brendala

According to ANN, some director named Wolfgang Petersen is making a live-action, American version of Satoshi Kon's awesome animated film, Paprika.

....WHY!? Paprika is one of those movies that is tailor made for the medium of animation. Any live-action adaption is going to be chock full of (expensive) CGI anyway, so why not just animate the whole damn thing? I could get behind different animators doing shorts inspired by Paprika (a la the Animatrix or Batman:Gotham Knight) because that would be really cool and interesting. But this...well, this quote from Mr.Petersen sums up why I have low hopes for this thing quite well:
""Petersen notes that his representatives first introduced him to the story through Kon's anime film: "And I saw it and bingo, I thought this is fantastic. This is a great piece. That will be a very very interesting movie." Although he plans to make the story a little more accessible for a mainstream audience, he compares the story to The Matrix in its scope."""

Note to director: The Matrix was pretentious crap and 2/3 of those movies were impossible to sit through. Maybe Paprika was a bit pretentious, too. But at least it had Kon's killer visuals.

I hope this thing rots in the same development hell as the live-action American remakes of Evangelion and Akira.

This is the ending theme from Nerima Daikon Brothers. I love this show (despite the fact that the jokes can be REALLY dirty) because the music is just so much fun. It kinda reminds me of a bizarro Japanese version of Jem and the Holograms. Best of all, its one of those rare anime where its actually worth your while to see it in both English and Japanese. The English version is fun because of all the jokes and songs. And the Japanese version is fun thanks to the Nabeshin commentaries and the pop-up Japanese cultural notes in the ADV release. 

I highly recommend checking it out. Funimation recently rescued it from ADV's corpse. But I recommend buying the ADV discs if you can find them since I'm not sure if Funimation will keep the commentaries and the pop up cultural notes (the pop up notes are absolutely essential if you plan on watching it in Japanese).

According to ANN, both the Lodoss War OVA and the TV series are going to be re-released on DVD by Media Blasters. ^_^

This makes me really happy! I was never able to buy the Lodoss TV series (aka Chronicles of the Heroic Knight) because it was out-of-print and insanely hard to find by the time I found out it existed. Last year, I finally rented the CPM discs from Netflix and copied them onto VHS tapes. But it'll be great to finally be able to get it on DVD. I adore the 'Welcome to Lodoss' chibi shorts.

No release date yet. Hopefully, we'll get one soon.

I just discovered this interview with Eric Stuart where he does the whole thing in-character as Seto Kaiba! His performance feels more like the Abridged version of the character than the 4!Kids version (mainly the attitude and relentless Joey bashing). It's a lot of fun to listen to. And it makes me wish the radio host was a Slayers fan so we could get an in-character Gourry interview, too. ~_^

I finally got around to watching the copy of Satoshi Kon's Paprika that I got for Christmas and it's awesome. I went in not knowing if I would like it because it has a plot centered on dreams; which typically means you're getting a pretentious mindfu*k movie. And I HATE pretentious mindfu*k stories (Evangelion, I'm looking at you). Thankfully that wasn't the case.

( Read more... )

I got to see Ponyo this morning. My date and I went to the first show of the day and had the whole theatre to ourselves. So we could talk (and play MST3K) to our hearts content. Sweet!

( Review and spoilers under the cut )

Just saw this news on Toonzone! Irresponsible Captain Tylor is getting a remastered DVD re-release!

The only difference between these new DVDs and the little brick-box ones I have is some remastered footage and the Japanese eye-catchers. Normally, minor things like that wouldn't make me want to re-buy a show I already own (and paid big money for!), but I love Tylor so much I just might make an exception! :)

It's cool that the old liner notes are included in the re-release (they were the best features on the original DVD sets). But it's too bad they don't get the mini-novels that were included in the old brick sets. I guess it would be difficult to cram the books into a thin pack box. :P



In any case, I recommend that anyone who hasn't seen this show yet get the new sets when they come out. Tylor is FANTASTIC. And I personally think that Crispin Freeman did his best work ever when voicing the title character.