Antlers missed and the 500th+ posts celebratory post & extra ramble

So, yeah, due to the movie Antlers having a surprising – ok, not that surprising – shortlived run in theathers here and being released in a very busy week, i missed it completely, so who knows when it will arrive on VOD here, i’ll just wait for when it releases on home video, most likely wil import it from the UK.

Meaning that the EXPRESSO review of Antlers i planned just won’t happen at all. Pity.

But we did reach the 500th posts total more than a week ago, so bathe in the celebratory anime dance gif, busting out and oldie but goldie.

Not looking forward to that Netflix’s live action Cowboy Bebop adaptation, just putting that out, but i feel like i have to say something about, so i’ll give it a watch and a full review. At least it not an outlandish proposal as the darn live-action One Piece, i saw that post and the partial cast reveal, the cast looks fine, honestly, just can’t imagine that series working in any satisfying or acceptable way with real actors, doesn’t matter how much money they put into the CG.

I guess we didn’t learn the most important lesson of Jump Force (which btw Namco Bandai it’s gonna stop selling – DLCs included – the coming February 2022, so if you want to own it for collection purposes, get it now): realistic redraws of anime characters from One Piece can be quite the terryfing looking human simulacra.

Watch Kill Me Baby, that’s the lesson today kids.

[EXPRESSO] The French Dispatch (2021) | Tales From Ennui-sur-Blasè

Yes, i was quite excited when this was announced, i love me some Wes Anderson, especially when he’s doing stopmotion animation, but the live action casts for his movies have everyone in them, so i’m willing to “overlook” the issue time, though i’m not entirely sure about William Dafoe not being made out of clay to some degree.

After his japanese themed envorimental tale of samurai dogs, this time we’re dealing with a story about the world of journalism, as an anthology of stories adapted from the fictional “The French Dispatch Magazine”, here presented as a “real” side column to the Kansas-based paper “The Evening Sun”, originally conceived for travel logs and such but eventually got big and based itself in the little french town of “ Ennui-sur-blasè”, attracting the best journalists from all over the globe.

All framed as the newspaper founder dies and by his will the French Dispatch itself will close, with the writers and staff selecting the best stories for the last issue of the magazine itself, ranging to a student protest to a romance between a psychotic prisoned artist and his warden.

As you can guess, expect and tell, this sound indeed like an ensemble cast for a huge “vignette variety hour” on the subject of journalism, promising all the zany quirks of Wes Anderson’s eccentric directing and writing style… and sure as hell you’re not gonna change opinion on his works with The French Dispatch, which plays to all the strenghts and flaws of Wes Anderson with even more vigor than before, for best or worst.

Personally i loved it, but i think it’s fair to say it could have been better.

Especially since we have reasons to expect a lot.

Even so, at the very worst it’s good, so i do recommend it.

[EXPRESSO] Yaya E Lennie – The Walking Liberty (2021) | Jungle Rebel Yell

Time for some ambitious animation cinema from Italy, from director Alessandro Rak, the brand new Yaya E Lennie – The Walking Liberty, that premiered at the prestigious Locarno Film Festival this year, and had a limited theathrical run as an event screening here in Italy.

Produced by neapolitan studio Mad Entertaiment and animated in 3D CG via Blender, the movie follows the titular duo, a crafty girl and a gentle giant with the mind of a child (a direct reference to Lennie of Mice And Men) that travel this post apocalyptic jungle world with a free spirit, living day by day in a world where aside from the dangerous but free jungle also roam soldiers of the Institution, a military regime clinging to a fascist sense of order in a world newly remade primeval, and bent on bringing civilization at any cost to everyone everywhere.

It’s a children enviromental fable about the importance of freedom in spite of poisonous “progress”, and all that it entails, and it’s a pretty good one, it concedes to some of the animated children movies staples with a proud neapolitan angle, but also doesn’t really pull punches on the matters, uses a good amount of cursing, and also the Chaplin monologue at the end of The Great Dictator. So it’s definitely not pandering itself to toddlers, and manages to earn what it wants to represent, instead of just assuming it can without the actual work.

The characters are quite likeable, the art direction it’s great, there’s even a few lines that will get a chuckle out even the older kids, the story it’s solid enough, the only gripe it how the animation still has that issue with most 3D CG, as in it feels very robotic and “laggy” at times. Even so, it’s good work.

The Spooktacular Eight #6: Dominator: The Movie (2003)

Are you ready to rock and roll with the most unknown Spawn-rip off you never heard?

Are you ever heard of “brit-manga”? Me neither, but apparently Dominator was the “new wave of brit manga animation”, according to what the front cover of the UK DVD release claims.

Yeah, this is some rare shit indeed, an animated movie that involves familiar names in the horror sphere like Doug Bradley, Ingrid Pitt, and metal bands like Cradle Of Filth providing not only the music but the voice acting, based on a series of british comics by Tony Luke, one that was still ongoing in 2006, but has since then been in hiatus.

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Alice: Otherlands (2015) [REVIEW] | Uncertain Fate Kickstarted

While Alice Asylum (as said in the review of Madness Returns) is now officially in the pre-production stage of development, the path to this potential third game in the series hasn’t been a walk in the park for anyone involved, and it was bound to be full of bumps and by-products because a third game was never certain, so it makes sense that American Mc Gee tried to bring closure to his series back in 2015, with the project known as “Alice Otherlands”, made of artworks and two short animated films produced by Spicy Horse, funded via Kickstarter, as the owner of the Mc Gee’sAlice IP itself, EA, wasn’t interested in funding a third game, at all, so they had to pivot the project.

Fuck EA, btw. Just in case you needed more incentives to do so. You didn’t.

What came out of it where – mostly – the two aforementioned short films, Leviathan – A Journey Through Jules Verne’s Mind and A Night At The Opera.

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[EXPRESSO] Josee, the Tiger and the Fish (2020) | and the Andersen

Eventually anime is coming back to cinemas here as well, starting with 2020’s anime adaptation of the short story Josee, the Tiger and the Fish by Seiko Tanabe, already adapted in live action form both by japanese and corean production, here with animation curated by studio BONES.

It’s a romantic drama about Tsuneo, a university student working a part time job that one day stumbles upon an old lady carrying a big wheelchair for a girl with cerebral palsy, calling herself Josee, after the heroine of a Francois Sagan’s novel. He starts frequenting “Josee” as her attendee for hire, and as time goes by he learns more about her, etc. I don’t think i have to explain how romance 101 work, so i won’t.

So, it’s a fairly common setup for an anime romance film with actual ambitions to drama, with the girl suffering from a disability or disease of sorts, i can’t really claim this movie does anything new never seen before in any way, it’s definitely what you think it’s gonna be, so don’t expect to be “surprised”, even though people don’t see romance movies for Shaymalan style twists.

But it’s honestly fairly good, definitely good enough to have it nominated at Annecy last year, fairly well executed, good animation, decent to good characters and – yes – good romance, actually surprisingly quite funny as well. What stops it from being great is that it basically does the usual framing of “disability” as some sort of “personal extra hurdle” situation to the romance, touching upon the themes that come with it but not exactly in a nuanced way, most likely because they mean well but don’t know or want to know much, resulting in a less impactful execution.

Still, it’s worth seeing, just don’t expect A Silent Voice.

[EXPRESSO] Space Jam: A New Legacy/New Legends (2021) | Look On My Works, Ye Great Mighty Poo

Let’s get this over with, even if it’s pointless to review, as it’s just a WB corporate flex.

I revisited the original Space Jam just before seeing this, it was a corporate vehicle emphasizing cross brand promotion, spectacle, and references over story, with the “hook” of real life celebrities acting a cliched “inspiring sports film” formula alongside animated characters.

But in retrospect it had some laughs and some self awareness NOT weaponized to just suck corporate cocks in a proud cynical fashion, all the time.

And yes, this is just a new one, a “stand-alone sequel”, make sense since it has been in development hell for 15 years.

It has the same basic premise, with a basketball game deciding the fate of a real life person and the cartoon characters he mets in a new world. Obviously this one swaps Michael Jordan for James LeBron, but also tries to up the ante and modernize it, setting it in a virtual WB-verse where an evil algorhythm-IA has trapped LeBron and his younger son Dom.

Problem is it also quadruples down on corporate bullshit, to the point it’s way longer than it needs just to have countless references using WB owned IPs. Not jokes, references. It also takes itself more seriously for no reason, and it’s often more embarassing and awkward than funny or fun.

This is an official feature length shitpost filled with memes and references (not so much jokes), and while the animation isn’t bad, it’s a stylistically spineless affair, even the older Space Jam had a consistent style to the mixing of live action and animation.

The original was a product of his time as much as this new one is, but even the 1996 movie it’s still better than this specimen of pure corporate public narcistic wanking.

Horrendous.

Arachnicide (2014) [REVIEW] | Going Digital On Yo Ass

This one is a bit special to me as an italian, as it fills a niche of monster movies that basically went extinct over time: the italian b-movie made for the international market.

Yeah, as you could ascertain from the poster (and the cast list) having almost exclusively italian actors on it, this is an italian movie, and if the look of the actors didn’t give it away (i’d argue it does, at the very least it’s obvious that these are not American), the english dub ABSOLUTELY will make that clear as day, and sadly you can’t watch it in italian with english subs, not only on the UK DVD release i imported, but apparently in all english languages releases on streaming as well.

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Reflecting a bit on the new Shaman King anime for Netflix

So, a month or something ago the new anime adaptation of Shaman King dropped as a Netflix exclusive, and after watching the first 8 episodes, i think there is something to be said (in a non-elaborated, just “vomiting my thoughts without much editing or revision” way) about Shaman King and its legacy, and how this new adaptation is indeed trying to propose a very old shonen series to modern audiences, but staying as loyal as it can to the source material, which is nice but it also shows how old and fairly ancillary feels this series today, with many others Jump series that came out at the same time, later or before and still left a bigger, longer lasting mark on the genre.

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One Piece TV SP 13: Episode Of Skypiea (2018) [REVIEW]

Director: Tetsuya Endo

Writer: Tomohiro Nakamaya

Runtime: 105 minutes

So, by the fact that Episode Of East Blue wasn’t followed up by a special with an original story later in 2017, you can tell Toei quietly just kinda ditched the promised output of One Piece TV specials with original stories following new adaptations of old material.

It wasn’t until a year (a year and one day, to be pedantic) after that we got another special in the summer of 2018, with Episode Of Skypiea, another abridged remake of a story arc from earlier in One Piece’s storyline. BUT i find that this one makes a bit more sense, as Skypiea is such an unfairly hated story arc for many fans (which often made a lot of videogame adaptations of One Piece just completely skip it over it, while keeping a lot of minor story arcs)…. because someone shunned it entirely due to Ener’s ability being basically doomed to begin with against Luffy’s. But Amazon Lily’s arc that features Luffy making women marvel at his golden balls is perfect.

It makes even more sense to give Skypiea the “Episode Of” treament since we didn’t get any tangental piece of re-animated material from this arc in any of the specials before.

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