Movie Review: Royal Space Force: The Wings of Honneamise

This is yet another film I saw thanks to the JICC and I went to it since I'd always heard good things about it but people never mentioned details. I knew that there was a struggle in the end with the older characters giving up and the younger ones advocating pushing on (and that I only know because of some folks saying those roles should be reversed) but that was it, people just weren't selling the movie to me! So let me do the job instead and say: this was a fantastic film, everyone shouldn't just want to see it, everyone needs to see it.

Royal Space Force: The Wings of Honneamise

Movie Review: Brave Story

While I can't say that I've seen many movies in theaters this year, there simply weren't many I was interested in, I can at least say that I've seen quite a few anime movies thanks to the JICC so once again, thanks guys, I really do appreciate it (even if I don't always like the films).

Brave Story

Movie Review: K: Missing Kings

As I mentioned in my Fall 2015 Anime Round-UP, K is back after a two year break! But in those years this movie came out and the second series is a direct sequel to this movie, which was a direct sequel to the first series. Basically, you need to watch the movie first and, for American viewers, it just went up on hulu a few weeks ago for those of us who missed it in theaters. Do to the fact that you are only going to be watching this movie if you're already a fan of the show I am going to put some spoilers in the review! I imagine most people reading this review will either be seeing if my views matched up with theirs for the movie or if they can possibly read the review to skip watching the movie immediately, newcomers this is not the place to start!

But for those newcomers, since my review of the first season is a little old by now let me do a general recap of the entire show up to this point and hopefully sell you on "the most anime to ever anime". In a slightly alternate world, a discovery in Germany back in World War II has enabled some people to gain powers through a mysterious slate and others through pledging themselves to a "king". There are always seven kings in Tokyo (where the Dresden Slate was moved to) and hapless high school student Shiro is accused of not only being the new Colorless King but also of killing a beloved clans-member from another clan who is now out for his blood. He doesn't have any memory of this but everyone else has video so he's on the run with a sometimes-cat-sometimes-girl "strain" (people who have powers without a king, can be animals, there is honestly a pegasus in one of the spin-offs) and a man from yet another clan. Kuroh had orders to kill the next Colorless King if he was evil but has been won over by Shiro through sheer force of charisma than anything else. Look it's a rather ridiculous set-up but trust me, this trio somehow works and this is one of the rare times where I care only about the these characters and barely about the (more popular) side characters. It's a pretty silly story and a go-to example for "style over substance", especially with it's over-use of colored filters making every scene look even more rainbow-y than an instagram at a pride parade, but the show is also sneakily good at foreshadowing and more subtile hints too. Shiro's situation is eventually explained and it was a funny payoff since I had seen people speculating about it for weeks at that point and while their proof was winning me over I couldn't quite believe until that moment that the show had some idea of what it was doing.

This is also a multi-media project so in these intervening years there has been a beaucoup of manga, light novels, and drama cd spin-offs as well. There aren't necessary to enjoy the show but I have looked into a lot of them so I will reference them in these reviews since that's where you get a lot of the world-building details from and again, some surprising foreshadowing. And so, with all of that said, onto the movie!

K: Missing Kings

Movie Review: Mai Mai Miracle

No post yesterday because I had a headache that could split mountains and quite predictably those make my writing rather incoherent, even for a shorter post like this one. But I think a day's delay for this review is fine since once again almost no one else has talked about it! I'm not sure how the JICC scored a viewing copy of the movie before the Kickstarter DVDs had released (in fact I'm not sure if they're out yet, given that the KS updates are backers only and the last update was in late July) but this wouldn't be the first time they have showed a movie that doesn't have a physical media release in the US.

Mai Mai Miracle

Movie Review: Giovanni's Island

When the JICC announced the date for this film I was a little surprised, I've never heard anyone else talk about the movie aside from Enzo at Lost in Anime. When I asked if I should go he told me yes, absolutely, that more people should see the film so I took advtange of the showing!

Giovanni's Island

Movie Review: Patema Inverted

Once again, thanks to the JICC I had a chance to see a film which I missed in theaters (if it was playing near me in the first place) and once again it was a film I had heard mixed things on. At first I only heard terrible reviews for it but after a time I heard more mixed reviews on it. So I went, steeling myself knowing that I would not completely love this movie no matter how much I really really wanted to going in which is a just plain odd feeling.

Patema Inverted

Movie Review: Letter to Momo

I went in completely blind for this film, I knew nothing about the premise other than it was a family film, wasn't familiar with the director, and I thought I had a friend who really liked the movie but even that wasn't true! It's unusual for me to go that blind into a film or anime these days, even more obscure titles I tend to watch because someone specifically recommended it, and it can be fun to go into something completely blind if it turns out good!

Letter to Momo

Movie Review: Ernest and Celestine

In case people didn't see Monday's review, between my library woes getting this silly DVD unlocked and the fact that I spent half of last week helping out at a con I was just too bush-wacked to both watch this movie and come up with a review for it, even if it's rather short. So without further ado, a short little review for a short film!

Ernest and Celestine

Movie Review: Hal

I was pleased to hear a few months back that Funimation had picked up the recent anime film Hal and I was sad they didn't have a weekend where you could watch it for free like they've done in the past with other films. But they were screening it at Otakon and since it was for only an hour Saturday morning how could I say no?

Hal

On running away from a home you don't love

Sorry for the delay folks, a combination of feeling that this post wasn't ready, a good sized headache, and then my computer acting like the slowest machine to ever grace this Earth all pushed this back, and this week's book review is getting pushed back to Saturday (which seems to have been happening a lot lately anyway).


 As a more-or-less fan of the tv series, I went out and saw the Veronica Mars movie pretty soon after it came out and while I enjoyed parts of the film and problems with other parts my biggest beef with it in the ending (which is my way of saying that this little write-up is going to contain rather large spoilers). As longtime viewers know, the town of Neptune has not been kind to Veronica and it's destructive influence hurt both her and her friends over and over again. You could even argue that it was partially the town itself that re-shaped Veronica after her friend's murder and made her into someone where "untrusting" is an understatement. And so, at the end of the final tv season Veronica left, she went off to another college and, as the movie tells us, while she's been in some contact with her old friends and family she hasn't been back to the town in nine years (which I think makes her reasons for suddenly coming back seem a bit impulsive, even given her history, but that's not precisely what I'm talking about here). And then she stays, Veronica decides that instead of becoming a big shot lawyer in NYC like she's been working towards for the past nine years that she's going to go back to this town which has hurt her so much (and actively despises her) to become a private investigator and try to fix the town because she thinks it's still savable. And based on my own personal experience that just didn't sit right with me.

Movie Review: The Snow Queen

Disney's Frozen is many things and not being very faithful to the original story is one of them. We all know that by now, actually I think everyone figured that out by the time a talking snowman showed up in the trailer, and that surely Disney isn't the first studio out there to take the story from the page to some sort of stage. It turns out there are quite a few of them, I might have to check out some of the others but I remembered hearing about one a few years back which was a Russian animated film that was taking a while to get out to the US. Well it finally popped up on Netflix a couple of months ago and, since it's been a few weeks since I last talked about an animated film (and it finally warmed up for a few days here), it seemed like the perfect chance to watch it!


The Snow Queen

Movie Review: Star Trek: Into Darkness

Last week with Sherlock I commented that it had been years since I started the series and as I was watching this movie I realized that there was an even bigger gap between when I watched the first movie and this one. I remember it clearly since it was the first film I saw in college, especially because I was meeting up with a few people I half knew or didn't know at all and was praying it wouldn't be a terrible mistake (it wasn't, still good friends with some of them), and by now I'm out of college, that's over four years! I'm half surprised they even made a second film with that large a gap, normally I'd say that there's no way you could get such a large audience with that gap but clearly Hollywood works in mysterious ways.....

Star Trek: Into Darkness

Movie Review: Hot Fuzz

Back during the summer I became a bit curious about seeing the film The World's End and realized that while I'd seen Shaun of the Dead I hadn't actually seen Hot Fuzz, writer-director Edgar Wright's other really well known film (my mother has no idea how she let that happen). To be clear, yes I know that these films have nothing to do with each other and you can enjoy one without having seen the others, however I knew it was going to be a while before I had a chance to see The World's End so why not watch this one first? I know this would all make a lot more sense if I had gotten to it a few months earlier but I honestly did forget until I caught sight of the DVD at one of the local libraries, probably why I hadn't thought to watch it earlier in the first place.

Hot Fuzz

Movie Review: The Garden of Words

Like many an anime fan, I was curious about Makoto Shinkai's work but, since it was much too new for Sentai to be streaming it (and crunchyroll's annual "Makoto Shinkai day" was months and months off) there wasn't really anyway for me to see it. However I was tipped off that a local group (they're connected with the Japanese embassy somehow but I'm not sure how, enough that the staff speaks Japanese and you have to go through metal detectors to go into the building however) was going to be having a showing one night. So I braved the cold to see a short film set in the summer.

The Garden of Words

The 2013 Wrap-UP

It’s that time guys, time for my big, 2013 wrap up post! As usual I’m going to be talking about all media I consume in one big post since not only is that just easier for me but also because while some areas are easy to talk about (like anime) there are a lot of areas where it’s going to be a little, messy. But I’ll talk about that as I go along! First though a bit of housekeeping, as people have already noticed I’ve started using ads on the site, I’m trying to be more diligent about putting in referral links (should have some to Right Stuf soon, although sadly the reviews that get the most views are the ones which don’t have a physical release yet), and I’m going to change it up a bit more next year as well. When I started the site three years ago the format I chose, breaking everything up into their own sections, was a good idea since it made me consider multiple parts of the show and often made it easier to get going while writing. However I feel like I’ve grown past that point so starting January first I’m going to shift to a more free form style just like almost everyone else uses, and that will be for everything I review. Also, I feel like by doing this the infrequent little essays I write, which for the past year have just been going on my tumblr, will fit in better and I can post those here as well, just trying to catch up to the rest of the blogging community since I like what they’re doing and want to be part of it myself.

So, with that out of the way, here’s what my favorite things of 2013 were!

Movie Review: The Secret Life of Arrietty

My life has been a bit fuller than usual lately and that, coupled with the two hour hissy fit my computer threw this morning, is why this is so late, guess I need to start writing reviews on off days as well to build up a buffer huh. As for why I watched this film, it's Miyazaki, I think my anime nerd card would be taken away if I wasn't at least interested by all the Studio Ghibli films that come out. Although, after Ponyo I wasn't in a big hurry to see this film but at least the reviews for it I had already seen were more positive.

The Secret World of Arrietty

Summary: Arrietty and her parents are borrowers, little people who live in the walls of houses and take just what they need from the humans around them. Their lives aren't filled with rules but they do have some including the big one, never be seen by the humans lest they have to move to hide away from them again. For many years they've succeeded and lived happily but when Arrietty begins to venture out into the world she's seen by the homeowners young, sick nephew and they form an odd friendship. 

The Good: I can now safely and easily say that I enjoyed this more than Ponyo and where I would say that Ponyo is a children's film (that is, enjoyable to one age group and not so much to everyone outside of it) Arrietty felt more like a family film (something for everyone that you might want to watch again later) which I think is a great thing. The story was not too simple nor complex, I liked how the characters interacted, it of course looked stunning, and flowed nicely as well. There wasn't anything that particularly stood out to me but I was glad that I had finally seen it and it made me a bit excited again for all the other Ghibli films I haven't seen yet.

The Bad: Like all Studio Ghibli adaptations this one isn't terribly similar to The Borrowers books that I remember (although that would be nearly 14 years ago now) and that wouldn't have bothered me as much except that I remembered after the film that Arrietty and her family don't live by themselves in the house, they live with a good sized extended family and have relatives in the nearby neighborhood as well. This isn't the case in the film and one of the subplots is the three of them wondering, in a bit of a gloomy way, if they might be the only ones left which makes it feel like the movie took bits and pieces of the original setting and then left out others in order to create conflict which feels lazy to me. Other than that, the only part of the film I really didn't like was just how crazy Haru the housekeeper went by the end trying to prove the borrowers were real, honestly I started wondering if it was the end of a long day where everyone in the recording studio was tired and they went "ehhh, leave it in!" since it was so incongruous with the earlier parts of the film.

The Production Values: While lovely I am a bit confused by the setting of the film, there are Japanese esque things (tatami mats, sliding doors) right next rather English looking things (the outside architecture of the house) and I wondered if the setting was as confused as I am about it really was*. Whatever it was it was pretty, I just couldn't tell if it was supposed ot be an homage to the story's roots or not. As for the voice acting, I saw this film with my mom and told her to choose what language to see it in so we went with the English dub and mostly I was okay with it. I did feel like Sho/Shawn was a bit too subdued in places, my mom disagreed saying that since he had a heart condition it was expected that he would sound very monotone and would be trying not to get upset, I said that his actions didn't match up with the tone of voice and felt odd as a result, I regret not checking out the Japanese dub for those parts later on to see if it was the same there.


In the end I'm giving this movie a three out of five, well made and without any large problems but it didn't grab me the way some of the past films had and it'll be a while before I feel like rewatching it and I doubt I'll ever buy a copy for myself. But again, there's nothing wrong with it, I just feel like Studio Ghibli is past it's magical peak and since I saw those films first few will ever compare to them for me.



*when I was glancing at tvtropes I even saw something about how some scenery had been flipped around, from how it actually looks in Japan, to make it resemble America more or something which I rather doubt since America never crossed my mind, I'd love to see a source or even someone who honestly thought that.

Movie Review: Colorful

Initially I had no plans to see this movie, it just didn't sound like my thing, but when I came across it at the local college's library I grabbed it anyway since, once it was sitting in front of me, I was just curious enough to see what it was like and if my initial guess on whether or not I'd like it was spot on.

Colorful

Summary: The spirit of a recently dead person is slowly trundling towards the afterlife when they're stopped and told that miraculously god has chosen to give them a second chance in the body of a boy named Makoto who just committed suicide. The spirit doesn't remember anything about their past life but figure out what great crime they committed to end up dead and to unravel what was going on in Makoto's life that made him kill himself.

The Good: Do you like complicated characters that feel wholly realistic for their failings?Then you'll most likely like this film, the story shows that Makoto's life before his death was more complicated than you would first expect and how the new spirit reacted to dealing with family problems and school felt rather realistic (even if he was an ass for at least half of the movie and unsympathetic because of it). I suspect that many people's enjoyment of the film will depend on how much they can sympathize with "Makoto", personally my middle school (and high school) life was complicated in rather different ways so while I could see why he was lashing out to all those around him I wasn't rooting for him to figure everything out for the first half of the film or so.  

The Bad: Clocking in at just over two hours I found this film a tad bit too slow for my taste. I understand why it was so deliberately paced, to show how "Makoto" was reconnecting with the world and finding a reason to live again (which helps set up the answer to why both of them died in the first place, and thankfully the movie doesn't treat either of those reveals as some great twist but rather as something the viewer should have figured out as they went along too). But I still wish it had been a tad snappier, it just seemed odd to have the main character's life at stake and see them not actively doing anything to figure out what happened even if that was their personality. 

The Production Values: I thought the film looked fine for a DVD playing on my computer but I seem to recall that Justin from ANNCast (for the life of me I can't recall which episode) saw the blu-ray version and said that some of the scenes at the very climax looked terrible. I'm not sure if these were simply BR only problems and that's why I didn't seem them, or if because I'm not as sensitive to flaws as someone who works in the BR authoring business is but I would encourage people who are thinking of buying the BR to look more into that. As for what I did see, again I thought everything looked fine from the character designs to the backgrounds, for a movie that starts with a supernatural event it's rather down to Earth and grounded and I was glad to see that the movie reflected that in it's attention to details in the setting. I found it rather appropriate that Purapura looked bright and colorful in the underworld but rather grayed out in the real world considering his non-mortal status, heck the fact that the movie is set in winter, when the world seems gray and lifeless was exceedingly appropriate and helps to highlight how much thought went into every aspect of it.


In the end my initial guess was correct, I didn't hate the movie but it isn't one that I'll go out of my way to recommend to others (unless someone asks for a rather specific recommendation) or even rewatch anytime soon. I'll give it three out of five stars however since it's more than competently done, just not my thing. And for those in the US the movie just popped up on Hulu (literally, I found it yesterday and saw someone else who normally keeps me up to date on those things mentioning it after I had found it, perfect timing!).

Movie Review: The Princess and the Pilot

After seeing quite a few good reviews for this movie lately (after not even knowing it existed before NIS America licensed it, the anime blogging community often seems to miss movie works that aren't done by a well-known director, for the record this was actually based on a light novel and not a completely original work as I had previously assumed) I was thrilled to see it on the Otakon schedule and even more so when I realized that it conflicted with practically nothing else I wanted to do thanks to it's Friday morning scheduling. There were a few technical snafus (I think it all was whatever they were using to show the movie and not the staff's fault, either that or the disc itself had a problem showing the subtitles) but everything got resolved pretty quickly and we were still out right around when the video was supposed to end anyway.

The Princess and the Pilot

Summary: Princess Fana del Moral is set to marry the prince of Levahm across the ocean who is currently engaged in a brutal battle with a third country. The prince wants her to be with him and, after the entire palace is fire-bombed in an attempt to assassinate her, her family accepts and the Levahm prepares their ace pilot, the mixed blood Charles, to escort her directly through the line of enemy fire. 

The Good: This is a movie that involves quite a bit of just two characters talking and once the story gets going (and it's the middle and end of the story which have the bulk of the talking) it never once feels dull and manages to feel remarkably natural as well, I suppose this is one of the cases where coming from a prose source material is a pro, not a con. It was well-paced, Charles and Fana felt like rounded characters by the end, the setting had been fleshed out, the plot didn't contain any leaps of logical, all around it had fantastic writing which translated into great material for every other aspect of the show.

The Bad: After seeing quite a few people declare this to be practically a masterpiece I was a bit let down since I didn't think it was one. I still think it was a great movie but the one thing that bothered me was Fana's character development. She certainly grew and changed and I have no trouble with that, yet in a way that story started so quickly that I wasn't sure if her distant and quiet personality when the plane ride began were due to the recent, destruction assassination attempt she was coping with or if she simply was a quiet, retireing person and learning about the world has made her blossom. I suspect it's the former, if it was the later then just under a week should not have changed her that much, but I wish the story had started out oh so slightly differently just to establish this since then the story wouldn't just be about her growing but also moving past that event and helping her find determination that she'll keep for the rest of her life. 

The Production Values: The movie looks fantastic through and through and the art staff went to a lot of effort to make sure that the scenery was varied even though about a fourth or third of the movie is spent on or over the ocean. I seem to recall that Fana's voice struck me as a bit high, I expected something a tad deeper and more mature, but it wasn't a bad choice and her seiyuu certainly acted more than well enough (since this is a NISA release there is no dub) as did all the others. 


In the end I'm giving this a solid three and a half out of five for being a good movie, recommended to all anime fans who enjoy slightly slow paced, character driven stories (and possibly to people who aren't exactly anime fans but enjoy a number of anime movies). However, I don't like it enough to justify buying NISA's fancy release right now (even though artbooks are always tempting), perhaps if I can find it for an amazing deal or if they do a regular edition release in the future I will grab that though. As far as I know this title is not streaming anywhere online, although if they were showing it at Otakon it might pop up at other American anime conventions this year as well.
  

Movie Review: Fuse: Memoirs of a Huntress

I'm a bit confused by this film, one of the people on my twitter feed a few months back noted that it was streaming on hulu and I recently remembered that and went to watch it. Couldn't find any information about the creators on hulu for some reason, checked ANN and still not much information on it. If I'm reading this correctly, TMS Entertainment is the studio that made the film (which is odd since I feel like I normally see them attached to projects as a committee member or such, the actual studio within them is called Tokyo Movie anyway) and I can't find any US licensor listed with it and I can't think of the last time I saw a Japanese studio stream a full movie on a US site without it being licensed. Heck, while anime bloggers might not cover every film out there this one came out within the past 12 months and I don't recall seeing anyone talking about it, very very odd. In any case, wikipedia is also telling me that this movie was based on a book (which apparently was by the same novelist who wrote the Gosick series, had no idea that the author was a lady) which in turn was based on the Hakkenden which plays a rather large role in the movie but that's where the movie gets a bit, odd.


Fuse: Memoirs a Huntress (Fuse Teppō Musume no Torimonochō)

Summary: Hamaji was raised as a hunter by her grandfather and has continued to live that life in the mountains after his death. A bit lonely she jumps at the chance when her brother invites her to come and live with him in Edo and ends up being drawn into the hunt for half human half wolf (fuse, pronounced, fu-seh) creatures while trying to figure out what she should do next with her life.

The Good: No matter how many times I come across the setting I love seeing stories set in old-world Edo, there's just something cool about it. And on an amusing note I think I'm starting to recognize some of the locations, this movie had a climatic fight scene at what I believe was the same place that Katanagatari had it's final fight which rather amused me. In any case, it was interesting to come across the Hakkenden again but I do wonder if there is a straight adaption of it anywhere, I feel odd seeing adaptations before I see the real thing.

The Bad: There were several moments in the film where a character says something passionately and I thought "Oh, that's supposed to actually make me feel something but it just, doesn't" which was my main feeling about the film by the end. In some ways it feels under-developed, I'm not sure exactly what kind of character arc Hajami was supposed to have (accepting her feminity maybe? Except A that's a terrible arc because stereotypical gender roles and B It's not like she had any problems with that to start with) but I don't really think it was there. The pacing also felt a bit odd, this movie just took a while to get where it was going plot-wise and if it had spent that time developing characters and relationships or just showing off some really pretty art I would have been okay with that and said it just had a slow moving atmosphere or such. Yet here it felt like the story simply didn't know what to do with itself or that they were really having to stretch the source material to make it movie length. And finally, the Hakkenden; I'm familiar with the premise of it so once the movie started I went "ah, this is another interpretation of it, gotcha" and then it got, odd. Since this isn't a spoiler, we do in fact have 8 fuse siblings like the characters in the original story running down and being hunted in Edo but we also have a man who is writing the Hakkenden AND a play that is adapting the story for their play, yet it's implied that the play isn't exactly like the books (and that they aren't the first to do it). They never explicitly state what the backstory for the fuse are but I thought I was supposed to take the play as what really happened and now I'm even more confused, how did the author either create the exact same story or know of it?! In the end this is only a detail to the story, it doesn't alter the plot or the characters yet it's so odd that it just bothers me and I wonder if something important was lost in the adaptation (of this book to this movie, and this book was supposed to be an adaptation of the Hakkenden, ladies and gentlemen I believe we have achieved inception at this point).

The Production Values: I feel spoiled, after seeing so many lovely looking films in the past year this one just looked flat. Literally, everything felt oh so slightly minimalist and while I wouldn't confuse the movie for a tv show for a minute (the color palettes are too different, I rarely see anything using such subdued, almost pastel colors on tv) it was awkward when the movie would have a slow, loving pan across a landscape and all I could think was "eh, seen prettier". None of the action really stood out to me either but after thinking about it I realized that the movie doesn't actually have that many action scenes in it which is why. Still, in the end the art style just wasn't for me although I'm sure that some people will enjoy it quite a bit, the voice acting seemed pretty good throughout as did the music so it's certainly well produced, just not as "artsy" as I would have liked at times.


In the end I was disappointed with this film doing, well, really nothing by the end (a few things have changed situation wise but the character with arguably the most development is a side one) so I'm giving it just 2.5 out of 5 stars. If you want to see it and you're in the US then head on over to hulu and NISA has licensed it as well.

     

Movie Review: That Guy...Who Was In That Thing

And I'm back to having stable wi-fi, yaaay. Although I know that I'm making at least two other large trips this summer (and Otakon which I'm not even going to attempt blogging during), crossing my fingers that my internet will be a little more stable for that. In any case, I had to scramble a bit for this review anyway since I was planning on talking about the Fifth Doctor classic episode and it turns out that it's the one episode I've already seen/covered, Earthshock. So I went and looked at my list of movies on Netflix I eventually wanted to watch and found this one which I had seen some people talking about on twitter recently and, since it was only an hour and some change long, figured that it would be a good fit.


That Guy...Who Was In That Thing

Summary: There are many actors in Hollywood and only a handful will continuously capture the public's attention. As for the rest, well, they're playing smaller roles and even big roles but they're never quite as memorable, they're always just "that guy".

The Good: The way this movie was "pitched" to me was that it was about a group of character actors talking about the business which interested me, since character actors often look quite distinct, although as the actors themselves point out rather quickly that term doesn't quite mean what it used to. They were less "character" actors and more small to medium stars and it was interesting to be reminded of how small the pool of big name actors really is and just how many of the mainstream roles they get. Anime is similar, even though you can have smaller actors like these guys playing lots of guest roles on tv, or even a number or being part of the main cast of quite a few, if their not in the spotlight all the time it's easy to forget about them and that was interesting to think about.

The Bad: There are two big problems with this, it's too long and has too many people. There are 16 people interviewed here, all male, and 15 of them are white, I think most people can see what the problem here is (and when I saw the recommendation on twitter I also saw some people noting that it was all male and someone else saying that they had seen a similar movie recently but it had included some women, no idea on what the title of that production is sadly). And even when you have 16 people all talking about some of the troubles, both in general and personal, with becoming a recognized name in the industry that's just not enough to fill up 78 minutes without getting repetitive around the 45 minute mark. Sadly, between those two problems, plus a slew of technical problems I'm about to dive into, I just can't recommend this and was bored by a lot of this film. 

Production Values: Normally I don't have much to say about the production values of a documentary (partially because most people are unwilling to do anything extremely stylistic) beyond "okay they were competent, good!" However here, wow technically this was terrible. I wanted to give the filmmaker a tripod since they clearly didn't have one, for some reason they liked to zoom in and out on the speaker and sometimes didn't aim the camera quite right (I swear at one point we were accidentally staring at a grey wall for a few seconds), there was a shot or two where the actor was in front of a window and the poor camera was trying to figure out what exposure to shoot for and was changing as they were recording, I even heard an airplane in the background for one outside shot! Guys, I've made videos and yes it's frustrating to record something, see that, and have to rerecord but as it stands I, and most of my classmates from that class, have all made technically better videos with rather low level equipment, no budget, and almost no time, that's pretty terrible!


Sorry for no photo tonight guys, apparently Photobucket is down and I'll edit that in in the morning. In any case, I'm giving this movie just 2 out of 5 stars for being entirely too long, white, male, and for making me question the camera-person's technical abilities. If I can find the name of that other film I'll edit the review and put it in, for right now all I can say is that you can surely find something better to watch with your time.