The rest of ‘Pushing Daisies’ begins airing TONIGHT!!

The facts are these:

In September of 2007, ABC debuted a new and quirky series called Pushing Daisies. It was both a critical and ratings darling during it’s freshman months. Then the writer’s strike happened, and Daisies finished its first season with a paltry 9 episodes. When it returned, it failed to get the ratings necessary to keep ABC from canceling it and in December of 2008, after two partial seasons, the axe was dropped on Pushing Daises. At the time, ABC didn’t even finish airing the final three episodes. Since that time, ABC has allowed show-runner Fuller to go back and modify the final episode a bit so that it functions more as a series finale than simply a season cap. And now, they are dropping Pushing Daisies in the 10 pm slot on Saturday night for the following three weeks with as little publicity and fanfare as possible.

I don’t think even the Pie-maker can resurrect this one, but its nice to at least get a chance to say our goodbyes.

I didnt come to show when it first aired (as I seem to do with so much television) but caught it when it hit dvd. And it was really something unique. Creating a world that blended storybooks and comic books, Pushing Daisies gave us a wonderful and distinct cast of characters, a sweet and thoughtful love story and some of the best dialogue on television today. It was a zinger for sure, and original, which was itself a major accomplishment for network t.v.

The cast is terrific. Lee Pace, also wonderful in the fantastic The Fall, insinuates himself into another fairy-tale world as Ned the pie-maker who has the gift to resurrect dead things when he touches them, but if he touches them a second time they are dead again, forever. The other caveat is that if said dead thing is allowed to re-enter the world and exist for longer than a minute, something else in near proximity will have to die as a result. Anna Friel played his dead lady love, Chuck, who he resurrected but couldn’t bring himself to return to the grave. The two standouts of the show, though, were Chi McBride as the blustery private detective Emerson Cod (one of the most original characters I’ve seen in years) and Kristen Chenowith as the feisty, pining Olive Snook who works as a waitress at Ned’s cafe, charmingly called The Pie Hole. Daisies had begun pairing Cod and Snook together as sluething partners, but the cancellation came just as this storyline began to take off.

Now, for at least three more weeks, Daisies is alive and among us and well. Enjoy it while it lasts. It will be brief.

For everyone who has yet to see Daisies, you can get the first season on DVD and Bluray right now and the second season with the three added eps on July 1st.

Read what little ABC has to say about it HERE.

Movie review: Raimi’s road to ‘Hell’ paved with good invention

Drag Me To Hell (PG-13) 99 min. directed by: Sam Raimi. written by: Sam and Ivan Raimi. starring: Alison Lohman, Justin Long, David Paymer, Lorna Raver, Dileep Rao, Adriana Baraza. cinematography: Peter Deming. original music: Christopher Young.

Wow, what a weekend for movies. This is one of the best lineups I’ve seen since sometime in summer of 99 when The Sixth Sense, Dick, Iron Giant, Mystery Men and The Thomas Crown Affair all released on the same friday. I was actually in the midst of writing up reviews this afternoon for two other films that debuted today (one a masterpiece and the other a solid entertainment) when my wife called me and inquired if I’d like to check out a movie around 4. We had two on the roster we wanted to see–Drag Me to Hell and Up! and she expressed interest in seeing the former first. Afterall, it’s almost a given that a new Pixar will be brilliant, but the idea of a new Sam Raimi horror comedy? Yea, if I haven’t said it before, let me say it now: my wife rocks!

As it turns out, there couldn’t be a better popcorn movie for a rainy  Friday evening than Sam Raimi’s Drag Me To Hell. As a pure audience experience, I don’t think we will see its equal all summer long. Even our moderately attended late-afternoon showing yielded plenty of responsive yelps, guffaws and nervous giggles; Raimi hasn’t played an audience this well since Spiderman 2 and Drag Me To Hell is Sam’s best film since 1998’s A Simple Plan. Best of all, Raimi the mainstream filmmaker takes a back seat to the goop-meister Raimi responsible for the Evil Dead trilogy. He opens up his box of wacky tricks and unleashes a thrill-a-minute creep fest that isn’t afraid to go for the cheap scare or the cheap laugh while still maintaining a level of class that most current horror pictures don’t even get around to thinking about. When the old-style Universal logo came up on screen I knew we were in for something , ahem, ‘groovy’.

The movie has a pre-credits sequence that sets the stage for whats to come; a family in the 60’s bring their ailing son to Shaun San Dena, a fortune teller and seer who tries to help the boy. He stole a silver necklace from a gypsy caravan and for the past three days has been having violent hallucinations and mumbles something about a dark force ‘coming to get him’. San Dena tries to save the youngster but something supernatural bursts in on the attempt and ….well, you  should see it for yourself. Lets just say that at this point Raimi lets everyone know that while this might be rated PG-13  its anything but safe.

 

Hell then launches into the main story, involving Allison Lohman’s Christine, a sweet and mild mannered loan officer who is vying with a new employee for an assistant manager position at the bank where she works. In an effort to turn the tables to her advantage, Christine makes a break from her usually tender disposition and spurns an elderly gypsy woman who begs not to be foreclosed on. The decision is left in Christine’s hands and she sends the gypsy, Mrs. Ganush, on her way after a humilating display where the old lady grovels at the young woman’s feet.

After a particularly vivid and rousing slap-stick(a stapler is used in a most inappropriate way) battle between Christine and the angry hag in a darkened parking lot, Mrs. Ganush manages to rip away one of the girl’s buttons and  issues a curse on it. The only word Lohman hears clearly is ‘Lamia’. She doesn’t know what it means but before very long the cozy and quiet little life she has been trying to maintain with her boyfriend Clay is falling apart. Something terrifying is hunting Christine and hideous visions flood her every waking thought; among them a goat-like creature who stamps its cloven feet outside of her door and the gypsy lady herself, vomiting pounds of beetles and worms onto the young woman while she sleeps. When she consults dime-store psychic Rham Jas, he senses an evil presence and warns her that she has been cursed by a gypsy demon called the Lamia, or ‘Black Goat’. She will hallucinate for 3 days and on the fourth the Lamia will come and literally drag her down to the pits of  hell, soul and all. 

 The plot is just a simple hook upon which Raimi hangs an irreverent and rambunctious series of gross-out gags, jump-scares and atmospheric sequences where characters try to solve problems and find themselves knee-deep in complete, supernatural chaos. Theres plenty of absurd special fx and interesting camera work (a fly lands directly on the lens at one point) but the film’s secret weapon is its breath-taking sound design. When the jump scares land I dare you not to nearly soil yourself. The sound becomes so antagonistic that it results in the first horror film where we desire to cover our ears in fear rather than our eyes.

 Instead of giving the audience a concrete monster to fix upon, Raimi keeps switching from one halloween trick to the next; pieces of furniture attack, a handkerchief floats about and mutters as it does so, and there are some very sick-making but ingenious things done with flies. By the time one character regurgitates a whole cat, Drag Me To Hell has already deluged us in more fluids than should be allowable in one film. The regurgitation, especially, is quite frequent. In fact, vomit spews out of people here like pop references in a Tarantino film. Why puke? Because it’s less disturbing to the ratings board and it’s more inherently repulsive. Raimi loves to make our skin crawl, and make us laugh, and then , one scene later, take the whole enterprise seriously and wonder why we were laughing in the first place.

In Drag Me To Hell Sam unleashes seven different kinds of Stooge-like pain on Alison Lohman, who is one heck of a good sport. But in the end, it’s not the gross-out stuff that causes the 50’s horror-style dread but the underlying idea behind the entire movie; when the Lamia comes, its not Christine’s body that will pay the price but her spiritual essence. Fear not the one who can destroy the body, but the soul as well. So while he dishes out supernatural vengeance on Christine and her personal life, Raimi builds the unsettling idea of what such a drastic sentence might push a typically decent young woman to do. This girl doesn’t want eternal torment, and she doesn’t believe she deserves what is coming. In the end, afterall, it was the bank, not she, that had canceled on Mrs. Ganosh. Watching the ways in which Christine attempts to out-manuever the curse adds a layer of tragedy and dread to what , in all other ways,is a vintage horror comic come to life. And this is not a bad thing.

When all else fails, Jas brings Christine to Shaun San Dena, older now and played by the wonderfully effective Adriana Barraza (Babel, Henry Poole is Here). San Dena is looking to atone for her failure of years past and her focus is two-fold: save Christine and destroy the Lamia for good. The seance that follows is the grand event of Drag Me To Hell, where every funhouse gimmick in the book gets trotted out. Raimi has said on the Evil Dead 2 commentary that there was originally a crazy seance planned for that movie but the budget didn’t allow it. 20 some years later not only has he made it, but it’s one of the best pieces of directing he’s ever done.

I  had alot of fun with Drag Me To Hell and with Sam’s never-ending visual imagination. So much of whats here looks like a patchwork quilt of Darkman, Evil Dead and Army of Darkness but theres also a feverish ingenuity to the way it’s put together. Even when I had a handle on where the script itself was going story-wise I was constantly blindsided by the elaborate goofiness on display; a pivotal and tension-filled seance scene is interrupted by a grotesque, gabby goat. And Raimi has something this time around he never had when making the original Evil Dead films; talented and nuanced actors. Not to slam Bruce Campbell as Ash in the Dead films but his performance was mostly physical comedy and impersonated machismo–it absolutely worked but thats not what this movie requires. It requires us to feel for and worry for Christine, while also seeing the not so honest and kind underneath that she hides from everyone else. We also have to believe she is a strong enough spirit to take the kinds of blows and psychological assault she comes under here, while remaining steadfast in her search for an end to the curse.

 Lohman delivers this completely. She has always used her childlike features and youthful innocence to great effect, particularly in Matchstick Men where she ran an entire con based around the fact, but here she plays it up AND plays against it. It was fun to see Campbell get cluelessly thrashed in Army of Darkness but it’s something altogether different when baby-faced Lohman, covered in bile and formaldyhide, stands up and fights for her soul, even if it means fighting dirty and passing the buck to others. The actors around Christine could have been pulled from a black and white horror film and they capture the right tone for the piece.

Justin Long has the thankless role that used to belong to the likes of Kent Smith back in the 40s, the doubtful but supportive partner,, and he does a nice job of it. He stabilizes the movie and brings it back to a relative state of normalcy. This is mostly done so Raimi can just shatter it all over again, and he does that with the likes of Lorna Raver as the vengeful gypsy. There is nothing subtle about her performance and thats the beauty. Sometimes she is just a frail but nasty old woman and then other times shes putting in her dentures so she can bite Lohman. My personal favorite performance is Adriana Baraza’s turn as  San Dena, who is only in the film for the duration of the seance scene. Baraza has a folksy and sincere quality to her that was put to good use in films like Babel and Henry Poole is Here, where she took a typical latin stereotype and revealed to us the living breathing person underneath. In this movie she is all stereotype all the time, but she harnesses it and makes the best darn demon-fighting fortune teller you will ever see. That scene is the magnetic core of the movie and she is the emotional core of the scene.

I’ve always been a big fan of well-made horror films but I really detest what usually passes for the genre in today’s marketplace. Typically amoral and centered around pain and misery, the current crop withers in the face of Raimi’s jolly but straightforward tale of good and evil. Like the Spiderman films, there are choices we face and consequences for those choices. What I appreciate about Sam Raimi is that he doesn’t try to unhinge us as much as entertain us. He’s  like a demented carnival barker, running us through various traps and amusements and bringing us out on the other side, not permanently scarred or wishing we could un-see half of what we just witnessed, but entertained and energized  by the grand silliness up there on screen. And if theres a lingering bit of the creeps? All the better.

Harry Lime heads to the big screen and The Senator heads to auction

 

It’s official. The Senator is headed to auction on July 21st where the BDC (Baltimore Development Corporation) will preside over the sale. The Senator Theatre will be sold for no less than a bid of  1 million dollars.  For further details regarding the specifics of the auction and the circumstances surrounding it, check out yesterday’s Baltimore Sun article about The Senator.  

Theres also this editorial letter calling for respect for Tom Kiefauber’s work and contribution to The Senator over the years.

Right now, The Senator is still showing films and this weekend its playing a bona fide masterpiece, Carol Reed’s noir thriller The Third Man. If you have never seen it then I suggest you check it out at The Senator if you can.  My wife and I are showing the film as part of an upcoming movie night event at our house, so I’ll have a more detailed review of it up then. My advice would be to walk into it knowing as little as possible. You won’t be disappointed.

Showtimes for The Third Man, as well as Yellow Submarine and the Pink Floyd concert film P.U.L.S.E  are HERE.

 

Check

Remembering Jane Randolph and ‘The Cat People’

One of the scariest scenes in film. Jane Randolph finds herself being stalked by a panther while swimming alone in 'The Cat People'.

May 28th, 2009-

Jane Randolph is gone. The 40’s film actress passed away earlier this month on May 4th after surgery for a broken hip. She was 93 and had been out of the Hollywood spotlight since her last film in 1948, Abbot and Costello Meet Frankenstein.  Jane was quite the busy bee in Hollywood for the better part of a decade; between 1941 and 1948 she had roles in 20 films, including noir thrillers like Railroaded and Jealousy. And then, shortly after the Abbot and Costello picture, Jane married wealthy Spanish producer Jaime Del Amo and moved out of the country leaving her film career behind forever. That was more or less it, until news of her death hit the internet today.

So, with such a slight  career and so few recognizable titles to her name, why is Randolph remembered at all?  Well, in addition to being a strong and classy presence  in whatever movie she showed up in, she played an integral part in what is arguably one of the creepiest and most intense chase scenes ever put to film; the night-time stalking sequence from Val Lewton’s The Cat People. In honor of Randolph and her great work as Alice Moore, I’m going to take an in-depth look at this scene why it continues to hold so much power all these years later.

Jane Randolph as the 'other woman' in The Cat People

The Cat People is easily one of my top five favorite horror films. It doesn’t really feature much in the way of the supernatural and it’s amazingly short– it clocks in at just 73 minutes– but during that time it creates a spellbinding atmosphere of psychological fear and mounting dread. Really? Fear? In a black and white film over 65 years old? Absolutely. Most odd is that the potential victim in all of the film’s chase sequences, Randolph’s Ann, isn’t the character we have sympathy for. That would be Simone Simon’s Irena Dubrova, a young, Serbian-born artist who meets the handsome Walter Reed and falls in love.

Irena and Walter marry but she can never bring herself to consumate the marriage because of an ancient curse tied to her familial bloodline; a curse that might cause her to transform from a human woman to a panther during sexual intercourse. Svelte and sexy, with a smoldering voice and big doe eyes, Irena seems every bit the femme fatale but instead she’s the film’s tragic heroine, slowly losing the man she loves to Randolph because of her paralyzing fear of what might happen after sex. Randolph plays Alice Moore as a 40’s working gal, reasonably independent and self-posessed and although she isn’t completely a wolf, when the cracks start showing in co-worker Oliver’s marriage, she insinuates herself between he and his repressed bride.

Simon, as Irena, turns in a truly captivating and poignant performance; she really does suggest lurking feline qualities and a certain predatory spirit under this meek and mild young lady. Randolph manages to match her scene for scene, and she also makes Alice a far more compelling character than a simple home-wrecker. She isn’t quite likable; she does too much damage for that, but she also isn’t evil or conniving and when she is in peril we fear for her safety just as we worry that Irena might lose control and fall into violence or something worse. The script downplays the two male roles, Oliver Reed and sinister Dr. Judd, and pits Irena and Alice against one another.  Alice worries about Irena’s mental state but ultimately wants her out of the picture and Irena, hurt, angry and possibly psychotic finds herself following Alice and experiencing haunting dreams connected to her shape-shifting fears.

All of this leads to the film’s two central fright sequences, one on a darkened, lonely street and the other in an empty indoor pool, both connected to one another. At their center is Jane Randolph and one of the very clever things Lewton, Tourner and screenwriter DeWitt Bodeen do here is to melt Alice’s fiery independence down into a paranoid, all-consuming fear. They build the tension step by step and Randolph conveys Alice’s slow but sure unraveling as an unseen intruder invisibly stalks her.

The pool scene is a masterpiece of editing and sound design. It is really just a series of reactionary shots of Jane in the water intercut with the murky shadows of the pool house’s back wall and on the soundtrack we hear the stealthy breathing and low growls of a big cat. The cinematography never allows the viewer to see anything more than just Alice’s head bobbing above the water, and Randolph has to convey her fear via only facial expressions and gesturing movements. What she manages to deliver is a scene-specific performance that outdoes Janet Leigh and her infamous shower scene  in Psycho.

The Cat People sets the template for every horror film to follow after that focuses on a young woman bathing alone but it handles the sequence with far more class and creepiness than any of its imitators. Still, its nothing compared to a the infamous chase sequence that finds Alice headed home on an empty street as an unseen pursuer follows her.

Lets take a closer look at it:

 

The scene begins with Irena watching Oliver and Alice leave work late at night.  Oliver heads home and Alice sets off on her own. Irena waits until Oliver is gone and begins to follow Alice. The way moonlight is used in this sequence is quite stunning; the juxtaposition of light and shadow on Irena’s figure manage to create a feline illusion that is enhanced by her long furry coat and coiffed hair. There is no music on the soundtrack to let us know whether Irena is vengeful, feeling betrayed, or just curious. When she starts to walk behind Alice there is absolutely no sound at all and she seemingly floats off screen.

 Cinematographer Nicholas Musuraca treats each image of this scene as if it were an Edward Hopper still life. The winding sidewalk curving off to the right of the screen and the encroaching darkness drifting down from the upper right help create that Hopper-esque feel of loneliness, isolation and solitude. The lamp post divides the frame into two pieces and now there are two seperate worlds; the one with Alice in it alone, and one that harbors danger. Alice’s back is turned and so she is vulnerable. Still no sound. We wait for Irena to cross the barrier.

 Its interesting to note that despite the deeper shadows in Irena’s scenes, she isn’t necessarily presented as menacing. She doesn’t look or behave as if she plans to harm Alice but for the first time since the pursuit began sound intrudes into the sequence in the form of Irena’s high-heeled footfalls.

Another lamp post and another barrier. First Alice walks by silently.

 Then Irena, looking obscured and insubstantial like a shadow herself.

 The footfalls have grown louder and on the soundtrack something funny is happening. The echoing of high heels is slowly giving way to something else. Alice is in the very forefront of the scene and her facial expressions suggest she wants to face her pursuer but might be too afraid. The form of the image has been laid out so we can see everything behind Alice and we know there is nothing there.

Just a long shot of the tunnel. We keep waiting for someone or something to emerge from it. They don’t. There is no one here at all. Then the footsteps pick back up.

 Alice walks, glancing back behind her. On the soundtrack, the sound of high-heel shoes has changed and grown; it now sounds distinctly like the padding of a big cat, with low ominous growls coming from behind Alice. We don’t see Irena anymore this scene. The sequence makes it appear as if Irena has been absorbed completely by the cat persona. Alice runs and something pursues.

 Suddenly, coinciding with a decidedly cat-like growl, a train rustles up and saves Alice from her nightmare walk. The scene holds on Alice getting on the bus confused before it returns to the sidewalk and shows a copse of trees blowing in the wind while animal growling can be picked up on the soundtrack.

And thats it. The anatomy of a truly creepy scene. It’s worth observing and studying and if you have never seen The Cat People it’s definitely worth seeing and enjoying. Heres to you Jane Randolph. Your work was brief but it was strong all the same.

James Cameron’s ‘Avatar’ concept art appears!

May 28th, 2009-

Hey everyone.  MarketSaw, a blog chronicling the production of 3-D movies, posted these above images from the hotly anticipated James Cameron sci-fi epic, Avatar, which hits theaters this December. These current pictures are only concept art and will be presented in an upcoming table top book featuring the artwork of Avatar. For some of the spoilerish details about where these images fit into the overall story and scriptment, as well as with the other production stills previously released, visit the Market Saw website.

Me, I want to discuss the images themselves. So far, it definitely looks like Cameron is approaching this film with serious ambitions of making a true-blue science fiction film. I like the look, though the artwork  seems to suggest the planet’s environment will be slightly less alien than I was hoping for. Still, I don’t think this matter much in the long run and when we have the moving images we can get a better grasp on all of the indigenous lifeforms, robotic technologies and alien races. It looks like science fiction with both a hard-science bent and a pulp adventure feel. C’mon Cameron, get us a trailer already.

Cameron has never faltered on the technical and visual end of things. I just hope the story he wants to tell with Avatar extends beyond just a compelling concept and embraces its characters. Considering the scale of the project, I don’t think hes tried anything this vast on a sci-fi level since The Abyss, which might just be the best movie he’s ever done. Just my opinion. What’s your take?

Monster fans, prepare to squeal like a pig for ‘CHAW’ teaser trailer!

May 28th, 2009-

Giant killer pig movies. There really aren’t enough of these out there. Even the Sci-Fi Channel hasn’t really exploited the unsavory idea of hordes of mutant hogs attacking the human population. In fact, the only predatory pig film I can think of is Russell Mulcahy’s australian thriller Razorback from 1984. The image above is actually pulled from that movie, as CHAW has yet to release images of its sinister swine.

Korea has been sitting pretty at the forefront of asian cinema in the past few years and they have even given us a great bonafide creature feature in the form of The Host, an instant classic about a dysfunctional family fighting an aquatic mutant to reclaim their youngest member. Think of it as Little Miss Sunshine meets Godzilla.

The trailer for CHAW elicits both a pure schlock vibe and an popcorn action movie vibe. The hog looks quite cartoony, but as long as the movie manages to capture the same sort of discomfort and amuesement one gets when looking at the below photo, it has a chance of success.

As for the title, while it isn’t as iconic as say, Hogzilla or Super-Swine: The Porcine Project, CHAW has a nice, grotesque ring to it. While I think it’s the giant pig’s name, it actually evokes images of a less than appeasing nature; whats the chance that we might get scenes of a giant pig happily munching on a human cranium?

Anyway, you can read more about CHAW over at TWITCH, the foreign film fan’s one stop shop for all current international and exotic film projects. 

You can catch the trailer itself HERE.

DVD Showcase: ‘Ghost in the Shell’ director Oshii flies high with ‘The Sky Crawlers’

 

The Sky Crawlers (PG-13) (2008) 122 min. directed by: Mamoru Oshii. voicework: Rinko Kikuchi, Chiaki Kuriyama, Shosuke Tanihara, Bryce Hitchcock, Ryo Kase.

 

They are known as the Kildren; eternally youthful adolescents who pilot WWII-style futuristic fighter-planes and participate in to-the-death aerial dogfights for the benefit of the mega corporations Rostock and Lautern. In the world they come from, there is no more war or conflict, and to ensure it stays that way the Kildren will compete in these global death games, filling the vacuum with an endless battle in the skies. Living like the lost boys and partaking in various adult activities including smoking and sex, the Kildren live a continuous, looping childhood; the banality of this existence is only brightened by the thrilling shooting matches they engage in while up in their planes.

That plot could be the center of a big Hollywood sci-fi picture aping Top Gun, but it’s actually the work of anime maestro Mamoru Oshii, the director responsible for films like Ghost in the Shell, Jin Roh: The Wolf Brigade and the live-action Avalon. Oshii, typically known for his philosophically dense dialogue and languorous, complex visual style, takes a step closer to main-stream storytelling with Sky Crawlers. The plot almost reminds one of a Howard Hawks adventure pic or even the recent French film Der Rote Baron, and while the film contains its share of thoughtful and introspective moments its primarily centered around characters and story.

The beautiful hand-drawn animation blended together with a near photo-realistic CGI presents rolling English countryside, vast manor houses and golden-hued cloudscapes where soaring machines fire endless rounds of ammunition, shells raining down to the world below. The battle scenes recreate the daredevil antics of WWI pilots and there is even a Red Baron character called The Teacher. When I saw the stills for Sky Crawlers months ago, I was worried that those sequences would come off like video-game cut scenes. At first, thats exactly what they seem like, but Oshii frames even these images with a painters eye for composition and the zig-zagging planes, framed against either rain-clogged thunderheads or wispy white cotton balls, are almost poetic in their movements.

Visually lush and patient in regards to it’s texture and detail, set to a sometimes tranquil, sometimes thrilling score,  The Sky Crawlers works as a purely sensory experience. In fact, all of Oshii’s films do. My previous gripe with his work, and indeed most of the recent anime feature films, is that its almost too obscure in its intent and holds the audience at an unecessary arm’s length. The Sky Crawlersis the first Oshii film in, well, perhaps ever, that actually manages to cultivate a strong emotional core in addition to an aesthetic one. The general layout is still subdued, but there are humans here behaving as humans  and each of them has human issues. The Kildren do not age, and this brings its own set of problems, but ultimately they still struggle like your average person.

Yuichi Kannami is the Kildren pilot at the center of the film and it opens with him landing his plane on the Rostock air-base in Northern England. He has no memory of the base or where he previously was, but picks up the swing of things quickly, befriending fellow pilot Tokino and starting a tension-filled relationship with his  commander, the icy Suito Kusanagi. She obviously posesses information she refuses to share with Kannami, and as the plot evolves secrets both on the ground and in the sky begin to manifest themselves. The battles in the air punctuate the human drama and the movie finds a nice balance between the action and the intrigue.

The story is speculative fiction and it’s been intelligently adapted from the novels by Japanese author Hiroshi Mori. Mori’s other novels are known as rikei mysterys because they revolve around some sort of scientific or mathematical puzzle. The Sky Crawlers novels were constructed in such a way where it was not always immediately clear what was happening or why, and as the series progressed all of the elements became available to solving the mystery.

To a lesser extent, Oshii does that here, weaving events in and out of one another and suggesting what the flow of time must feel like to a person trapped in an endless state of youth. However, theres a clear narrative thrust and the film doesn’t fly off on too many theoretical or existential tangents as the Ghost in the Shell sequel did. Instead there is a far more natural rhythym to the drama in Sky Crawlers and the film has an almost pastoral idealism that reminded me more of Hayao Miyazaki (particularly Porco Rosso, another anime involving dog-fights) than any of Oshii’s ouvre.

I haven’t enjoyed an anime film this much in quite some time, and the market has been rather scarce with quality product. A new Miyazaki is on the way right now, and there have been a few choice entries like Satoshi Kon’s Paprika and the recent The Place Promised in Our Early Years,but that’s about it. Oshii’s Sky Crawlersis a breath of fresh air in that respect and an exciting remembrance of the potential of anime to tell thoughtful stories in detailed fantasy worlds. It’s not just a great animated film, it’s a great film period and well worth recommending to the both the hardcore anime fan and the filmgoer who could care less about little moving scribbles. Yes, it really is that good.

The Sky Crawlers was released on dvd and Bluray on May 26th, 2009.

 

By the power of Bay! Transforminators!

No introduction is necessary. Behold the power of AWESOME.

Live in Baltimore County and want to catch a free screening of Up! in 3D tonight?

If you live in Baltimore, or close enough to make it down to the Whitemarsh Theater tonight, then you can follow this link, provided by the Facebook club “I love Free Movie Tickets!’ ( join it, as they offer free screenings all the time) and sign up for yourself and one guest. Then, when you show up at the theater, let the Disney reps know who you are, and you are in. The trick is coming early enough to make sure you will get a seat. I’d suggest showing up at least 40 minutes before showtime, but in this case an hour certainly couldn’t hurt.

If you are interested, follow the link  HERE. It will tell you everything you need to know. Sorry it’s so last minute, but I just found out about this myself.

Grrrrr….Arrrrggh…Buffy heads to big screen without Whedon or Gellar

May 26th, 2009-

It’s been an interesting coincidence that as several of the new series reboots have been hitting theaters, I’ve been making my way through an old one for the first time. Having more or less yawned my way through the 1992 theatrical film Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and being underwhelmed by the t.v. pilot in winter of 97, I never watched the Joss Whedon helmed t.v. series of the same name. And, as I’ve come to realize in recent months, that was my loss.

Whedon created a strong cast of characters that formed a tight-knit community and as inventive as his monsters and fiends were, they always took a back seat to the woes of teenage high-school life. When the characters moved beyond high-school and took on college and the work-force, the show moved with them. It was constantly changing and shifting–not in tone, only in theme –and it was growing, not violently rearranging itself. What I see now, is that Buffy the Vampire Slayer, despite its groan-inducing title and long running stint on the teen-burial-ground that was the WB, was one of the best shows to ever grace the television screen. And as I watched Terminator and Star Trek get a new lease on life, I wondered if Whedon would ever see fit to give us a big-budget Buffy movie.

And, it looks like part of that wish is coming true, but the rest of it is so off-base I’d just as soon not have heard this. Buffy, it seems is going (back) to the big-screen, with the director of the awful first film at the helm and it’s proceeding forward without Whedon, Gellar, and the rest of the cast. O.k., so it won’t attempt to touch the t.v. series, which is a good thing, but this reboot doesn’t make much sense. I don’ t know if Whedon or Gellar or anyone else were approached about this, or considered it, but I always thought the purpose of a reboot was to improve or jump-start a franchise which had run out of steam. We already HAD the Buffy reboot, back in 97. That’s the version that has fans, not the 92 mess. And Buffy didn’t just fade out with lousy final seasons. It finished strong, and during it’s seven year run, only season 4 was not quite up to snuff. If I didn’t think Whedon couldn’t find another interesting story to tell with the original cast, fine, but I think he easily could. Right now, this sounds not only unnecessary but a heart-breaker for those fans of the show that were holding out hope that one day Buffy and the Scoobies would make their way to the big screen.

Bummer.

Read the Empire Online account of this travesty HERE.