The Second Ever Film Review
Sep. 18th, 2006 04:03 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shazrashaOK I only got one comment on the last review but that's still one more than none. So here I am again reviewing films. This time I've rented them on DVD as I've not really felt motivated to go to the cinema recently. The films are...
Red Shadow, Keeping Mum, Casshern and Sky blue.
I started watching Red Shadow having no idea of what genre it actually was. So when it started with the three ninja kids being silly and progressing to the adults doing the same I was rather surprised but pleasantly so. The first half of the film is a take off of most ninja cliches around - my favourite scene being where the trio of Shadow ninjas run into a rival clan during an mission and then have to have a SILENT battle to work out who gets to complete their mission.
The second half of the film was a little more serious but was entertaining non the less. The action scenes are not the best in the business but the ninja fighting to the sound of rocky techno music amuses none the less.
Despite missing 10 mins or so due to a jump in the disk I still got the gist of the plot and as a less heavy film to watch entertained well enough.
Keeping Mum was an unassuming film that passed me by at the cinema and barely registered on my list of films to watch. In fact I only got it because K said she wanted to see it and I really couldn't think what else to get.
Now the opening sequence of the film is innocuous enough with just a jaunt in the country until the blood starts seeping from the trunk.
47 years later and we are in Little Wallop where the new housekeeper is solving the families problems in her own special way...The jokes are at once well thought out and in some cases crude but all make for a rather lovely British comedy with people who you really could imagine talking that way (unlike some jokes these seemed natural). A great film to sit down with when you need a bit more cheer, the proof in that I quite happily subjected myself to watching it a second time when![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
midnightoak came down to visit.
Casshern was a film that tried to make Manga live action resulting in K calling it Laanime (live action anime). It had everything a manga film needs, a post apocalyptic future with polluted zones and genetic illnesses, a tragic love story, clones created in a strange laboratory, a main male lead who dies tragically in a war but is brought back as a strange android and is the last hope of man, a vague philosophical goal anda coherent plot... ok some sort of attempt at a plot but one so vague that midnightoak and I kept asking each other if we had worked out what was going on. I know that manga plot can sometimes be vague but this was really pushing it. There seemed to be absolutely no motivation for anything the characters did. So all in all we regretted that evenings fare. We did speculate as to whether this film would make more sense to someone from where it was made but somehow we doubted it.
Sky Blue was an anime film 7 years in the making and it shows. No half measures here, everything from the lighting to the character colours to the sound of rainfall was meticulously planned. Revolutionary techniques were used and fused in what ended up being a 2D, 3D, CGI, Miniatures combination that truely is beautiful.
Plus points have to be given to the animators of the characters who apparently had to make every nuance of expression right for inflection and feeling. Which made it 100 times better at conveying feeling than any of the real actors in Casshern. This is the international release that differs from the korean release mainly due to an increased music score and added sound. The film was also in different directorial hands, though how this made a difference is tricky to tell without watching both versions in fine detail.
The voice actors (though some dubiously being from the powerpuff girls) actually worked with the plot and did not sound grating at all, unlike some dubbings that are hard on the ears.
Oh and the plot, the wonderful motivated plot. Ok I wax lyrical here mainly due to watching this the night after Casshern but this does have a decent plot for manga - even if it isn't the most original idea it is delivered in style. Well worth the money spent to rent it. I just wish I could watch it on a HUGE screen to do the graphics justice.
Red Shadow, Keeping Mum, Casshern and Sky blue.
I started watching Red Shadow having no idea of what genre it actually was. So when it started with the three ninja kids being silly and progressing to the adults doing the same I was rather surprised but pleasantly so. The first half of the film is a take off of most ninja cliches around - my favourite scene being where the trio of Shadow ninjas run into a rival clan during an mission and then have to have a SILENT battle to work out who gets to complete their mission.
The second half of the film was a little more serious but was entertaining non the less. The action scenes are not the best in the business but the ninja fighting to the sound of rocky techno music amuses none the less.
Despite missing 10 mins or so due to a jump in the disk I still got the gist of the plot and as a less heavy film to watch entertained well enough.
Keeping Mum was an unassuming film that passed me by at the cinema and barely registered on my list of films to watch. In fact I only got it because K said she wanted to see it and I really couldn't think what else to get.
Now the opening sequence of the film is innocuous enough with just a jaunt in the country until the blood starts seeping from the trunk.
47 years later and we are in Little Wallop where the new housekeeper is solving the families problems in her own special way...The jokes are at once well thought out and in some cases crude but all make for a rather lovely British comedy with people who you really could imagine talking that way (unlike some jokes these seemed natural). A great film to sit down with when you need a bit more cheer, the proof in that I quite happily subjected myself to watching it a second time when
midnightoak came down to visit.Casshern was a film that tried to make Manga live action resulting in K calling it Laanime (live action anime). It had everything a manga film needs, a post apocalyptic future with polluted zones and genetic illnesses, a tragic love story, clones created in a strange laboratory, a main male lead who dies tragically in a war but is brought back as a strange android and is the last hope of man, a vague philosophical goal and
midnightoak and I kept asking each other if we had worked out what was going on. I know that manga plot can sometimes be vague but this was really pushing it. There seemed to be absolutely no motivation for anything the characters did. So all in all we regretted that evenings fare. We did speculate as to whether this film would make more sense to someone from where it was made but somehow we doubted it.Sky Blue was an anime film 7 years in the making and it shows. No half measures here, everything from the lighting to the character colours to the sound of rainfall was meticulously planned. Revolutionary techniques were used and fused in what ended up being a 2D, 3D, CGI, Miniatures combination that truely is beautiful.
Plus points have to be given to the animators of the characters who apparently had to make every nuance of expression right for inflection and feeling. Which made it 100 times better at conveying feeling than any of the real actors in Casshern. This is the international release that differs from the korean release mainly due to an increased music score and added sound. The film was also in different directorial hands, though how this made a difference is tricky to tell without watching both versions in fine detail.
The voice actors (though some dubiously being from the powerpuff girls) actually worked with the plot and did not sound grating at all, unlike some dubbings that are hard on the ears.
Oh and the plot, the wonderful motivated plot. Ok I wax lyrical here mainly due to watching this the night after Casshern but this does have a decent plot for manga - even if it isn't the most original idea it is delivered in style. Well worth the money spent to rent it. I just wish I could watch it on a HUGE screen to do the graphics justice.
