The Cinema Show Experience Debate Cycle

So, we’re yet again having that conversation on social media, about the sanctity of seeing movies in theathers and how it’s the only true way to see them?

Ok, let’s indulge in some fruitless arguing, as the issues are decades old and the industry won’t actually do anything about fixing them, because they won’t until there’s a distinct financial incentive to provide good movie watching experiences.

And this is just indulging, let’s be honest.

Because most people don’t care, won’t really care, ever.

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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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Spiders (2000) [REVIEW] | Nu Spiders

The late 90s are not anymore. It’s the first year of the new millennium, the Y2K didn’t set off nuclear bombs leading the way for the world of Fist Of The North Star, just produced a lot of scams and made a lot of people work overtime to avoid “the bug” actually affecting things as believed.

Not that it matters, because for movies like this, it’s always the 50s regardless of what decade they are made in, it’s always about giant bugs or insects or arthropods made big thanks to the power of Radiation (©), or aliens, or both.

And since it’s the late 90s-early 2000s, you can take a wild guess this comes from our old friend Nu Image, taking a break from sharks to give the ancestors of Rachnera Arachnera their part as the killer giant animals protagonists of another creature feature. Alien killer giant animals, to be precise.

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One Piece TV SP 4: One Piece Historical Drama Series – Luffy’s Detective Story (2005) [REVIEW]

Director: Unknown

Writer: Unknown

Runtime: 42 Minutes

Time for One Piece to go “jidaigeki” and rock the 19^th centhury japanese setting way before the Land Of Wa arc, but – as the opening narrator smugly and humurously remind us – this special takes place in Jipangu, which may look like some country of some time ago, but let’s not be pedantic, it’s just a cartoon after all.

You should really just relax.

In this case it’s not a chanbara styled special, but more in the vein of Ranpo Edogawa’s period detective stories, with the One Piece characters (included many old faces from the early arcs) playing the role of civilians, tax collectors, carpenters and so on, while Luffy is the purposely unfitting secret policeman-detective of the city, and mantains order with his fists and jitte, aided by ninja Usop and perpentually indebted to Nami and Sanji’s restaurant.

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[EXPRESSO] Jungle Cruise (2021) | Steamboat Amazon Ride

Time and time again, Disney comes back to the familiar well of turning Disneyland rides-attractions into live action movies, hoping to avoid another The Country Bears and strike that sweet, profitable Pirates Of The Carribean lightning once more.

Can’t say i’ve ever even seen this ride in person, but then again i’m not even sure i even went to Disneyland to begin with, and this doesn’t matter anyway.

This time we have a throwback to 40-50s jungle adventure films, with steamboats, fearless guides with pith helmets, treasures guarded by perilous jungle animals, cursed soldiers, evil german royalty (not nazis since this is set during WWI, but it makes virtually no difference if they were), adventurous researchers and natives in “ethnic get up”. And Dwayne Johnson.

It’s as generic as it looks and as generic as they come, clearly prioritizing spectacle and action in order to avoid the audience NOT being stimulated, even if the scenes don’t call for action, there is it anyway, just shovel it in. This is through and through a manifactured Disney summer blockbuster, as obvious as me pointing it out (as if was needed), and ones expectes it to be just a fun, throw-away experience to kill 90 minutes.

BUT i gotta admit it’s fun, it manages to incorporate ride-like elements into the plot, often giving them some minor little twists to the usual cliches for fun, the cast is clearly overlyqualified for the roles and the dialogues, but they clearly have fun with the stock characters and the often silly lines (or deliberately bad jokes), it made genuinely laugh in more than a couple occasion.

It’s quite cute, it’s pretty much what it says it is, it’s a cute, mild, fun little adventure while it lasts, one you’ll quickly forget in any detail after watching.

Sky Sharks (2020) [REVIEW] | Gott ist im Himmel

Let’s close this year’s Shark Month with a big bang, shall we?

And frankly i don’t think there’s anything better in that regard as Sky Sharks, a movie you’ve might have heard of but wondered when or if it’s actually coming out.

Borne from a succesful Kickstarter campaign, Sky Sharks was supposed to come out in 2018, but production hit roadblocks, various issues came up, for some time we didn’t hear anything about it at all, but then, in 2020 it resurfaced, complete and was released, even on home video (might have to import it, though).

And it was definitelly worth the wait, since this one of those rare shark movies that sets out to be a big B-movie by design, trying to tick all the usual exploitation-but-awesome points… and actually succeds in living up entirely to its trailer promising flying sharks piloted by undead nazi uber-soldiers, alongside nudity and lots of gore. It’s just missing vampires, a christian-protestant feud, psycho priests with bayonet-blades longer than an arm, but i’m really nitpicking in this case.

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Shark Month BEGINS!

As promised, a monthful of shark movies starts now, but you’ll find it’s not quite totally about sharks, and some other ferocious fishes might be spotlighted for one reason or another, because here at Wise Cafe International we don’t discriminate about people getting eaten by anything or anyone… in movies.

But of course sharks are the main protagonist, it’s Shark Month after all!

Enjoy!

(btw, just managed to finally see A Promising Young Woman, holy shit!)

Do NOT buy the Kao The Kangaroo Trilogy on GOG

Yeah, this article isn’t timely, but i wanted to get around to it eventually, and eventually here we are.

Earlier this year, GOG re-released all the original Kao The Kangaroo games as bundle for 6 bucks, and since i was actually waiting for a re-release of the first and third games, as i’m a platformer buff and these are getting hard to find, i immediatly bought them, especially with a small discount to 5 bucks.

But sadly GOG really dropped the ball on this re-release of a niche and forgotten platformer series from polish developer Tate Interactive, especially as it wasn’t released before in its enterity. Kao 2 is basically the same as the enhanced Steam release, and it was also released on PS2, so there’s really not much to say.

The problems come with the other two games, the ones most people bought the collection to play because they didn’t before. The original Kao The Kangaroo game was released on both Dreamcast and PC at the time, so of course the GOG release ignored the version WITHOUT tank controls, and released the PC one.

Good idea for a 3D platformer game, good idea.

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Zombi Holocaust (1980) [REVIEW] | With Extra Falernum

Let me take you back the days of italian zombie movies, with one of the slightly more obscure films, even if we’re still in the familiar territory of italian directors credited with laughable american pseudonyms and a plethora of alternate titles, it wouldn’t be an italian zombie from that era if it somehow got the alternate title of Zombie 3 (yes, with an extra “e”), others trying to link it to the “Zombi non-series” or the cannibal subgenre, one that happens to have been mostly dominated by italian genre directors.

Zombi Holocaust does have 2 recognized alternative titles, Queen Of The Cannibals and Dr. Butcher: M.D., and to be honest they’re not too that outrageous or mystifying, because this one decide to go ahead and combine a cannibal and zombie movie together, throwing in a mad scientist that created his own zombie army, as an expedition to the Eastern Indies finds out more than they bargained for, as this group of doctors and journalist went there to investigate, after episodes of cannibalism by immigrants of that particular island started happening in various city hospitals.

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I Eat Your Skin (1971) [REVIEW] | Burial Grounds – Voodoo Terror

Summer means it’s a perfect time to revisit some black and white “exotic flavored” zombie flick of yore.

Made in 1964 as “Carribean Adventure”, titled this way to hide from investors the fact it was a zombie movie… it never saw the light of day until 1971, when the zombie genre was “properly” born via the unexpected, shocking and – as time would tell – seminal release in theathers of a low budget flick called The Night Of The Living Dead in 1968.

Of course, zombies existed in cinema before, but mostly “voodoo zombies”, as in people put under hypnosis or drugged by a scientist or master of some kind, used as both forced labour and goons to dispose of people, usually made invulnerable by magic to compensate their slow, stiff movements, but even by 1964 the “voodoo zombie genre” had already plateaud… heck, you can argue it basically died in the mid 40’s when zombie comedies like Zombies On Broadway happened, as Universal later would make Abbott and Costello meet its own monster roster.

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