Tokyo Godfathers: A Nearly Lost Tale of Understanding (At least I can relate)
I guess I've officially consider my financial state to be poor. This is because my shift at the front desk is just dragging on. Eight o'clock is the time that I like to start thinking about blogging, but it's 7:00 pm hence I've ran out of things to do with the Internet. At least things that I can afford to do with my time.
So, I gotta stay away eBay (despite there is an unusual abundance of blank championship belts for under $60.00) and Amazon (I can't even swing $35...better make sure my Nerd Block gets cancelled...shit, too late [crappy websites won't get a link regardless of the cool anime stuff I received]). Thus, I have to come up with a new plan to work around this, and further emphasize the need to get "Guy Does Finishing Moves on Zombies," to promote "Main Event of the Dead" finished. I'll throw that pitch at the bottom of the blog.
Fortunately, Netflix came through for me when I received Satoshi Kon's "Tokyo Godfathers." Sadly, renting it through this service is the most affordable way to do so (I really should have booted up my Window Vista PC, my Dazzle Video Import hardware and Roxio software...first time I ever consider using the tech for piracy). When you consider the old movies that may never see streaming services, the $7.99 DVD service is really worth it. And it kind of makes you have to watch it ASAP because if you do not, you negate the value of your purchase (like cancelling Nerd Block too late..."Evangelion," worth 35/"Mr. Bean," not worthless). This also makes my "not going to get shitfaced nights" dedicated to watching new flicks (to me) so I'll can get back into the practice of writing movie reviews. I figure my knowledge of film should further support why "Guy Does Finishing Moves on Zombies," to promote "Main Event of the Dead" needs to be completed. If he knows the medium so well, surely his script (that you can get a treatment of by e-mailing russthebus07@gmail.com) can't be too bad.Keep in mind, this course of action will only occur on nights that I'm not going to be a poor bore at the front desk. I need to save my other sober nights for "Disney Infinity" and "Infamous."
This film from one of my favorite anime directors ("Perfect Blue" is a must view) is quite an appropriate title when it comes to my developed course of action for slow hotel nights. Three homeless Tokyo residents are trying their best to be cheery on Christmas Eve, but it's difficult for the alcoholic Gin, transvestite Hana, and runaway Miyuki to stand each other, let alone accept the spirit of the season. God may be looking over them, because as they are digging through the trash for some classic literature for Miyuki, they hear the whines of a newborn baby.
Hana believes this is his "virgin birth" and decides that he must play the role of mother, refusing to listen to his compatriots that they need to turn the newly christened Kiyoko (translates to messenger of God) to the police. Because the immediate needs of the child, Gin softens his stance and Miyuki can relate to the child's plight in her own way. A compromised is reached in the morning when Hana demands that he cannot give the baby up until her parents explain their actions to him. So, the three that society have forgotten will venture on a quest to find a baby's parents that may lead the three to finally understanding and accepting each other.
I think Kon realized that story may be a bit cliche, so Yakuza, wannabe Droogs and hidden ailments of the three compatriots will present themselves to add greater challenges to our protagonists.
I will warn you this is a subtitled only release. The positive of this is that the authenticity of the translation cannot be questioned. The negatives are whatever the typical person has to bitch about reading. My only issue with the lack of a dub is that I like to see multiple angles to my animation. It's a different art to dubbing animation, and with anime's lack of mouth movement to the correct sound spoken, a good dub is about as good as a track where I will not recognize the actors. For fun, a dub can also throw in extra sounds/dialogue to explain the story even further.
Aside from this, "Tokyo Godfathers" is one of the best subtle stories I have seen in anime. Do not worry, crazy things will occur, but they happen to further our understanding of the characters, not to just break up monotony. It's kind of like the J. R. R. Tolkien adaptations to screen, but every action scene provides depth to the protagonist(s) instead of serving as an obstacle to present the illusion that the story is more than midgets walking towards a goal.
The character of Miyuki offers a lot more to be discovered about her, and the story only breaks the surface. Fortunately, the adult characters, the easiest to understand characters, are totally flushed out, so their stories and how they could seemingly coexist make the film very rewarding. Kon realizes that it is still a cartoon, so the film has a style that lacks realism which may make swallowing some of the tougher character traits a little easier.
Also he successfully reminds us of the medium with the incorporation of devices where characters comfortably break the fourth wall. They're very subtle devices that are not too far removed from Wile E. Coyote holding up one of his signs.
A huge positive of this film is how Kon was able to bring together three story-lines into just 90 minutes. That seems like a daunting task for many Asian directors to do with only one line to follow, and perhaps its through making the audience yearn to see the characters stick together that makes it work so well. Kon obliges, and you are given the time to pop "Perfect Blue" into the player (that's why I keep two VHS decks on standby) to see the range of his storytelling ability in just one night.
"Tokyo Godfathers" is a case for preventing a major distributor (Sony in this case) from getting a hold of marvelous niche films. I doubt there is any rush on their behalf for a Blu-Ray of this masterpiece in storytelling, so it maybe a decade before we can easily see this feature again. Since this and Kon's "Millenium Actress" suffer from poor distributing and Satoshi Kon has since passed away, I fear he may be forgotten in the states as one of the best directors of traditional animation.
Not my best closing, but I think its worth your time to listen to the following suggestion:
The "Main Event of the Dead" Test Reel Needs:
- Someone with some makeup or special effects experience.
- The true antagonist of the feature is a woman, so an actress to set up the premise of "Main Event of the Dead."
- Three or four wrestlers to take the finishing moves.
- One or two wrestlers to deliver the moves.
- A wrestling ring with a canvas that can afford to be left a little messy. If we can get extra from the crowd-funding campaign, we'll make replacing it a priority.
If you need a treatment of the script for "Main Event of the Dead" please e-mail me at russthebus07@gmail.com.
TRON Legacy - Too hip?
Until the awesome previews, I was skeptical about a "Tron" sequel. What can I say except I dug the 8-bittiness of it. Also, it took me nearly 20 years to understand all of the nuances of the first film. After accomplishing that, what would "TRON Legacy" offer a recovering code junkie?
In 1989, Encom CEO Kevin Flynn goes missing. Some speculate his demise while his partner Alan Bradley believes he is exploring the digital fronts. Either way, his son Sam has grown up without him, and is now a despondent majority shareholder who tries to compromise the corporation that is run by the likes of Edward Dillinger.
After his last stunt, Alan informs Sam that his father paged him from the old arcade that had been closed for 20 years. Sam goes to investigate, and winds up finding the teleportation laser. As a result, he is transferred to the Grid, the digital universe that is ran by the megalomaniacal program CLU.
CLU was developed by Flynn to create the perfect digital world. Tired of being restricted to the Grid, he wants to take on the real world. To do that, he need Flynn's data disk to allow him to use the portal to the real world. By bringing Sam to the grid, he hopes to draw Flynn out of hiding. The only problem with the plan, Flynn may be ready him.
"TRON Legacy" is "Matrix" smart. It does not take a nerd to understand it, so the geek elite may feel betrayed. Otherwise, it is a pretty solid flick, easy for anyone to get into and ideal for 3-D screens or raves. Again nerds may feel left out. Especially since the film lacks a George Lucas love story.
If there is any trouble in terms of action sequences, it is that there is too much action. Keeping with the environment of the first "Tron", there is little in terms of backgrounds. The world is vast, but feels pretty small, so some of the scenes feel crowded, especially with the Virtual Boy like streak effects of the vehicles. It still looks great in 3-D, but does it translate to 2-D?
Aside from that flaw, the only weakness is that Sam, Garrett Hedlund, is not very interesting. Dare I say, Sam is Anakin like. Not to say that Tron was an enthralling character, but Bruce Boxleitner pulled of being a bad ass, and the Alan Bradley alter ego gave him a dynamic nature. Sam does not have the foil, so he needs to do something to be unique. Being the stereotypical rebel does not cut it.
The rest of the characters are unique and fun (especially Michael Sheen getting to try and be the flamboyant Brit). Fantasy films call for actors to not be "normal," and they all succeed.
If "TRON Legacy" was more careful with their Kung Fu and throw the first film's fan more than a Journey sound byte, it would have been perfect. It should have been made for the fans, but you really cannot hold anything against a good Jeff Bridges movie. "Crazy Heart" was lame, but Bridges was fantastic, so cannot argue against his power.
07521 088965 - Pinterest
90 min at 3.99: Ultraviolet...just to prep for the anime sequel
You remind me of the babe.
What babe?
The babe with the power.
What power?
The power of VUDU.
That was lot of research in how I purchased "Ultraviolet" to justify cutting out some sleep for content. I think coming up with a David Bowie/Jim Henson reference about a Milla Jovovich headlined film demonstrates my genius. With that said, I think you should give my pro-wrestling zom-com "Main Event of the Dead" some attention. Feel free to request a treatment of the script via russthebus07@gmail.com. Promotional suggestions would be nice to get this B-movie script into production.
Regardless of my genius, I am glad "Resident Evil: The Final Chapter" clocked in at 1:47. This means that I will not have to repeat that quest for cleverness. Not putting Iain Glen's or Ruby Rose's name on the poster makes me feel that it does not deserve more promotion.
The search for a digital receipt in the @MainEventZombie Twitter account's email (after my primary email search failed) also let me find some classic tweets from the "@midnight" era. I now have approved stingers for blog post. Unfortunately I will not have the time to write this blog in one sitting. Ironic, because dove right into this blog morning. It just took me the majority of it adjusting the layout. Too much Pinterest time to balance the content and empty space is all I will say about that.
Because I stayed up two hours for blog content, that means there was not that much excitement to be had this week. At least that I can complain about that is. If I choose to move to a big city and get back into hospitality, dragging the name of a corporation that feels just in screwing me out of a wedding trip through the mud would probably be ill advised.
And as I typed that up, my better quarter (of course I am giving Eva the cat the majority of my quality) is desperate for a road trip, despite a wedding will not allow for the sites of the DC area, so I will need to come up with reservations today from the corporation that will not even revisit my Better Business Bureau complaint until Saturday. If the wage I made under them was not insult enough.
It may be a good idea to try selling my movie idea directly to All Elite Wrestling. If they buy it and let me into their fold, I can totally bury them. You can tell I am coming up on 40 if that is now the dream.
Aside from my past coming back to bite me in a bad way (I would not mind if the portion that ditched me for their sobriety was doing the knawing), there is not much stress in my life otherwise. Communication between me and my girlfriend could be better, but it forced us to have fun at a coworker hosted Halloween party. That is a new experience for us. Here is to hoping to keep that rolling at my other job's Illini Hockey night tomorrow.
As I said, communication could be better. Halloween was cool with her getting over the arguments of me buying stuff/spoiling her. She at least laughed off the concept that there may come a day where she may be of no worth to me, so exploit it while she can. The main determining factor in the need to better communicate is that we watched "Beetlejuice" for the holiday evening. Tim Burton's second feature is only an hour and 32 minutes. If she would have only suggested this viewing 24 hours earlier, I would not have to reevaluate my decision of repurchasing a Milla Jovovich film that I was only holding on to the DVD of for her commentary track to explain what the hell this action flick was.
That lack of communication hurts more than me not pushing her into allowing me to abandon the wedding and letting me head to Downtown Peoria and Berwyn for My Life with the Thrill Kill Kult, a sex on wheels weekend. Maybe I am a one-man relapse device.
Ultraviolet
In a world you may not understand, humans have been warring with hemophages, those infected with a vampiric virus originally designed to create better soldiers. This is not a trailer so that neither works as a great opening line for this review or the film. Exposition has a purpose, but the primary message of the film is that explanations are something that can be abandoned when you have CG. The story is about Violet, a single-hemophage killing machine who is looking for a cure to the virus which may be in the package she has stolen from Vice Cardinal Daxus, the de-facto leader of the human government. An end to hemoglophagia would serve as a revenge for the system causing her to lose her husband and unborn child via experimentation.
Instead of there being vials and needles, the package is a young clone of Daxus. The boy, Six, holds the key to a cure, but it has nothing to physically do with him. What is established is that the kid is dying. Because the kid's a work in progress, Daxus want to regain all of that tissue. It may not be the end of this viral age, but Violet's maternal instincts will make it so she will protect and allow Six the most anyone can get out of life.
I hate to be so harsh, probably because it reflects on my own taste and desire to claim Milla Jovovich as a talented actress, but "Ultraviolet" is a mess on every level. After completing that statement, Jovovich was not a mess. Her performance was as good as the script allowed, but the director's attempt to make her a PG-13 level pin up in every shot shows that writer/director Kurt Wimmer has/had a greater obsession with her presence than any nerd on the planet.
He is/was aware that she is married to his style over substance peer Paul W.S. Anderson? His phoney gunkata martial arts is not going to whisk her off her feet. Did he even perceive how stupid punching with a gun firing in the same hand looks?
Wimmer is synonymous with incoherent story telling. He is an M. Night Shyamalan knock off without any chill. Everything has to be a twist. As I had already established, the film thinks it did not need exposition it because of the "cutting-edge" computer graphics. This created an environment that makes it dependent upon his curveball nature. You need a fastball to establish the strike zone, otherwise all your off-speed offerings will require Bob Ueker descriptions.
As for the CG, high definition, let alone FDR (bought into the 4K too soon), has not been kind to it. It felt like "Tron" but with everything filled in. The lines in the Disney classic are thin. If they were filled, it becomes a blur of color. The film also seems to lean on, "obviously this isn't real, so bullets and explosions can look cooler." These bullets and explosions would makes this a B-Movie if you were unaware of the budget.
Despite all of the flaws, if you are looking to direct action, I can see this film providing some situations that you can only improve upon. The film may even look good in storyboards. Timur Berkmambetov has some very similar scenes in his big three features, ("Day Watch", "Night Watch", and "Wanted"). He is a now under-rated director (I will get back to you about "Ben-Hur" [a $5 iTunes special]), so as far as I am concerned, those are now his scenes. If he got the inspiration from this film, he braver than I. I have only watched this thrice.
"Ultraviolet" is an attempt to create something cool without giving the prospective audience a reason to. Milla Jovovich already had "Resident Evil", so this was totally unnecessary. Perhaps you can appreciate some of the intentions, but you are probably looking for reasons to justify spending any of your money on this feature.
This is a tutorial into how to waste $30 million and potential IP for the sake of being an auteur. Director/Writer Kurt Wimmer may have proven with this film to be a bigger disaster than Ed Wood. "Ultraviolet" is best viewed with a couple of robot friends and some illicit substances.
 |
"Underworld: Blood Wars" and R-Rated Table Reads for Kids
The original subtitle for this blog was "Maximizing the HDR but not Charles Dance." I bring up Charles Dance in the blog title having recently seen "Godzilla: King of the Monsters". Do not forget the birthday gift that your parents had gotten your significant other. There are consequences.
You would think it would be tough to get back to my latest 90-minute movie review after that rant, but I must be clairvoyant. The first word of the review I wrote in what I think was January of 2018 was...
Bookworms are tough to read as film goers.
Underworld Blood Wars:
Before my current beloved, my last girlfriend was a lost 22-year old on Seroquel-prescribed mess (the past is the past), so it was easy to keep her amused with flashy imagery. The William S. Burrough readers who left me bankrupt would find other means to distract themselves. The roommate I had a literal falling out with had little time for appreciating pop corn cinema because her boyfriend at the time embraced it while ignoring our tendency to indulge in Milla Jovovich films not directed Luc Besson.
Tuscola's finest nose being in books made it so she never kept track of gimmicky cinema, and since all of our motion picture library for the first year of our relationship had to be viewed in the common living space, it was tough to catch her up on it. Despite all of the distractions, she is amused by chicks fighting monsters. Regardless if she retains any of the plots, I am not allowed to watch any of their sequels without her.
 |
Thankfully, with me initially installing the 4K equipment in the bedroom, she would have to become a cinephile. There are no arts and crafts to distract her. Just the need to deal with all of her questions from the previous franchise installments that competed against yarn balls for her attention.
Fortunately, "Underworld: Blood Wars" did not inspire a refresher. The film returns to what the first film in the series promised, vampires versus werewolves. If it makes a viewer inquisitive, it is only about what they had previously seen the British actors in.
Humanity has abandoned their purge of violent "Twilight" characters. This leaves the war between vampires and lycans to focus on capturing a hybrid to dissect for the cause of securing their clan's respective future.
The only person who can lead anyone to one of the werepires is the death dealer Selene. To ensure this cannot happen, she has hidden her daughter and arranged it so she will not know the child's location. Thus, she is left wandering the Earth only to be amused by killing those dumb enough to chase her. That can get dull, so she has become nothing more than a reverent of regret hoping it will end soon.
David the vampire prince is able to track her down and tell her that she will be welcomed back into the coven to train new death dealers since the lycan threat is only growing. If one half of her pursuers can be eliminated, this may allow her to knock off the absentee mother routine. But everything in her thousand-year life has been based on a lie, so there must be a vampire or two planning her demise.
Selene will need a new trick to escape and end her foes, so the film leaves you to brainstorm. Will you guess correctly or inadvertently prepare a treatment for the sixth film?
It is a good time for fantasy with the success of "Stranger Things," and "Underworld: Blood Wars" capitalizes on the audience accepting any convoluted premise. The viewer has fun trying to out think the dungeon master/screenwriters Cory Goodman's plot and is rewarded with an amusing story advancement. There is nothing about this film that can be taken too seriously, you will catch on to that quickly and enjoy the ride.
There is nothing noteworthy about the fight sequences, but the environments and the amount of action will keep your attention. Unlike the previous films, characters who survived are further developed (Charles Dance), so you get something they totally dismissed with Scott Speedman's character. If you were angry about that hollow love interest was left out of the previous film, you receive a quite satisfactory resolution to your complaints.
Perhaps the best aspect of this feature is that it keeps moving. No moments are taken to add weight to events. It is a "Dynasty Warriors" video game put on 35 mm. You came to see vamps and wolves bash heads. As an indie wrestling fan, I can appreciate the decision to skip story and just spreading the thumbtacks on the canvas. We do not need Stephanie McMahon showing us how she verbally loves licking her lips for 20 minutes...ever.
And that is why people immediately doubt my sophistication when I mention wrestling, regardless of the alliteration.
"Underworld: Blood Wars" is how a ridiculous 80's feature premise can still work in the 21st century. A familiar face and action is all you need. Just keep it brief (under 100 minutes) and the effects worthwhile, and you can get the audience to accept anything. This is "Cruiser Weight Classic" film making, not "205 Live".
No comments:
Post a Comment