It just a littleunder 3 months before Peter Jackson takes us back to Middle-Earth with the first of three films that will make up The Hobbittrilogy.
There’s not much else to say other than this latest trailer for The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journeyjust continues to whet the appetite for all things Middle-Earth. It’s much more action-packed with some nice new scenes instead of just rehashing what was in the original teaser trailer from year ago.
Enough words. Just watch the trailer below and decide for yourself whether another trip to Middle-Earth (before all the War of the Ring brouhaha of the first trilogy) is worth your monies.
The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journeypremieres worldwide on December 14, 2012.
The latest “Song of the Day” comes from a band that many haven’t heard of but should. It was fellow site writer necromoonyeti who first introduced me to their band of folk rock almost three years past now. It was their song “Requiem” that first got Altan Urag onto my music radar.
“Requiem” is a difficult song to categorize. It’s definitely traditional folk music in sound and gives hints of Altan Urag’s folk rock sound. It is also a song that cannot be called a ballad and too melodious to be a dirge despite the title. The video made for this song actually starts off with a young boy asking his grandfather a question. We don’t know what he asks but the song itself gives u s hints as to the answer. An answer that has notions of sorrow and hope, of death and rebirth.
We don’t get to hear the distinctive “throat singing” from the band in this song, but their use of traditional Mongolian folk music instruments like the morin khuur (horse head fiddle) and ikh khuur (grand horse head fiddle) could easily be heard throughout the song and gives the song it’s unique sound.
Altan Urag may not be a house hold name to the general public, but songs like this should give those who have never heard of them an idea why so many people hold them in such high regard.
After people see this scene they will think I’m either crazy or a glutton for heartache for loving this scene. It’s hard to disagree with that statement. There’s a reason why I love this scene from the anime series Clannad After Story and it has less to do with the tone of the scene, but a major reason why anime is not just for kids or about boobs, tentacle rape and all the other things adults in the Western media dismiss the art form for.
This scene from Clannad After Story happens between the series’ main lead in Tomoya who has now come to the realization that he must now make amends to the daughter he left behind to be cared for by his wife’s family. It’s a powerful scene that has brought many to tears from young teen girls to grown-ass men who probably bawled more than the former. One doesn’t even have to have seen the previous season to this anime or any episodes leading up to this scene. The moment itself has enough of a backstory that one cannot help but get caught up in the moment. It’s also a scene that does a great job of emphasizing that bond between parent and child even when the former hasn’t lived up to their responsibilities.
I think if more people watched anime like Clannad After Story their opinions of anime would change for the better and see it in a new and positive light.
One of the films for 2012 that’s seen by many as a major player in the end of the year Awards season. Steven Spielberg’s long-delayed and gestating historical drama about Abraham Lincoln will finally make it onto the big-screen this early November. Spielberg had initially chosen Liam Neeson to play the 16th President of these United States but as the project continued to get delayed he backed out and in comes Daniel Day-Lewis to take on a very difficult role.
Lincolnis based off of Doris Kearns Goodwin’s biography of the 16th President, Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln. With Tony Kushner tasked with finally hashing out a final draft of the screenplay the film finally went into production in 2009. The cast is an ensemble led by Day-Lewis that includes several past Academy Award and Emmy winners like Tommy Lee Jones, Sally Field and Hal Holbrook with other acting luminaries like Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Walton Goggins, David Straithairn, Jared Harris and Jackie Earle Haley.
The first trailer finally arrived today, September 13, 2012, during a Google+ hangout with Spielberg and Gordon-Levitt and reaction to the trailer seems to range from “give Daniel Day-Lewis the Oscar already” to “an Oscar-bait if there was ever one”. No matter where one sat in their reaction to this trailer it will be interesting to see if Spielberg will come out with a film that doesn’t come off as maudlin and manipulative, but deliver a film that explores and tries to explain why Lincoln became such a beloved President in his time despite making so many unpopular decisions and sitting through the worst era of American history (Civil War) and decades since his death.
Here’s to hoping that the film is less like Amistadand more like Schindler’s Listin terms of tone and narrative. We know why Lincoln is seen as the greatest President we ever had. What we want to know is the why’s.
Lincoln arrives in the theaters this November 9, 2012.
It’s quit an early Thursday morning and I just thought to pick a brief but very interesting piece of AMV as the latest “AMV of the Day”.
It’s actually called a MAD video. A type of fan-made video very popular in Japan where fans take an audio clip from a favorite anime (or even a non-anime) and splice it together with piece of music and try to match the dialogue with the beats and tempo of the song. This particular MAD is by creator called fillin and take the comedic way the Bakemonogatari character of Mayoi Hachikuji always stutters the name of the series’ lead in Araragi.
The song used is the Moogle’s Theme from the Final Fantasy V soundtrack. The video pretty much works perfectly as Mayoi’s stuttering of Araragi’s name matches the tempo and melody of the song perfectly. One thing that’s clear is that this video is quite addictive to watch since it loops and plays again once it finishes. I think I watched and listened to it for almost an hour straight and would’ve continued longer if sleep hadn’t called.
I haven’t been as big a fan of Capcom’s Resident Evilsurvival horror game franchise (weird considering that zombie fiction and entertainment is like catnip to me), but the upcoming and latest entry in the series has me excited. Resident Evil 6looks to return the series to its zombie roots after spending the last two titles veering away from it.
While the gameplay still looks to be just something upgraded and tweaked from games past the story itself looks like something that I would find interesting as it moves the danger from being localized to something more global in scope. I’m really hoping that this title brings me back to the franchise which was great in the beginning then began to lose steam and ideas in it’s latest offerings.
This latest trailer takes a page out of the Halofranchise’s marketing book by making it live-action. It might be only 90 seconds but getting a glimpse of how a world reacts to the onset of a zombie apocalypse makes for a nice, brief piece of entertainment.
Resident Evil 6is set for an October 6 release for the Xbox 360, PS3 and Windows PC.
I’ve heard the collective groans from many who have achieved zombie oversaturation. For some reason the renaissance of the zombie subgenre which began during the early 2000’s continues unabated. One just has to look at the huge popularity of Robert Kirkman’s long-running horror comic book The Walking Deadright up to the even more popular tv adaptation of the comic book which now enters it’s 3rd season on AMC TV. Yet, not everything zombie-related in entertainment could be considered scary or even entertaining. If one looks at the dozens of direct-to-video which seems to come out month in and month out that barely rises above amateur production and execution one does have to feel that the subgenre should just die and go away. Then something like The Deadby the British sibling filmmakers The Ford Brothers comes along and breathes some fresh blood into the scene.
An indie film shot pretty much in northwest Africa (Burkina Faso and Ghana), The Deadis a throwback to the classic Romero zombie films before the new millennium and, even moreso, the Italian zombie films of Lucio Fulci with emphasis on Zombie. The Ford Brothers pretty much shot the film in some of the worst conditions a film crew could find itself in. It doesn’t matter whether it was the baking mid-day heat in the open plains and desert right up to the very real armed conflict which continues in the region to this very day. These two British siblings definitely took some guerilla filmmaking lessons from their hero Romero in how to stretch their tiny budget and still come out with a very good production.
The Deadis a pretty straightforward zombie film and acts more like a road film than your typical zombie story which tend to focus heavily on the siege aspect of the genre. We don’t get sieges in this film. The openness of the African plains and desert made for an interesting change of pace to the typical urban and/or countryside locales past zombie films ended up using. The film also spent so much of it’s running time in broad daylight which also made it stand out from it’s zombie film brethren which used night time as a prop to create dread and mounting terror. The Ford Brothers were able to use that very brutal heat and searing African midday sun to give the film a beautiful look but also one that highlighted it’s apocalyptic and hopeless situation. The light showed zombies shambling along from every direction, slow as they may be, in that steady, silent pace that was as inevitable as Death itself.
The story of the film is quite bare bones with the opening sequences pretty much introducing the two storylines that would intersect very early and combine to become one. There’s the lone survivor of a military evacuation flight out of the area and back to America (at least Europe) in Lt. Brian Murphy (played by Rob Freeman) whose role as a flight engineer in the doomed flight gives him the necessary technical skills to fix an abandoned vehicle he finds, but who is not what one would call a hardened soldier unlike Sgt. Daniel Dembele (played Ghana actor by Prince David Oseia) whose role as a soldier gives him the skills to protect Murphy. The two become traveling companions who must traverse the post-apocalyptic West African landscape that always have zombies, silent and sure slowly and patiently finding their way to the two no matter how fast and far they go.
Murphy wants to get back to his wife and daughter back in the States though he doesn’t know if they’re still alive or not. Daniel wants to find his son who was rescued by soldiers in the beginning of the film as their home village succumb to an attack of the dead. These similar goals become the very thing which helps the two bond together despite their cultural and ideological differences.
The film doesn’t go too heavy with the themes and ideas of Africa and zombies, but they’re there and the Ford Brothers don’t try to avoid them either. Throughout the film one could see that the film could easily be a metaphor for the birthplace of mankind also becoming the beginning of its end. There’s also the shadow of the crimes of Western colonialism and interference in a land whose people have been exploited and used like chess pieces on the grand world stage. Like some of the best zombie films, The Deaduses the apocalyptic setting and the danger of the zombies as a way to explore serious themes and ideas but do so without being too obvious or heavy-handed. In fact, the Ford Brothers actually were quite subtle with their handling of these ideas throughout the film. This made for a much more streamlined story, but also kept the film from heading into epic territory.
Freeman spends almost the whole time on the screen which stretched his performance somewhat. At times his dialogue came out natural and then on another sequence he would come off stilted. It’s not surprise that some of the best scenes Freeman’s Murphy had was when in the presence of Oseia’s Sgt. Daniel Dembele. Hiss presence on screen almost overshadows Freeman at times and one could almost wonder how much the better the film would’ve been if it was just Daniel searching for his son and no Murphy character to distract things. Oseia’s performance becomes the moral center of the film and as the story unfolded one felt like rooting for the man to find his son even though the odds on him succeeding rises with each passing minute.
The Deadis not a perfect film and one could say that it’s very straightforward nature becomes too generic and evident at certain times during the film. Yet, the rough and raw way the Ford Brothers wrote and shot the film with some very good performances from it’s cast made up for any shortcomings the film had. Even the gore effects wasn’t hampered by the minuscule budget. This film should satisfy gorehounds and story aficionados both. That’s something that most indie zombie films can’t boast about that this film can. The film’s ending leaves things somewhat open for a sequel (something the brothers are open to exploring as a future project) with the final shot evoking a “Lone Wolf and Cub” vibe before the fade to black.
The Ford Brothers’ The Deadsaw a very limited release in 2010 and 2011 but has now seen a wide DVD/Blu-Ray release for 2012. For some it would be a buy and a keeper, but at the very least it deserves a rental to see what all the hoopla was about.
I would say that the AMV producer who has shown up on this “AMV of the Day” feature the most has to be tehninjarox. His videos rarely turn out to be misses and even the ones I don’t gush over still end up being very well done. It’s no surprise that one of his latest videos was chosen to be the latest AMV profiled.
“Troll of Hearts” is one of his latest and it manages tomake use of Rick Astley’s now classic and over-memed song, “Never Gonna Give You Up”, with the harem anime series The World God Only Knows. This video manages to make the anime series’ main lead, Keima Katsuragi, come off much more committed and romantic than the series really lets on. For those saying I just spoiled the anime shouldn’t worry. The World God Only Knows is less about drama and emotional growth and more the comedic side of a young man so obsessed with dating sims game that he’s forced by Hell to use those same gaming skills to try and romance real “3D girls” instead of 2D virtual ones he seems to prefer.
I know that the Rick Astley song has become the butt of many a joke and parody video. This AMV doesn’t change yet the lyrics fit in well with how tehninjarox (aka Shin) edited the scenes from the series. If there was one thing which keeps me from making this latest AMV pick as one of my all-time favorites it would be the length of the video itself which is under 2 minutes and doesn’t make use of the song’s total running time. It’s a little nitpick really since the AMV was something done for an AMV contest that didn’t require he use the whole song. The fact that he was able to place 1st even with a truncated video just goes to show the impact the video had with those judging.
News that should make fellow site writer and contributor pantsukudasai56 very happy just came down the pipeline. According to Anime News Network the shonen series High School DxD has been given the greenlight for a second season.
While details about this second season has been, for the moment, quite sparse the fact that the season is now in production means that it’s not just a promise of one, but a guarantee that more harem hi-jinks involving the clueless Issei Hyodo and the beautiful, albeit demonic, girls of his high school. This is a series that’s definitely more about comedy than anything serious and/or thought provoking. Then again one can only survive on dramatic and deep anime for so long. Some levity needs to be mixed in with the dark and High School DxD certainly delivers in that front.
The popularity of the series (and the new season should get quite a welcome from its fans) also stems from the fact that it is a harem anime that also involves some very ecchi (fan service) moments. While this type of anime doesn’t appeal to everyone it still attracts a huge number of anime fans.
There’s no word when the new season will air, but until then I’m sure pantsukudasai56 will be anticipating ew stuff from his favorite character on the show: Koneko Toujou.
Mahou shoujo (magical girl) anime has become the bread-and-butter of the anime scene. Whether one would like to admit it or not they have watched some episode or an OVA of a magical girl anime by chance or accident. I mean if they caught reruns of Sailor Moon in the past 10 or more years then they’ve watched a magical girl anime. There’s one magical girl anime that hasn’t been getting as much attention even amongst anime watchers. It’s this mahou shoujo series that I think more people should be watching and I’m talking about Princess Tutu.
Princess Tutu is a series adapted from the manga of the same title written by Mizuo Shinonome. It’s a series that dares to do something different with the magical girl genre by relying less on violence and battles (people tend to forget that these series may be called magical girl but they’re also quite violent). The series is a sort of fairy tale but with the complex twists and turns that anime tends to layer onto something old and familiar to good effect. We have a duckling given the chance to become a human through a magical gem necklace. When in human form she resembles an awkward, sweet teen girl who reverts back to her duckling form if she quacks. Only by touching water once more can the duckling become the human girl Ahiru once more. This necklace, given to her by a sort of puppetmaster figure of the series, also allows Ahiru to take on the ballerina aspect of Princess Tutu whose mature bearing and expertise in ballet grants her special powers.
One could say that Princess Tutu only owes it’s mahou shoujo label due to the magical abilities granted to Ahiru in her Princess Tutu aspect, but other than that the series is quite different from such magical girl series like Sailor Moon, Puella Magi Madoka Magica and Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha. While the series does have conflict between the other characters around Ahiru like Mytho, Fakir and Rue the fights doesn’t use the more typical magical duels and battles common in the genre. Instead the series uses a clever way of implementing ballet and it’s use to represent fight’s between characters.
Like some magical girl series of it’s kind Princess Tutu has it’s comedic and light-hearted moments. Where the series shines is when it delves into the darker side of the narrative. Just like the traditional fables and fairy tales this series works best when letting the darkness of the story come to the forefront instead of just being hinted at. It’s definitely a turn in the series’ narrative that may surprise some people who are expecting an anime that’s all about cute character. Ahiru and the rest of the cast might be animated young-looking (with the male leads looking androgynous), but the trials and tribulations they go through during the series’ run would be considered very adult if done live-action.
Princess Tutu is actually available as a complete set on DVD and not very expensive when compared to other anime DVD sets. So, if one looks at mahou shoujo anime as their cup of tea or just looking to dabble their feet into this type of anime then Princess Tutu is a good place to start. I would usually put up a trailer of this series to better give people an idea of what to expect but I think two great AMV (anime music videos) produced by two fans of the series best describes what people should expect.
It just a littleunder 3 months before Peter Jackson takes us back to Middle-Earth with the first of three films that will make up The Hobbit trilogy.
Through the Shattered Lens 