Movie Review: Metropolis

A professor at my school, don't know him or even what department he's in, seems to have organized a film festival of sorts where the school's movie theater (an actual theater, not the auditorum where they normally show movies) shows a different, classic German film every two weeks or so and the first film up was Metropolis which is basically the granddaddy of modern science fiction. I don't know if the version I saw was the most complete one out there (it was missing two scenes), poking around it seems like this is the most complete one that is missing only about five minutes out of it's 2+ hour run time, and the professor talked a bit too much during the film (some of his points were interesting, like large objects representing authority, others not so much) but none of those are the film's fault, even if the talking really got on my nerves at times.

Metropolis

Summary: In the future there is the great city of Metropolis where the rich live in every comfort and the workers toil beneath the city to keep it running. Freder is a youth living in the upper part of the city who is distraught to find what kinds of lives the workers live and feels called upon to be the foretold mediator between the two groups. But his father, the creator of Metropolis, doesn't wish to see the workers gain that kind of power and conspires with the inventor Rotwang to use his newly created robot to infiltrate the workers and destroy them from the inside.

The Good: I was really not expecting Metropolis to have such a complex plot with deep themes so the movie really blew me away. Part of the reason I had been holding off watching it for years was that I was worried that I would be disappointed but it didn't disappoint here at all. It balanced several points of view well, looked great for the time, had a strong plot, and had some real concepts that were interesting to think about later on. It's not surprising that so much of this movie has been an inspiration for later stories (it's considered by some to be the first disaster movie, has the first transformation sequence in a film, etc) and I was rather in awe. And while a lot of the acting seems a bit over the top one place where I felt it was well done was for Maria and Fake!Maria, the same actress did both roles in the exact same costume, I don't think even her make-up was changed, and obviously without sound, but she was able to create such different personalities with just her movements alone that there was never any doubt which character she was supposed to be at the time, that takes an amazing amount of skill and I can't remember the last time I saw someone pull off something like that so well without using other visual or audio cues. 

The Bad: As I mentioned above, the physical acting is done a bit differently from today's films, the actors' movements are much more stylized and, in some cases, over the top which takes some getting used to and I think will probably bother a lot of modern day viewers. Another thing that modern day viewers have to be prepared for is that the movie is quite long, two and a half hours and it's pacing is on the slow side. I think that it could've worked a little better if parts had been sped up (I've heard that there is a shorter version out there, not sure if it's just missing scenes or if it's been deliberately cut to fix this problem, but apparently it really didn't work).  The movie just takes it's time setting up atmosphere and laying out the groundwork for the plot but there were still a few scenes where I just wanted to yell at the movie to get on with it.  

The Audio: The film is a silent film which doesn't mean there's not any sound at all, it just means that there's no talking. Back in the day it would have most likely been accompanied by a piano player in the theater improvising but here there is an actual soundtrack, I believe it's supposed to be a reconstruction of the original score. There were a few points where the music didn't seem to quite match up with the scenes but by and large it worked well and it didn't feel like anything was lost by not being able to hear the actors.

The Visuals: The film was shot back in 1927 so it's in black and white and some parts of the film are remarkably well preserved. I'll admit that I'm fond of black and white photography, I've had to spend three semesters shooting it so it grew on me, so that aspect didn't bother me, although there are some parts which have been very badly preserved. The film also had a huge budget for it's time, I'm not sure how to adjust for inflation but it was around 5 million Reichsmarks and the movie used it well in building multiple elaborate sets, some of which were built in miniature and then filmed through a mirror which I never would have guessed, and having some rather advanced special effects for the time. The costumes were rather plain, although for costumes you really need color, but overall I was very impressed at the sets.

All in all I was really impressed with this movie and can see why it's still so well remembered even 80 years later. I'd completely recommend it to anyone who likes science fiction or movies in general. I feel like you HAVE to see this just to see where things didn't exactly start but where a lot of things got moving. Doubt I'll ever see the animated version of Metropolis however, apparently Tezuka hated his own work, vowed to never make it into a movie and then the director of the movie waited until he died in order to do it and the movie wasn't that great, think I'll stick with the good version then. 

Book Review: Wired (now titled Torn)

And here is the final installment in Robin Wasserman's trilogy, whew, only took me a month and a half to read and then review all of them which I suppose isn't too bad. So there's not much more to say at this point to introduce the book, onto the review!

Wired (now titled Torn) by Robin Wasserman

As before, this is the UK paperback cover, the kind I have, and again I prefer it to both the old US cover and the new set of covers as well. It's not the greatest cover, I just think that it's really hard to pull off a rainbow color scheme well and this cover isn't doing it, but the lighting on the old US covers bugs me and I feel like the new covers are too non-indicative of the story. 
 
Summary: Lia is back living at home as repayment to her father for the events in the last book and things continue to get more and more dangerous for mechs. Despite her and Biomax's best efforts to change the public's mind there is more and more violence against mechs but then the unthinkable happens, the mechs actually begin to die and Lia and Jude, with a few unlikely allies, are in for their most dangerous fight yet.

The Good: I was happily surprised to see a theory I had thought of reading the first book confirmed, slightly different but it did provide a bit more backstory to the series. I also liked how Lia's sister, Zo, got more character development since she was overdue for it and there have been hints for the past two books that she's more than she appears, the same goes for their mother and Lia's tune-up expert.  

The Bad: This book confirmed a nagging feeling I had had for the past two books, this really should have been one, huge, book instead of a trilogy. None of the books have the right balance of thinking and action and there are large parts where nothing happens. Turning this into one book possibly isn't the best solution, even paring down the books it would make for a 600-800 tome, but I feel like the pacing would have worked better and would've made for a more satisfying story. That aside, I should have been it coming but I disliked the ending (it's the exact same trope I disliked way back in Brain Jack) since I'm not fond of those kinds of tropes and it just makes me roll my eyes and drags me out of the story.

Bit of a short review but really that's it, I feel like the story had some good parts but that this story shouldn't have been a trilogy and that really hurt it pacing wise overall. Would I have liked it more as a single book? I think so, I'd still have problems with some of the subplots (I couldn't bring them up since they started getting more spoilery than I like to in reviews, not that I have any trouble with spoilers in the comments below) but it would avoid one problem I had with the series as a whole, characters appearing one book but not being important until later and feeling rather static until they became important.

Manga Review: Akira

A few people here might remember that I reviewed the first volume here back last spring and are probably wondering, why the wait? What happened is that I got through volume four before somebody went ahead and requested the entire series from the school library (one thing I don't like about this library, if someone requests something you have you have a new due date that's MUCH sooner) and already checked out five and six before I returned four. Of course five and six didn't get returned before the school year was over (and of course no one else had checked out these books the entire semester leading up to when I did it) so believe me I wanted finish up this series several months ago. But once I got back to school one of the first things I did was snag volumes four, five and six from the library  (wanted to reread four just in case, thankfully each volume has a pretty detailed "what happened previously" section as well) and finished up this epic sized manga.


Akira by Katsuhiro Otomo

Summary: The setting is Neo-Tokyo a few years after World War III destroyed the original Tokyo. Kaneda and Tetsuo are punks in a local motorcycle gang who enjoy causing havoc but ultimately staying out of trouble themselves. But they find a lot more than just trouble one day when they accidentally come across a decades old government experiment involving physic powers in children, Tetsuo becomes a part of the experiment and decides to use his new powers to cause as much havoc as he possibly can, starting with releasing the most powerful of the children of all, Akira.

The Good: The ending of the Akira movie was rather, odd (that darn journey-t0-the-center-of-the-mind sci-fi ending variant) but the ending here was much more solid and enjoyable. Also enjoyable was how Kei, a girl from a resistance group in the early volumes, continued being an important character throughout the series and had a lot awesome moments in the end. I had been afraid that she (and the other prominent female characters, actually all the characters except Kaneda and Tetsuo) would be less important later on but thankfully every important character in the good sized played at least a small part in the ending. It takes real skill to write a climax where it's clear that the final battle will come to just two of the cast but still find a way for every other member make a legitimate contribution.

The Bad: The ending may make more sense than the movie's but it's still a bit, strange. Thematically it makes sense but I couldn't help but feel cynical and couldn't up a lot of enthusiasm for it. Honestly, as interesting as the manga was, I never managed to connect with any of the characters or get really caught up in their struggles. It was like watching a really interesting documentary but not being able to sympathize with the characters since you already know how it ends and there was never any doubt in my mind how this series was going to end. 

The Art: One thing I've noticed is that older manga series tend to have much more detailed (insanely detailed even) and epic artwork that most modern series don't and with very few screentones as well. The level of detail in every panel is astonishing and you really need a few minutes to soak in the many double page spreads. It's no wonder that the manga took nearly ten year to be finished, nearly 2000 pages of that kind of detail takes a while. Impressively, there are no instances when the art looks sloppy or like anything was drawn by a different person (I have no idea if Otomo used assistants at all) and the start of each volume has several full color pages which take even longer to do. The manga is worth a look just to take in all the art, it's on a level that few comics today are (as a warning however, the English edition is flipped which I found irritating). 

In the end, this was a good story but for some reason I just couldn't connect with it and felt a little hollow when it ended. I'll certainly admit that this was an amazingly badass story which I think was better than the film and that plenty of people should check out but I don't think I'll be rereading it anytime soon.  

Movie Review: Ghost in the Shell

I've never seen this movie before actually (as some people have probably guessed, I'm a relatively new-er anime fan and didn't have any older fans around me to make me watch all the classics, I'm the one making my friends watch them) which seems a little ironic considering how much science fiction I was reading this summer and this is a classic sci-fi film for sure. I don't think the movie needs much of an introduction, I will note that I saw the original 1995 version, not the remaster since I heard that they made some dumb changes to how the film looked and I got it off of Netflix streaming.

Ghost in the Shell

Summary: Not far into the future the world is still much the same as it is today but robots and cyborgs are much more common and are part of many people's ordinary lives. Major Kusanagi is a cyborg who works for Section Nine, a covert operations department in the Japanese National Public Safety Commission who are currently trying to track down "The Puppet Master," a genius hacker who hacks into the ghosts of people with no known motive. 

The Good: So when I read Brainjack apparently I was expecting to get this movie instead of, that, so I was quite happy to see that this movie lived up to everything I had heard about it over the years. It feels a lot like old school science fiction, a view of the future that is neither positive nor negative, plenty of technology that looks cool even though it comes off as slightly dated and philosophical musing about what this technology means plus a fairly strong, if a bit strange, plot*. The action scenes and the quieter ones are nicely balanced, the pacing in general is strong, the plot is interesting without being overly complicated and I really want to try out the tv series now.

The Bad: Another similarity many classic science fiction stories hold in common is having a really strange, journey to the center of the mind/generally trippy ending and GitS has elements of that as well. My problem with this trope is that, even if the characters have deep, philosophical moments earlier in the story, everything that happens and all the actions they make are grounded in reality and what actually exists, it makes for a rather jarring transition and generally an unsatisfactory ending to me. GitS didn't bother me as much as it has in the past, and there is a second film I haven't seen yet, but that did bother me a bit. That and the fact that while the fact that one of the (male) minor villains gets a cool, thermal deflecting camouflage coat the Major (female) is either wearing nothing at all or a skintight body suit, it's really strange fanservice that contradicts the logic present in the movie and it just irked me^.

The Audio: Since this was streaming on Netflix I saw the English dub and I thought it was a pretty strong dub (it's the original dub so the Puppet Master has a male voice, I agree that changing the voice to a woman's defeats the purpose a bit). There are several times when the lip flaps don't match up perfectly with the actors speaking (and it probably happened even more when I was looking away) but the flow and the tones sounded natural so I'm happy that went that route instead of matching up the flaps more and making everything sound stiffer. The music in the movie is a bit unusual since, instead of the traditional techno music used in cyberpunk films, it features more instrumental pieces and it's most memorable piece is a distinctive, haunting choral song, one that just seems to match the film's more philosophical feel in places very well.

The Visuals: The film is from 1995 and it shows, everything is hand drawn, the aspect ratio is a little different and the colors seem a bit muted and the whole picture a bit fuzzy. The film struck me as one I would love to see a remaster of so I could see it in it's full glory, an ironic thought since the Ghost in the Shell 2.0 rerelease from 2008 instead of simply restoring the film added in a lot of CGI that many fans didn't like (although it sounds like there is a straight up remaster on one of the blu-rays). Those details aside, the film looks fine with highly detailed backgrounds, a level of detail you just don't see as much in more modern films and amazing looking fight sequences. 


Strangeness of the ending aside (and let me say, before people jump on me, it wasn't as weird as it could have been and hasn't been as weird as I've seen, see the footnote below, but that trope is still one I don't really like) I absolutely loved this film and am now trying to figure out how to get the "good" version of the remaster, if not I'll just get a DVD of the old release some day. I don't know when I'll get around to the second movie or the tv series but they're both on my to-watch list now, yay for good sci-fi!



*the movie actually reminded me a lot of a book I read most of a few years back, The Diamond Age: Or, a Young Lady's Illustrated Primer by Neal Stephenson. Lots of similar elements, didn't read it all the way through since I peeked ahead at the ending and it seemed to end with an orgy that lead to a higher level of existence, nothing too strange for sci-fi in general but too strange for me.
^that and I'm recommending this movie to my dad, the guy who got me reading strange science fiction like the above example, and I feel really weird telling him there's robot nudity in there and I really don't want that to turn him off from watching a really good movie.

Movie Review: Akira

When I was home briefly for Easter I noticed my brother (who barely reads or watches anything) was interested in the Akira manga and I hatched a plan. A simple plan, get a copy of the movie (hello local university library!) and make him watch it. Since he seemed to get more out of the movie than I did I'm calling my plan a success.

Akira 

Summary: Kaneda and Tetsuo are punks living in Neo-Tokyo and spend their time riding their bikes with the rest of their gang and generally pissing off the authorities. But one day they get caught up in a decades old government conspiracy and some interesting facts about the city come to light.

The Good: Now that's an action packed movie and it has a better plot that most action movies which is rather nice. The visuals are as good as everyone makes them out to be and it's easy to see why this movie was such a hit with American anime fans for years. It's not a kid's film at all, looks great, is paced pretty well, dystopias are always popular and there is a bit of a plot. All in all it makes for a satisfying film and there are still few, if any, animated films in the West that are anything like it.

The Bad: While there is a plot in the movie for sure, and it is certainly based off of the manga, a lot of the manga's plot has been stripped away or simplified to fit into the time constraints of the movie and for more explosions. A couple of the characters are completely changed (such as Lady Miyako), the outcome of certain plot points is changed and the plot is more less comprehensible than the manga's. For someone whose never seen the manga the movie probably makes complete sense* but someone whose seen the manga first may be a bit confused as to what's going on since the two do diverge.

The Art: One of the things that Akira is best known for (especially the movie) is the incredible amount of detail in the artwork and it is rather stunning. Coming from an era where everything would have been meticulously hand-drawn, that makes the art even more impressive than it already is. However, this DVD seems to have been remastered so the colors are incredibly bright, bright enough that blood now looks more like orange juice than, well, a red liquid. It's a bit strange to see everything so bright and over-saturated, was the original movie really that brightly colored?

The Music: Since our DVD player is an anglophile my brother and I watched the dub, the Animax one, which by and large was a strong dub. The voices didn't match the lip flaps all the time unfortunately, and the three children's voice actors were incredibly stiff but everyone else was more or less solid (although the fact that everyone mispronounced "akira," putting the emphasis on the second syball instead of the first, was cringe worthy every time it happened). There was one theme that was used several times during the movie (generally it would start up halfway through Kaneda yelling "TETTTTSSSSUUUOOOO!") and it was a really overdramatic piece, almost overdramatic enough to the point of being cheesey.  

Not much else to say about it, my brother loved the film (wish I had known this more than a couple of days before his birthday) and I liked what I've read of the manga more. I've always been more of a plot person so this is hardly surprising, but I am happy that I've seen the movie now, now to see if I can track down the rest of the manga. 

*except for that ending, I believe that elicited a WTF out of both my brother and I.

Manga Review: Biomega (volume 1)

I dropped by the local library looking for more comics to read for here (I'm working my way through the rest of the Akira manga but it takes me more than four days to read five volumes of manga, these days anyway) and I stumbled across this one at the library. It looked interesting, is part of the Sig Ikki line (whose books I've enjoyed before, like Ooku, Children of the Sea, and Afterschool Charisma) so why not?

Biomega by Tsutomu Nihei

Summary: The year is 3005 CE and the majority of Earth's population are now zombie-like drones, courtesy of NSS virus. However, there still appears to he hope for mankind in the form of people who can transmute the virus and it's Zoichi Kanoe's job to find these people and protect them.

The Good: The story is low on words but big on action and the action sequences are well done, the eyes just glide across the pages and the transitions from panel to panel feel very smooth. Because of that the volume is a fast read, not that a volume of manga takes particularly long to read anyway, and the action barely stops making it go faster still. There is a small epilogue to the volume, titled "Interlink" which provides a hook for the next volume with some information that wasn't on the back cover and which suggests that there is more to the story than there first appears.

The Bad: There are stories that go for "show don't tell" and others that go for "tell not show." And then there is Biomega which barely shows nor tells, it takes almost the entire volume for all the information on the back cover. True most of the backstory can be gleaned in the first few chapters (clearly something has gone wrong on Earth that has resulted in massive environmental damage and zombies) but the story so far is moving quite slowly. There does seem to be a rather large plot hole in the series (namely, a colony on Mars that hasn't had contact with Earth in seven centuries also has the virus yet, the virus is seven centuries old, then it really should have spread even farther than it has) but hopefully future volumes will clear up exactly what triggered this epidemic. Also, why is there a talking bear who can shoot guns? Has science progressed far enough that there are now genetically modified bears or does this just come under "rule of cool"?

The Art: There is nary a screen tone to be seen in this work, a few gradients in the background perhaps but everything else is meticulously done in pen and ink. The rough edges make the art work perfectly with the setting, a broken world with many unpolished edges of it's own and it's a good thing too since the art is the main focus of the book. As per usual, the Sig Ikki books are slightly large than the standard US manga volume which makes for easier holding and really show off the art. Also, the cover is slightly darker than the above image, that cover seems to be from a different edition actually but it's essentially what the US cover looks like.


So, barely anything is explained and nothing, other than the sketchy pen and ink style, set this manga apart from half a dozen other cyberpunk stories. Do I want to read the next one? Eh, nothing compels me to seek out the rest of them but if I come across the rest of the volumes (wikipedia lists six in total) I'll certainly check them out.

Manga Review: Akira (volume one)

Being a newer anime fan, I still haven't seen a lot of the classic movies/series and Akira is one of those movies on my "to-watch" list. Clearly this isn't the movie but my school library does have all the volumes and I've seen a few people say they didn't like the movie because they liked the manga so why not at least give this a shot?

Akira by Katsuhiro Otomo

Summary: In 1992 Tokyo is destroyed by a nuclear weapon and this triggers WWIII causing world-wide destruction. The year is now 2030 and the setting is Neo-Tokyo, built near and upon the ruins of the original Tokyo, a city filled with violence and crime. Kaneda and Tetsuo are members of a biker gang and love nothing more than doing whatever the hell they want but as Tetsuo awakens as an esp-er and Kaneda becomes involved with anti-government rebels their lives are about to get a bit more dangerous.

The Good: The story is fast paced and deftly sets up the stories background without needing much time at all. Half a dozen characters from all the different factions (the gangs, the government, the rebels) are all introduced and, while the motivation for the rebels and what exactly the government wishes to accomplish with it's mysterious "akira" project is unknown, it would have been shocking if the manga did reveal all it's mysteries up front.

The Bad: Perhaps it's because this is a 20/30 year old manga (depending if you date it from the start date or the end date) but so far this manga hasn't done anything new or done anything better than the rest of the cyberpunk genre. There are hot blooded young punks (are these kids seriously only 15?), government conspiracies, people with psychic power, fairly standard fare for cyberpunk these days. Hopefully the story will do something truly amazing with these parts in the later volumes (this volume also felt a lot like it was merely setting up the story, not actually performing the story), there must be a reason for all the hype!

The Art: The movie version of Akira is adored by animation fans worldwide for all the detail in it and the manga has an astonishing amount of detail in it as well. The over-sized volumes let you get a great view of it and appreciate all the details. 

Movie Review: Tron Legacy

I saw the original Tron again a few months back (I was showing it to a friend who wanted to see the original before she saw the movie) and afterwords I was thinking that this might make a nice Christmas gift for my brother and checked out the prices on Amazon. Wow, holy cow, I have never seen a used VHS go for that much money before, one of my friends swears she's going to gold plate and hang her VHS on the wall if they go for that much. I've heard a rumor that Disney has a lot of the old DVDs and was also telling retailers not to sell them, fearing that people might not want to see the new movie. Having seen the new movie I believe that Disney is crazy and missing out on a chance to make even more money, sure the old one looks bad but this new movie looks really good regardless.

Tron Legacy

Summary: After Kevin Flynn's escapades in the original Tron he now leads ENCOM International and spends most of his time working but still finds time to tell his son Sam stories before bed. He vanishes one day however, breaking Sam's heart and the trust of everyone in the company except his old friend Alan. A couple of decades on Sam is drifting through life with no real purpose, except to mess with the heads of ENCOM once a year, but soon enough he's pulled into the world of Tron just like his father was and it's a race against time to get out.

The Good: There were several little details in the cyberworld (The Grid?) that I thought were really neat and unique. To say more about them would be spoiler-ish but I'd love to see some video games that explored the world more (maybe a prequel when Kevin was creating the world?). The plot may be lacking but the setting and ides surrounding it are not and, of course, the visuals are pure eye candy and the music is pretty cool too. So, the package for the story is very cool and it's worth seeing for the visuals alone. The other stuff however....

The Bad: I think the original movie actually accomplished more in terms of plot than this one actually. In the first movie there was an actual bad guy that had to be defeated to "save the world," here the plot isn't quite sure what it's doing. It's a quest of some sort and in the end it's just a beat the clock quest which is rather dull. But no one really came to see the plot of this movie so, a few other problems. There were a couple of subplots that I felt got axed halfway through filming so the basis for them (programs rebelling against CLUE is the one I noticed) is still there but nothing ever happens. Also, Quorra's character was just odd. Sometimes she acted like a regular person and other times it seemed like she didn't know how to interact with the other characters and that random inconsistency (well, along with her flatness which plagued all the other characters as well) didn't make me like her that much.

The Music: I actually did not like the music as much as I hoping and that made me quite sad. Derezzed was a pretty awesome song but not much else on the soundtrack stuck out to me. Oh well, at least I can buy Derezzed separately and put it on repeat.

The Visuals: I didn't see this movie in 3D, so I can't exactly comment on that, but I suspect it probably would have looked good in 3D. The CGI was slick and, while the film was visually dark, I never had any trouble making out details on screen. Someone (or more likely, many people) had a lot of fun creating the visuals for this movie. The CGI isn't as far ahead of it's time like the original Tron was but the visuals are fantastic none the less.

I was really disappointed with the plot here (I was expecting it to be lacking but not this lacking!) but I'm still glad I saw it for the visuals. Would I buy this, or the original Tron, on DVD/BR in the future? Probably not, but I can see my brother buying this or a friend so if I ever want to see it again I should have no trouble finding it.