, leading to him abandoning showbiz and walking out on Blunt.  Flash forward a year and a half and he’s recruited to come back to the next big movie, which his her first job as director, and it turns out their producer (Hannah Waddingham) has hired him surreptitiously to figure out where the star (Aaron Taylor-Johnston) has vanished off to.  There are twists and turns and some fun action moments, with a conclusion that reminded me a lot of F/X: Murder by Illusion in how it used  the characters special effects knowledge to figure everything out in the end.

The movie didn’t do well though, and I can see why.  It’s trying to walk a tightrope between a genuine action comedy and a wry, self-referential post-modern satire and it doesn’t come together properly.  It’s a bit too smart to appeal to people who just want the former, and doesn’t go far enough for the latter.   Fun, but inconsequential

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Uncle Retrospective, Todd, Ben

Uncle Retrospective wrote:

Watching Widow’s Bay on Apple. It’s a fun horror / comedy, with some good gags and some good scares.

I’ve been watching this too. Really good. It does well in balancing the spooky horror and the comedy without undercutting the creepier elements, and Matthew Rhys (who I liked a lot in The Beast In Me) is a great lead. Already looking forward to the next episodes.

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Uncle Retrospective

I saw Mortal Kombat II. it isn’t going to win any Oscars but it’s a fun time if you like Mortal Kombat. Compared to the previous film (which I thought was good but not great) this one learns some lessons and features lots of great fights, plenty of fun personalities, less extraneous storytelling detail and a simpler, more fun plot that is just an excuse for lots of fighting. There’s lots of reverence for the original games but without constantly hitting you over the head with every single wink or reference. A proper 90s martial arts Friday night movie, and second only to the original 90s MK film in terms of how fun it is.

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Uncle Retrospective, Martin Smith, Ben

Would I need to have seen the first one to follow it?

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Dave

Martin Smith wrote:

Would I need to have seen the first one to follow it?

I’m not sure how serious this question is, but no, not really. There are a few characters that return from that movie and a bit of backstory but it’s all recapped in this one.

There wasn’t even a fighting tournament in the first one – that happens in this one – so in retrospect the whole first movie feels like a glorified prologue for this one.

It does mean though that there isn’t much of Scorpion and Sub-Zero in this sequel as they were the focus of the first movie.

I mean, Mortal. Kombat. What more info do you need?

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Todd, Dave

Legends

From the writer of The Gold, a pair of series with a focus on what happens after a gold bullion robbery, this new Netflix series shifts to 1990 and the dying months of the Thatcher government amid a heroin flood. In response Customs mounts an undercover operation to nail the drug trade.

There’s a wry cynicism running through the story, from the way the team is assembled to its triggering incident, a Cabinet Minister’s daughter overdoses, to politicians heedless of operational or practical realities. At the same time there’s a sharper edge to the nature of undercover work.

Like with The Gold, Forsyth has a keen eye for everyone getting their due, albeit sometimes in very quiet, limited ways. There’s a hanging plot thread of what happens after time spent undercover, as the criminal underworld has a long memory.

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Todd, Dave

Dave wrote:

Martin Smith wrote:

Would I need to have seen the first one to follow it?

I’m not sure how serious this question is, but no, not really. There are a few characters that return from that movie and a bit of backstory but it’s all recapped in this one.

There wasn’t even a fighting tournament in the first one – that happens in this one – so in retrospect the whole first movie feels like a glorified prologue for this one.

It does mean though that there isn’t much of Scorpion and Sub-Zero in this sequel as they were the focus of the first movie.

It was a serious question, though I realise it sounds a bit silly, as I’ve not seen the first but I understand it focused on some new character (Cole?) rather than the ones from the game.

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Dave

Martin Smith wrote:

Dave wrote:

Martin Smith wrote:

Would I need to have seen the first one to follow it?

I’m not sure how serious this question is, but no, not really. There are a few characters that return from that movie and a bit of backstory but it’s all recapped in this one.

There wasn’t even a fighting tournament in the first one – that happens in this one – so in retrospect the whole first movie feels like a glorified prologue for this one.

It does mean though that there isn’t much of Scorpion and Sub-Zero in this sequel as they were the focus of the first movie.

It was a serious question, though I realise it sounds a bit silly, as I’ve not seen the first but I understand it focused on some new character (Cole?) rather than the ones from the game.

That’s right. He also features here but not in such a leading capacity – this is more of an ensemble piece, although nominally I guess the leads of the movie are Johnny Cage (played by Karl Urban who does a decent if unremarkable job and plays it exactly how you’d expect) and Kitana, who gets a surprisingly decent story arc.

All the Cole stuff is explained in this movie to the extent that’s needed, and the plot of the first one doesn’t have a massive bearing on this sequel – everything that you’ll need to know is explained.

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Martin Smith

Finished my Star Blazers re-watch.
Season 1 – Quest for Iscandar.

Good stuff, just ended a bit flat.
Good ride all in all

But where can I find season 2, The Comet Empire?
All on You Tube, watching it now.

Honestly starting flat, just started episode 4, finally disobeying and heading out, I think? Should happen this episode.

And might be unfair to judge Japanese Season one 1974, season 2 1978, and season 3 1980.

But only one wonan? I love Nova, just scared lady friend (sometimes demon woman) wakes up and sees me.

Or should I just stop talking now?

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Todd, lorcan_nagle

Sean Robinson wrote:

Finished my Star Blazers re-watch.
Season 1 – Quest for Iscandar.

Good stuff, just ended a bit flat.
Good ride all in all

But where can I find season 2, The Comet Empire?
All on You Tube, watching it now.

Honestly starting flat, just started episode 4, finally disobeying and heading out, I think? Should happen this episode.

And might be unfair to judge Japanese Season one 1974, season 2 1978, and season 3 1980.

But only one wonan? I love Nova, just scared lady friend (sometimes demon woman) wakes up and sees me.

Or should I just stop talking now?

You need to check out Yamato 2199, it’s a fantastic update and remake of the original series.  The various sequels to it aren’t as good but often still a lot of fun.

Like, check this shit out:

 

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Andrew, Sean Robinson, Todd

Dave wrote:

I need to see the new one too.

I think it’s better. It isn’t as experimental in the film-making as 28 Years Later but I like that Boyle let Nia DaCosta do her own thing and it’s more memorable with one incredible set piece scene .

I can’t wait for the final episode.

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njerry, Dave

I had to break my watching of The Bone Temple into two parts (which I hate doing, but needs must and all that) and I do love that they made Jimmy Saville the villain of this piece.
Good to see Cook from Skins finally getting his proper break, too. Took Jack O’Connell a bit longer than the other guys, but what a year he has had, playing the villains in this and in Sinners. He’s going to be big, and well-deservedly. Cook was one of the most compelling characters in Skins and a lot of that was his performance.

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garjones, Uncle Retrospective

Christian wrote:

I had to break my watching of The Bone Temple into two parts (which I hate doing, but needs must and all that) and I do love that they made Jimmy Saville the villain of this piece.

It’s an interesting part of the concept that essentially culture in that world ended around 2003. Savile remained an eccentric entertainer and not a massive sexual offender. It’s hugely provocative of Garland to go there but in that world he has no dark connotations.

There is no news, TV, music or anything in the past 28 years. They live off remains or memories of Teletubbies, Iron Maiden and Duran Duran.

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Andrew, Christian

Good Omens “Season 3”

It’s always fun seeing Sheen and Tennant chewing the scenery together.

When it was announced that Season 3 would be a movie instead of 6 episodes due to Gaiman and his controversies, I was disappointed and apprehensive as to the results that would be generated. Having watched it, I think that was the right choice.

I have complained that some streaming shows really should be movie. They will stuff so much filler in them, they end up dilluting the finale product. Could the story have been told in six episodes? Yes. And yet, GO S3 told a complete story. It had good character bits and funny scenes. I think it could have used an extra 20 minutes to flesh out Jesus’s story a bit more. He really seemed a bit extraneous. Overall, I felt I got a satisfying conclusion to the story.

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Uncle Retrospective, Dan

I was pretty meh on series 2 and this is literally the first thing that has me considering watching the finale

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Todd

lorcan_nagle wrote:

I was pretty meh on series 2 and this is literally the first thing that has me considering watching the finale

It’s much better than S02, but it’s still pretty meh.

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Todd

Watched episode 4 of Widow’s Bay and it was one of the best bits of horror TV I’ve ever seen. Kate O’Flynn has been great so far, but this EP focusing on her was outstanding. Watching her losing her mind as everything gets more and more fucked up was a delight.
Great show, well worth your time. (It’s on Apple)

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Dave, njerry

lorcan_nagle wrote:

I was pretty meh on series 2 and this is literally the first thing that has me considering watching the finale

It’s 1 hour 39 minutes, so it’s not a huge time commitment. You can tell they had to compress down a potential six-hour story to a bit over 1.5 hours. I’m sure what would have been a bunch side stories that would have been tied to the main plot were completely removed and all we got were a couple of characters with a couple of lines. You can see where there was going to be more but were cut for time.

It still has a lot of fun and whimsy that lifts the material. You do feel the spirit of Sir Terry Pratchett in it.

For something that really shouldn’t have gone past the first season, Season 3 does bring it to a nice conclusion.

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Uncle Retrospective

Uncle Retrospective wrote:

Watched episode 4 of Widow’s Bay and it was one of the best bits of horror TV I’ve ever seen. Kate O’Flynn has been great so far, but this EP focusing on her was outstanding. Watching her losing her mind as everything gets more and more fucked up was a delight.
Great show, well worth your time. (It’s on Apple)

Yeah, this was superb. Not sure if it’s just me but the show seems to be getting better and better with every episode. She’s been great in a supporting capacity so far but elevating her to the lead for an episode worked brilliantly.

Some amazingly unsettling moments in it too. That brief panning shot of the mirror shook me up.

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Uncle Retrospective

garjones wrote:

It’s an interesting part of the concept that essentially culture in that world ended around 2003. Savile remained an eccentric entertainer and not a massive sexual offender. It’s hugely provocative of Garland to go there but in that world he has no dark connotations.

There is no news, TV, music or anything in the past 28 years. They live off remains or memories of Teletubbies, Iron Maiden and Duran Duran.

I love the scenes with Ralph Fiennes dancing with Samson to Duran Duran so, so much.

Dave wrote:

Some amazingly unsettling moments in it too. That brief panning shot of the mirror shook me up.

That was incredible! So subtle, but so freaky.

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Dave

Send Help is a weird movie. Lots of fun Raimi touches and a decent enough central premise, but it isn’t coherent as a whole. It feels choppy and nonsensical and operates on a kind of cartoon logic that makes it hard to buy into it or care about it. It’s almost like a Tom & Jerry cartoon at times.

Also it has a weirdly cheap look to it (lots of wonky CGI) which contributes to the unreal feel. Although the biggest stretch is trying to make Rachel McAdams look old and frumpy.

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Andrew, Todd, Martin Smith

So I watched The Old Guard 2 for some reason. Well, the reason was I did like the first one and I think Charlize Theron is a great lead in this kind of movie. And it’s always nice to see a movie turn an indie comic into big bucks for the creator, of course.

So, I don’t know, I couldn’t tell you a thing about the first movie anymore, but like I said, I remember liking it. This one though… wow. Terrible in absolutely every respect. Not a single original thought in the entire movie. It was full of the kind of plot ideas and even dialogue lines you’d get in every immportals movie since fucking Highlander. And it’s dumb and predictable and boring. And then it ends on a fucking cliffhanger as if it was a given that a shit sequel to a somewhat decent small-budget action movie will get another sequel. Jesus fucking Christ, what were those guys thinking?

First one was written by Greg Rucka alone, the second one has another writing credit besides him, so I’m going to blame the terrible script on her.

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lorcan_nagle, Uncle Retrospective, Todd, Ben

Spider-Noir

I finished it last night, and this show is amazing and spectactular!!! Sony got it right!!!

First off, if you’re not watching this show in black and white, you’re watching it completely wrong. Normally, iffy CGI can be a distraction and take you out of the show. But here, it helps give it an actual 1930s-made movie feel. There’s a lot of cinematography and shots that are very period and it enhances the experience. I only wish this show could have been shot on B/W film with period practical effects, or they could have given it a lo-fi filter to take some of the sheen off of it. Black and white gives it its period feel.

Nicolas Cage is absolutely perfect as Reilly. He is giving you the full Cage experience. I do want say this series has some of the best casting ever. There have been no miscasts. Special shout out to Cary Christopher as the kid Frankie. He is wonderful as the smart aleck kid who, while running with the adults, still feels like a kid. The performances really feel like they’re from an old movie and I mean that as a compliment.

They story holds together and sticks the landing. While I hope there’s a Season Two, they tell a complete story with no annoying cliffhangers but leave you wanting more.

This show has exceeded all my expectations. I give it the highest possible recommendation.

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Christian, Uncle Retrospective

I saw the last of Euphoria. It needs to be studied someday about how a show that was at one time white hot and so viral can lose so much steam.
You can tell that a lot of the cast were so over it and just filling out their contracts and mailing in their scenes.
They’ve moved on to more promising projects and they got their exposure/popularity from the show already
Anyway, it’s over and that’s that. That finishes for me streaming the Boys, Daredevil, and Euphoria
Until next time.

I caught David Cronenberg’s Crash in the cinema yesterday.  I saw it back when it came out but hadn’t rewatched it since, so I remembered very little of it. And I liked it!

James Spader and Deborah Kara Unger play James and Catherine Ballard, a married couple who sleep with other people and then tell each other about their sexual encounters while having sex themselves.  Ballard is in a car crash where the driver of the other car is killed and his wife Helen in the passenger seat (played by Holly Hunter) accidentally exposes a breast while trying to escape the wreck.  From there Ballard gets drawn into a bizarre world by Helen, lead by the charismatic Vaughan (played by Elias Koteas).  Vaughan is obsessed with car crashes, particularly celebrity ones which he illegally stages reconstructions of on public roads, and he and his acolytes are all aroused by watching car crashes.  The obsessions build to a crescendo and does anyone learn anything? Not really.

This is a fascinating movie to watch, half the cast act like aliens who are trying out this whole “sex” thing the humans are obsessed with.  Unger especially has an otherwordly feeling to her, in her facial expressions, her cold demeanour, and the mechanical way she goes about having sex.  Koteas is exceptional as Vaughan with an almost predatory way of moving, gesturing and pushing himself into people’s personal space.  And this odd discomfort flows outwards into other parts of the movie – there’s long stretches without dialogue, relying on the actors expressions to sell moments, the frequent depictions of sexual encounters are often quite explicit, but shot with a clinical, almost disinterested eye that robs them of most of their potential eroticism, and Howard Shore’s soundtrack, heavy on slightly dissonant, echoing plucked strings adds a sense of dread that slips in and out as the music rises and falls.

It feels very cyberpunk without having any SF elements in the same way that Falling Down does.  It’s a rumination on the alienation of humanity in a modern urban society and the ways in which we act and react as a result, how it warps our minds, and how alterations to our bodies as a result of this environment – Rosanna Arquette has an infamous role as a woman who’s legs are in braces, with an open wound on the back of one leg that resembles a vulva which Ballard penetrates as they have sex – but also how we alter ourselves, there’s nods to the BME scene both in that aforementioned sex scene,  the way the camera lingers both on Arquette’s braces and the extensive ones that pin Ballard’s leg in place (and how Vaughan inspects them when they first meet), Ballard and Vaughan getting car-related tattoos and both of them, amongst other characters having extensive networks of scars across their bodies – Ballard on his legs and Vaughan across his face and torso.

I can see as well how this caused such controversy on its release.  It got a special award at Cannes, and it was noted that this was done over the objections of some of the jury.  The tabloids in the UK campaigned against its release and while the BBFC gave it a certificate, it was banned by some local councils.  But people who look at the explicit content and get offended are missing the entire point of the movie.

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Uncle Retrospective, njerry, Dave, Christian, Todd, Sean Robinson

lorcan_nagle wrote:

It feels very cyberpunk without having any SF elements in the same way that Falling Down does.

I think that goes for a lot of JG Ballard’s work.

I remember seeing Crash back then. I did like it, but I was disappointed at the same time (because I kind of expected more, after the more obviously surreal mindfucks of Videodrome and Naked Lunch).

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Uncle Retrospective, Dave, Sean Robinson, Todd, lorcan_nagle

[Martin Smith]

I saw that new He-Man, sorry, Masters Of The Universe film today. Overall, I thought it was pretty rubbish.

It certainly has good bits. Sir Idris Elba is as solid as you’d expect and Alison Brie is great as Evil Lyn. But beyond that, it has many problems, which I’m going to spoiler tag.

The first 2/3 of the movie is very much Roger Sweet’s He-Man, that is brawn above brain, masculine power fantasy. It feels like it’s written by a 14 year old edgelord and seeing He-Man rip off a guy’s horn, jam it up into his jaw and then kick him off a mountain into lava just feels wrong.

Now, it definitely tries to pull back from that in the end, by emphasising that Adam was chosen to have the power of Grayskull for his humility, compassion and humanity rather than to exert brute physical strength. Which absolutely doesn’t work, for several reasons. First is that the film’s take on all these qualities feels like parody. While on Earth, Adam has ended up with a job in HR and all of that is cringeworthy corpo-compliance talk: group recitations of mantras, people “telling their truth”, everything a shitty workplace sitcom from 15 years ago would have run into the ground. It feels like intentional “anti-woke” right wing strawman of not being a dick, especially with the way the film revels in its violence, which makes it all the more surprising it tries to pull it back at the end and go “that’s good, actually”.

Second is that we don’t really see any evidence of Adam’s compassion and conciliation stuff. There’s one micro-scene where he’s trying to resolve an HR issue at work, which again, is essentially played off as “ha, look at this nonsense job he has.” Beyond that, it’s all him being a wuss played for laughs, such as when he tries to talk down Trapjaw. Which leads into the third problem with it: for all that the film purports to adhere to the Filmation morality of He-Man, all his attempts at amicable conflict resolution fail and he has to resort to violence. Talking down Trapjaw ends up with Adam ripping his gun arm off and using it to kill all the minions with him. When he tries to talk down Skeletor, it doesn’t work and he resorts to beating the shit out of him, which the film practically orgams over. Adam’s big “rallying the troops” moment – which I guess is meant to showcase how nice he is – is similarly awful. It’s mostly played for laughs and its main thrust is “we need to work together to escape, because where has working alone got us?” even though none of them were working alone! They were all captured in groups!

It’s brainlessness about on par with the rest of the script. The tertiary characters – Fisto, Ram Man, Beast Man etc are not only thin as hell, they’re inconsistently written. Near the end, Ram Man looks askance at Fisto for having called him that, despite Ram Man having enthusiastically claimed the name earlier. The film straight up forgets about Roboto for five minutes. Cringer is completely wasted and instead of being transformed into Battle Cat just agrees to disregard his entire personality (which has had a cumulative two minutes on screen, at best).

Perhaps most baffling is how the film is just embarrassed by its source material. That thing about Ram Man’s name? Turns out, he’s not called Ram Man (though his real name isn’t given) that’s just one of the “silly” names Adam gave to people from Eternia after being stranded on Earth, as he drew pictures to try and remember them. Same with Fisto, Mekanek, Trapjaw and others. The film even dismisses the name He-Man as laughably stupid, only using it right at the end and not at all seriously. And I’m sorry, “Evil Lyn” and “Skeletor” are fine but “Ram Man” and “He-Man” are a bridge too far? What are we even doing here lads if you’re embarrassed by the name of the main character of what you’re adapting? 25 years on from “what, you’d prefer yellow spandex?” and we’re still doing this self-apologetic crap?

The film decides to make no distinction between Adam and Adam as He-Man, there’s no “He-Man” personality, which isn’t a terrible choice. But it also has *everyone* aware that Adam is The Character Not Called He-Man and yet, it still shoves in a gag at the end where, upon receiving a distress call, Adam slinks off with Cringer to transform as if he has a secret identity to hide, with everyone else commenting how weird that is as he knows they all know. And I don’t get why that’s there rather than as a slight at the cartoon. Because it’s not like Adam says anything about being a fan of superheroes while on Earth and wanting to emulate them nor tries at any time to hide his transformations earlier from anyone. Just arbitrarily does something stupid for a bad joke.

But that’s pretty standard for the level of shitty writing this film has. Its willingness to mock the Filmation series and the franchise generally is galling given how vacuously it’s written. When Teela rescues Adam, she tells him what Skeletor has done to Eternia. He wonders why he’s done it. “Because he’s bad,” Teela tells him. “No, there must be something more to it than that,” Adam says. “He has a skull for a face,” Teela says, as if that proves everything. When Adam tries to find peace with Skeletor (before beating the shit out of him) he asks Skeletor why he’s so determined to have the power of Grayskull etc and the film rejects any attempt to give Skeletor anything approaching motivation. “Because I’m a villain” he says (I think – I’ll come back to that). Fucking Orko shows up in the credits to do a mock Filmation moral summation and says something to the effect that “and people who have skulls for faces are bad”. And I guess that’s alright then! I mean, I don’t need deep lore and backstory for Skeletor, but fuck me are we really doing a Filmation moral that is “judge people by appearances”?

Skeletor’s problematic in other areas. Visually, he’s good – the design is well realised – and the script is… well, it’s hard to fairly judge because Jared Leto is so fucking shit. Not only is his voice heavily processed to have way too much bass, which makes it near impossible to make out some of his lines, his take on the character is as insultingly banal as his Joker. It’s vaguely British, I think, the laughter is forced and hesitant. So bad. It makes Mark Hamill just doing the Joker in Kevin Smith’s MotU cartoon a classic by comparison.

I think this film is going to do well for the same reasons the Michael Bay Transformers movie did well. It’s glossy, it’s got a “cool” take on the characters and edgelords will be all over the violence. But just like how Bay missed what made that franchise special, this film fails to understand MotU. I’m not even that invested in MotU – I watched the original cartoon as a kid but it’s certainly not something I can bear now as an adult. But I recognise its qualities, and this film misses them. The 200X series was far more successful in taking the premise, owning its eccentricities while making it more “mature”.

• This reply was modified 3 weeks, 2 days ago by Martin Smith.
• This reply was modified 3 weeks, 2 days ago by Martin Smith.

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Uncle Retrospective, lorcan_nagle, Todd

Martin Smith wrote:

I saw that new He-Man, sorry, Masters Of The Universe film today. Overall, I thought it was pretty rubbish.

A lot of the criticisms that you raised are the same ones I’ve seen in reviews of the film.

I’m curious to see how it does against Obsession and Backrooms. Those two movies are smoking hot now. As someone who watched He-Man when it first aired in the 1980s, I have no sentimentality towards it. I would rather go see Backrooms as that sounds far more interesting to me.

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Andrew

In the world of Tokusatsu, if there’s one franchise that gets the participation medal each time, it’s Metal Hero.  Sitting alongside the big three of Super Sentai, Ultraman and Kamen Rider, Metal Hero’s schtick was that the characters had robot or cyborg themes and their costumes were designed to look more like suits of armour as opposed to the spandex uniforms of Ultraman and Sentai, and the biker’s leathers of Kamen Rider. Like Super Sentai begat Power Rangers, and Ultraman and Kamen Rider have had localisations over the years, Metal Hero provided footage for Saban shows in the 90s, in this case VR Troopers and Big Bad Beetleborgs.

And I’ll admit to having a soft spot for 1984’s Space Sheriff Shaider, the final in a three-part series of Space Sherriff shows, following Gavan and Sharivan.  In each of the three shows the titular Sherriff and their female assistant (usually also his girlfriend) fighting the latest evil force to threaten Earth. Shaider was a lot of fun, with him fighting against the mystical aliens known as the Fuuma, and his girlfriend Annie was almost as formidable in battle as he was, frequently saving the day and having her own inset theme song where the singer extols how she is both cute and kick-ass.  In 2012 there was a Gavan sequel movie in which the mantles of the three space sheriffs are passed on to a new generation of heroes, and as an add-on to that movie Shader and Sharivan got one-hour special episodes.

Which is a roundabout way of saying I got around to watching Shaider Next Generation during the week.  In it, Gavan is investigating a string of crimes by Horror Girl, a humanoid creature with a bird head and he’s constantly being stymied, only to learn that the investigation is being suspended as Space Commissioner Gordon’s daughter has been kidnapped.  On Earth, Sharivan is tracking down an alien smuggler only for his overprotective girlfriend Tamy to show up and assume he’s up to no good because he ditched her to go on this mission,  The contraband the smuggler is transporting turns out to be a girl, and you can guess who this turns out to be.  Cue a bunch of action, some comedy and a lot of explosions before the day is won.

The show’s big strength is the action, which is very good.  There’s lots of well-choreographed action sequences, while the original Shaider was more of a traditional square-jawed hero, the new one is more of a goof and bit of a lech and there’s a hint of Jackie Chan in his fighting style.  Like there’s a sequence where he’s attacked by a simulacrum of juvenile delinquents, one of whom is a girl, he dodges an attack and ends up with his head under her skirt and she smacks him for it.  Shaider and Tamy’s relationship is amusing, and while he seems to be trying to hide from her because he wants to creep on other girls and he’s afraid of her beating him up, there’s actually a core concern there that becomes a plot point in the show. Tamy’s more of a broad comedy character than Annie was in the original show, but she’s still competent, figuring out a chunk of the plot on her own and also kicking her fair share of butt in the various fight scenes.

There’s also some nice callbacks to the original Space Sheriff shows.  Unlike the Gavan movie and Sharivan special, they couldn’t have a cameo from the original Shaider actor as Hiroshi Tsuburaya died in 2001, but Naomi Morinaga reprises her role as Annie, for a decently sized role that’s actually important to the plot, and Masayuki Suzuki, who played Kojiro Oyama in all three shows makes an appearance.  None of this is overpowering and there’s no feeling like you’re missing anything, the characters are named and their current status is explained (when last we saw Annie, for example she’d gone off to study archeology in Egypt, and now she’s a doctor.  It’s mentioned that she saw too many people suffer in refugee camps and decided to help.

The show’s biggest flaw is the same a lot of Japanese SF shows and movies have from the mid 90s onwards – bad CGI.  The practical effects are mostly great, though again like a lot of Toku a bunch of the props look like literal toys, but the CGI is way fewer than great.  Like the flame effects on Tamy when she kinda enters a berseker rage, or the depiction of the three heroes mecha at the end.

Overall I had a good time, but at least a passing familiarity with the original would be highly recommended.

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Todd

lorcan_nagle wrote:

Metal Hero provided footage for Saban shows in the 90s, in this case VR Troopers and Big Bad Beetleborgs.

Oh, I had no idea they were sourced from the same show.

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lorcan_nagle

Martin Smith wrote:

lorcan_nagle wrote:

Metal Hero provided footage for Saban shows in the 90s, in this case VR Troopers and Big Bad Beetleborgs.

Oh, I had no idea they were sourced from the same show.

Separate shows in the same franchise.  VR troopers took footage from Shaider, Spielban and Metalder, while Beetleborgs took footage from B-Fighter and B-Fighter Kabuto

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Martin Smith

I noticed that Amazon had added Furiosa: A Mad Max Story recently and gave it a spin recently, and I’m afraid it didn’t float my boat.  It’s a prequel to Fury Road, detailing Furiosa’s childhood and journey to where we see her at the start of Fury Road.  This is delivered as a series of vignettes starting with Furiosa ending up in the clutches of Dementus, a biker gang leader played by Chris Hemsworth before eventually becoming one of Immortan Joe’s soldiers.  The story is well-told for the most part, but it’s a lot and a lot of the time you’re just wondering when big moments are going to happen.  For a lot of it Furiosa is incidental to the action of the story she’s featured in and it’s more moving characters around the desert in and around the Citadel.  This isn’t unusual for a Mad Max story, he’s usually just someone who ends up somewhere and gets dragged into whatever’s happening in that place, but when Furiosa is meant to be the central figure it doesn’t work as well.

But the big problem is that this just doesn’t look as good as Fury Road.  There’s some exceptionally dodgy effects sequences where moments are sped up or slowed down and it looks unconvincing, there’s frequently really bad CGI and it drags you out of the movie every time it happens.

The highlight is probably Hemsworth as Dementus, who’s just a total piece of work, shrouding his nastiness with honeyed words and it really feels like he and Furiosa are in a subtle abusive relationship… Where she spends a bunch of her childhood chained up and gagged in a cage while Dementus claims to be her father… OK, the metaphor doesn’t quite work but the dynamic is the most interesting thing on display here.

I went on to rewatch Mad Max: Fury Road and it’s night and day.  Spectacular action sequences, great performances, a solid story… easily one of the best action movies of the century thus far. And the fact that all that mayhem is in service of this exceptional character story about Max and Furiosa lowering their barriers, learning to trust each other, becoming comrades, and in Max’s words, finding some redemption along the hard road. I know how I’d spend two hours in the future given the choice of the two movies.

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Martin Smith, Dave, Todd, njerry, Uncle Retrospective

I just watched the last Widow’s Bay. Pretty good, they keep up the mix of horror and comedy nicely all the way up to the end.

I wish it concluded a bit more… conclusively, but apparently it’s been renewed for a second season so I guess that’s why.

I had thought it was a one-off single season and didn’t realise there would be more, but I’ll look forward to it when it returns. It’s been a really pleasant surprise.

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njerry, Todd, Dan

Dave wrote:

I just watched the last Widow’s Bay. Pretty good, they keep up the mix of horror and comedy nicely all the way up to the end.

I’ve really enjoyed it. It was just refreshing TV and horror comedy rarely works well, so to see it done this well was a delight.

There were so many good bits, the hotel in ep 3, the cocktail party in 4, accually, almost anything to do with Patricia was gold. They kept the pace up and the scares / mystery / laughs coming at a good clip.

Looking forward to season 2 and I hope they can keep quality up.

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Todd, Dave, njerry

Uncle Retrospective wrote:

Dave wrote:

I just watched the last Widow’s Bay. Pretty good, they keep up the mix of horror and comedy nicely all the way up to the end.

I’ve really enjoyed it. It was just refreshing TV and horror comedy rarely works well, so to see it done this well was a delight.

There were so many good bits, the hotel in ep 3, the cocktail party in 4, accually, almost anything to do with Patricia was gold. They kept the pace up and the scares / mystery / laughs coming at a good clip.

Looking forward to season 2 and I hope they can keep quality up.

Rhys has been a revelation as a comic actor, I think he’s brilliant. The entire dilemma in the final episode and the conversation around it was both horrible and hilarious at the same time.

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Uncle Retrospective

I also almost cried laughing at “He got bit by an animal and then became that animal.”

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njerry, Dan

I loved Widows Bay, but I have no idea what happened in the historic episode. The episode was so dark on my TV it was basically a radio play of screaming. The rest has been top notch though.

Now I need to fill the gap before I switch to paramount for Strange New Worlds.

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Uncle Retrospective

Dan wrote:

I loved Widows Bay, but I have no idea what happened in the historic episode. The episode was so dark on my TV it was basically a radio play of screaming. The rest has been top notch though.

Now I need to fill the gap before I switch to paramount for Strange New Worlds.

Yeah, the unnecessarily dark scenes have been my only complaint about this series.

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Dave

So I’m watching Spider-Noir, and in episode #5 and I know I should know who Ogden is… ah! It’s Andrew Robinson, Garak in DS9!

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Todd

Sean Robinson wrote:

It’s Andrew Robinson, Garak in DS9!

I was on the fence about watching this. Now I’m not.

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Todd

I’ve been watching The Beauty. It’s very much a Ryan Murphy show, with all that that entails… but most of the time, I like the schlockiness that he brings to his shows, and this one is quite an enjoyable romp.

It’s funny that these days, an indie comic gets made into a TV show and we don’t even talk about it here. World’s a different place.

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Uncle Retrospective

Netflix recently added My Dress-up Darling in two batches, it’s an anime that had been recommended to me a lot, and I gotta say, I had a blast with it.

The main character is Wakana Gojo, a first-year student who’s family have been making porcelain dolls for generations, and he’s passionate about them but when he showed one to his best friend as a young boy, she recoiled, calling him weird and unnatural because girls like dolls and boys don’t, so he’s been quiet and insular in school ever since, hiding his passion and family business. but one day his sewing machine at home is broken and he brings the doll costume he’s working on to school to work on it in the home ec room after class… only for Marin Kitagawa, the vivacious, beautiful gyaru, one of the most popular girls in class walks in on him.  As he panics she produces an outfit from her bag – it turns out she’s a wannabe cosplayer but is terrible at sewing and she asks him for help. When he agrees she gets so excited because she’s finally going to be able to be her favourite character from Saint Slippery’s Academy for Girls – The Young Ladies of the Humiliation Club: Debauched Miracle Life 2!

“Excuse me?”

Marin’s a big fan of erotic games, eroge in Japanese fan parlance as it happens plus any tie-in manga and anime, and she’s so happy to have someone who’s at least open to sharing her passion with, because her friends just dismiss it as nerd shit even as they’re all still good friends, and the pair begin to explore the world of cosplay together.  Wakana is inquisitive and really gets into the stories and characters while delving into the technical side of cosplay, the things you need to do to recreate outfits, styling wigs and all that stuff, while Marin gets a lot of attention form photographers and fans thanks to Wakana’s meticulous work.  They make friends in the cosplay community, Wakana starts to become part of Marin’s broader social circle and both elements help him come out of his shell a bit.

This is a variation on one of the standard teen romantic comedy templates in manga and anime-the insular and set-upon boy who’s a total catch and doesn’t realise it falls into the circle of a beautiful, vivacious girl and they have fun adventures while they slowly realise that they love each other.   In this case Wakana is pretty standard in that his shyness prevents him from talking to Marin about how he feels, while Marin refreshingly realises very early on that she’s into him in a big way and proudly talks with her friends about how she’s hanging out with this super-hot boy, but she’s got basically no romantic experience so she doesn’t really know how to take their relationship to the next level. It feels natural and genuine and the development over the story works really well.

For example, I’m not often a fan of cringe misunderstanding jokes, but there’s a well-executed one where Wakana is staying over in Marin’s place, and he somehow internalises that if he stays awake all night, it won’t count as a sleepover and he won’t have gone too far in their relationship.  He’s heard about energy drinks and so when they pair visit a convenience store, he grabs a couple of cans of Monster to use to stay awake.  But they’re right beside the weirdo aphrodisiac drinks that are common in Japan’s supplement culture and Marin becomes convinced he’s planning to sleep with her that night, but they haven’t even kissed yet! Of course, that doesn’t happen and Wakana somehow misses all of Marin’s hints about sex, and it all made me laugh.

The show is also pretty fanservicey, which may be good or bad depending on your tastes.   Most of it fits into the story at least, in an early episode Marin shows up at Wakana’s to get him to take her measurements, and she’s worn a bikini under her clothes so he won’t see her in her underwear, and the animators are perfectly happy to have the camera linger on her curves and a lot of bare skin, and there’s quite a bit of that with various characters depending on their costumes or other circumstances. I’ve seen far worse and far more gratuitous in my time.  All that said, the show is quite frank about male sexuality and I really appreciate that.  There’s an early sequence where Wakana has a wet dream about Marin and it’s not explicitly talked about but it’s clear what’s going on.  Or later when they’ve inadvertently booked a Love Hotel to do a photo shoot and Marin is straddling Wakana so he can get a food photo from below, while in a very revealing outfit he gets an erection but the tension is broken by a phone call.  It’s not played for laughs,  it’s portrayed as natural, if awkward and part of the progression of their relationship (Marin is already openly crushing on Wakana to her friend by this point so it’s not exactly an unwelcome development)

So yeah, strong recommend.  It can be quite anime tropey at points but the core relationships are very sweet, believable and make me smile.  The animation is gorgeous, leaving aside any racy content, and it’s a lot of fun overall.

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Christian, Martin Smith

Christian wrote:

It’s funny that these days, an indie comic gets made into a TV show and we don’t even talk about it here. World’s a different place.

Oh, I liked that comic! Didn’t know it was being adapted. Not a fan of Murphy at all though.

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Christian, lorcan_nagle

Watching a “refresher” video on the past two House of Dragons seasons to get ready for s3 starting tonight.

I remember because of the pandemic and other things, S2 did not have its “big war” episode like GOT did. It was postponed for this season and it might come tonight or by e4. I just want the show to hold interest.

I briefly thought about catching up on House of the Dragon, but then I remembered that I thought the first season was utter shite and I wasn’t going to touch it again for good reason.

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Martin Smith, Todd, lorcan_nagle

I was at Akira in the cinema a month or two back.  I didn’t talk about it because we’ve all seen Akira, right?  It was my third or fourth time catching it in the cinema!  I once did a commentary on it with one of my favourite media YouTubers on her Discord!  But one of the trailers before it was for an upcoming anime release, full of melancholic imagery with a gentle art style, and about halfway through I almost shout out loud, waitaminute… Is this fucking Angel’s Egg? and it’s getting a cinema release? Lo and behold, it was!

A collaboration between Mamoru Oshii, then best known for working on the Uresei Yatsura TV show and movies, now for Ghost in the Shell and Patlabor; and Yoshitaka Amano, best known for Final Fantasy and Vampire Hunter D, this is a mid-80s OVA that had a loimited theatrical release at the time in Japan but has never been officially available in the west before, in part due to a bizarre rights tangle over a Roger Corman-produced movie called In the Aftermath, which… it’s hard to explain, Corman got the rights to Angel’s Egg cheap as part of a package deal, couldn’t understand what the hell he had, passed it to some of his creatives and they made a live-action movie in an attempt to explain it and spliced some of the footage from the OVA into it. Anyway, it’s had a 4K restoration that was overseen by Oshii and it’s here now.

There is a plot of sorts, but the movie is long on introspective shots of melancholic imagery and short on things like characterisation, motivation and explanations.  A massive eye-like structure descends from the skies, it’s covered in statues and steam whistles.  A young man with a crucifix-shaped piece of machinery observes it descend.  A girl awakes, hides a large egg under her dress and wanders a city scavenging food and water.  The city is of an 18th-19th century European style (as is common for anime), cold and empty, cast in a monochrome of blues and greys. The only people we see other than the main two characters are legions of identical fishermen, all in the same colour palette as the backgrounds.  They have no will, no interiority, all they do is chase the shadows of giant fish that are cast upon the walls and streets of the cities from an unknown source.  They hurl gigantic harpoons that smash windows and gas lamps or land impotently against brick and stone.  Against this backdrop the young man and the girl meet.  He wants to crack her egg and see what’s inside.  She wants to nurture it until it hatches, she believes an angel will emerge.  There’s a philosophical bent to this, most notably when the young man recites the myth of Noah’s Ark, only in this version the dove never returns to the ark.

It all comes to a head and then the story becomes more open to interpretation as the final moments become more abstract.   It’s definitely one of those pieces of art that’s interrogating the concept of the apocalypse from a culture who had an apocalypse incurred on them by their fellow men.  it is beautiful to behold, Amano’s art is gentle and complex and is often flattened and robbed of much of its beauty in the simplification needed to make it work in animation, but this does not happen here.  Oshii and Amano are well-suited to each other and the OVA is more than willing to let still frames sit on the screen or to have the camera pan over a much larger painting and soak in the detail on display.

So is it worth watching?  A qualified yes.  I enjoyed it for sure, but it’s not going to be to everyone’s tastes.  It’s one of the codifying points in Oshii’s rise to one of the more prominent anime directors, and if you’ve seen the Patlabor or Ghost in the Shell movies those moments of quiet introspection that help elevate them above your standard action/thriller dealies are the same sentiment lovingly on display here.

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Todd, Christian, Dan, Martin Smith, Uncle Retrospective

Sounds fascinating!

I just watched the British-Nigerian movie “My Father’s Shadow” (that was in the running at Cannes last year) for work. During the nineties, a father travels to Lagos with his sons; he wants to collect salaries that he’s owed there. At the same time, there’s political hupheaval because there are democratic elections (that will be overturned). It’s a very good movie about fathers and sons and about Nigeria, and it’s also a movie that has its own fascinating slant, an ambiguity for which I have what I think is the most productive interpretation, but which is deliberately left open. Let’s just say there’s an element of magic realism there.

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Uncle Retrospective, lorcan_nagle

We watched Two Weeks In August, a new eight-episode British drama that seems to be inspired by The White Lotus and its ilk, but with a slightly narrower focus: it’s about one group of middle-class friends and couples who holiday together on a remote Greek island but quickly the cracks and tensions and awkwardnesses in their various relationships start to show.

I quite enjoyed it as a quick binge-watch, the actors and writing are all pretty good and it moves faster than White Lotus, packing in a lot of development and consequences rather than being all about tension and build-up. Plus there’s an interesting mystical/magic realism subplot to it that I thought worked quite well.

Not amazing but not bad.

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Martin Smith, njerry

We saw Toy Story 5 today, partly as the kids were keen and partly to spend an afternoon in a cool air-conditioned room.

It was actually alright, not up there with the first three but a little better than the fourth one. I had thought beforehand that the tech theme would skew too old for a Toy Story movie but they handle it well in a way that young kids can understand. Making Jesse the lead rather than Woody and Buzz also works well. It’s funny and occasionally moving and has some inventive moments, even if the cast are now sounding their age (and in some cases dead actors have been replaced). I wouldn’t rush to see it but it’s not terrible.

Dave wrote:

Not amazing but not bad.

Is it part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe?

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Todd

People may be aware there’s a new TV version of The Ghost in the Shell coming next month, and there’s preview screenings of a couple of episodes this weekend… which I went to tonight.

Every prior adaptation has, of course based itself on the comic to some degree, but has added or subtracted things.  Most of them take their cue from Mamoru Oshii’s 1995 movie, which picks and chooses elements from the comic to directly adapt (chapter 1, parts of chapters 3, 5, 9, and 11), and concentrates on the serious side, the cyberpunk action, and the existentialism.  Stand Alone Complex keeps the broader tone but some more characterisation seeps in, as does a tendency to do a visual or plot nod to some Shirow comic or other, and addition of some humour, primarily from the childlike Tachikoma robot tanks.

But this is a more faithful adaptation of the original comic, it’s just straight up doing the plots of the comic stories (episodes 1 and 2 cover chapter 1, 2 and about half of chapter 3), keeping all the story beats intact, the character choices and moments, even as some small details are changed.  Most notably, it keeps Shirow’s sense of humour, which is one of the things that set the comic aside from many other cyberpunk actioners being imported from Japan in the mid-90s. Also as a very nice touch is the use of on-screen text to explain some elements of the world, calling back to Shirow’s copious liner notes and backmatter in the comics, but nowhere near as frequently. Also worth noting is that the adaptation retains the controversial lesbian sex scene from chapter 3 which Shirow redrew for reprints and is primarily known in the west from being shown in Intro Depot 1, his first art book.  Though here it’s nowhere near as explicit as in the comic.

Production is handled by Science Saru, the animation house responsible for recent high-profile projects like The Colours Within, Devilman Crybaby, Scott Pilgrim Takes Off and Dandadan.  It looks fantastic, the animation is smooth and stylish, I can’t say enough good things about the look and feel. It captured Shirow’s art very well while also doing its own thing (not sure how much I like the Fuchikomas having little mouths when they speak, but it’s a unique take for sure)

The animation shown in the preview ran about an hour, and there was a making of that ran about the same length after it. This is pretty standard for anime extras, just a bunch of the staff talking to camera with some clips and not much of a narrative flow, but there’s some very interesting moments.  While the animation is being produced digitally, the artists working on tablets, it’s cool to see the digital canvases for the key frames still having the cut outs that physical ones had to mount them for photographing.  Also, the character designer talks about how he worked hard to try and capture the cultural zeitgeist of Japan of the Bubble Era in his work – being the point the comic was being produced.  He doesn’t say it out loud but it’s the first time I’ve seen someone working on an adaptation even reference the common maxim that SF reflects the era it’s produced as opposed to being a prediction of the future.

So yeah, I was already looking forward to this based on the trailers, but having now seen a couple of episodes I’m confident this is going to be something special.  I can’t help but notice as well that the show’s writer mentioned Appleseed in the making of and lads, LADS, do it.  Direct adaptation of the comic, ye can do it.  I need the fight in the warehouse from book 4, I need it in my bones.

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Martin Smith, Todd

That sounds cool. Where’s it available?

Martin Smith wrote:

That sounds cool. Where’s it available?

It’s going to be on Prime from the 7th of July (presumably weekly episodes given it’s a simulcast with a Japanese TV station), special cinema previews this weekend.