…well, in Japan at least. No idea when it’ll make it’s way to the US or Europe, but it was announced this week that Ponyo on a Cliff by a Sea will hit Japanese cinemas on July 19th.
anime – manga – sci-fi – art ...and more »
Archives for the month of: April, 2008
The first moving images from Sky Crawlers are out, the new flick from anime god Mamoru Oshii. Don’t know an awful lot about it at this point, apart from it’s based on a Japanese novel by Hiroshi Mori about fighter pilots in an alternate history setting. Nice. Looks great, with both the plot and the little we see of the mechanical designs, it kind of reminds me of The Wings of Honneamise – which is certainly no bad thing, it being one of my favourite anime movies. To say I’m looking forward to this one would be one hell of an understatement…
According to Variety today, Steven Speilberg’s Dreamworks studio has acquired the rights to produce a live action version of Ghost in the Shell. It’s not clear at this point whether the plan is to make an adaptation of Oshii’s 1995 movie, or Shirow’s 1989 manga, and the cynical among us (i.e. me) might jump to the conclusion that this is just a bandwagon jump after the announcement of the Akira live action flick. But apparently Spielberg ‘loves’ the original, and believes it is a ‘genre that has arrived’. Erm, OK Stevie. What genre, exactly? Cyberpunk? If so, then ‘fraid you’re jackin’ in about 20 years too late, chombatta.
NOTE: also sometimes spelled ‘Dennou Coil’
Produced by cult animation studio Madhouse and directed by relative newcomer Mitsuo Iso, Denno Coil first started airing in Japan in May of last year, which is when I first started watching it, courtesy of Ureshii’s sublime fansubs. In fact, I watched the first 8 episodes just days after each one was first broadcast, but with other commitments and time conspiring against me, I criminally left the rest of the series untouched on my hard drive for months, until last week when I had a chance to sit down and try and catch up. I got as far as episode 12, still leaving me with another 14 to watch, and believe me, I’m going to be doing whatever I can to get through them. That new short story I’m working on may just have to wait a little bit longer.
Now I have to admit to a complete lack of any knowledge or experience of the Little Nemo children’s stories…apparently popular in the US, as far as I’m aware they never made any real impact on this side of the Atlantic. But I’m suddenly a little interested now, after finding out that Studio Ghibli nearly made a feature film based on the characters in the 1980s, to have been directed by the late Yoshifumi Kondo. The project never surfaced – at least not from Ghibli – but now some footage has been uncovered and dumped onto YouTube. Get ready for a little slice of classic, if low-res, Miyazaki-esque flying sequence action.
Or at least his writers are. Once again they seem able to sum everything up in just under five minutes:
Updated: link fixed, video working again…
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This weekend – you’ve probably already seen it if you’ve any more than a passing interest – saw the release by Zak Snyder of the first of 12 monthly video blogs for the Watchmen movie, taking us up until the film’s release next March. Damn, that sounds like a long way off. It’s the usual ‘behind the scenes’ kind of affair, and is all very interesting and exciting, but like I said before I’m trying to curb my enthusiasm.
Just a quick one…had a clear out of the loft yesterday, and as a result I’m selling on some of my retro video games collection on ebay this week. Hard decision to take, because I love some of this stuff…even though I never use it, I just love looking at the packaging, especially on the Japanese stuff like the Wonderswan and the imported SNES games. Ah well.
Still not parting with my Dreamcast or Atari VCS stuff…not yet anyway…
