Steven Spielberg | Through the Shattered Lens

This week we saw news that the potential live-action Battle Angel Alita was one-step closer to becoming reality as script collaborator Laeta Kalogridis was working on a draft for James Cameron. Now comes more news of another manga classic getting closer to getting it’s own live-action adaptation being made with her about to turn in a script in a few weeks. This classic manga is Ghos in the Shell.

Masamune Shirow’s Ghost in the Shell has always been one of those manga/anime works which has continued to gain fans despite all the new anime/manga properties churned out in the dozens every year in Japan. It, like Katsuhiro Otomo’s Akira, has become one of the classics in the medium and plans to create a live-action version has been rumored and talked about for over a decade. With hollywood hungry for new properties and ideas to put on film they’ve suddenly turned to the Japanese manga and anime well for such ideas.

The rights to develop a live-action adaptation of GitS was acquired by Dreamworks a couple years ago with Steven Spielberg being the main engine to get the project up and running. In a couple weeks we’ll find out just how feasible this adaptation will be as the script by Laeta Kalogridis will be delivered to Dreamworks and Spielberg. If they like what they see of Kalogridis’ work then production can quickly begin as a planned 2011 release is still on the table. As a blowback to the success of Cameron’s Avatar, it looks like Dreamworks plans to have the film done in 3D right from the start and not something tacked on after production. If this is the case then Spielberg gets it when it comes to 3D and exactly how Cameron thinks 3D should be used.

I wonder if the oft-rumored and planned Akira live-action will get new traction and finally get made. That’s another anime/manga live-adaptation that will probably look great in 3D.

Source: Anime News Network

HBO’s 10-part mini-series in 2001 adapting historian Stephen Ambrose’s best-selling book, Band of Brothers, was a hit and success with both critics and the general audiences. The book and the series detailed the life of members of Easy Company of the 2nd Battalion, 506th Regiment of the 101st Airborne Division during it’s campaign. A campaign which first began during training in Toccoa, Georgia then moving on to the Allied training in the UK before participating in some of the bloodiest battles of the Allied Western Front Campaign: Normandy, Operation Market Garden, Battle of Bastogne and finally the taking of Berchtesgarden and Hitler’s Eagle’s Nest.

The mini-series was known for it’s historical accuracy and attention to battlefield detail. Band of Brothers owes much of its visual and film-style to Stephen Spielberg’s (he was one of it’s exec. producers with Tom Hanks being another) WWII epic, Saving Private Ryan. The heavily washed-out color stock gave the series an almost black-and-white quality with just the sudden splashes of color like red and orange to highlight blood and fire. When it came to the battles the series set the bar quite high with Ridley Scott’s Black Hawk Down and Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan being the only two to match it in technical mastery.

The series has become a yearly staple comes Memorial and Veteran’s Day in the US. I could always wake-up on those two holidays, turn on The History Channel and see a Band of Brothers marathon. Easter has it’s DeMille The Ten Commandments and these two holidays celebrating the sacrifices of soldiers, living and dead, have their BoB.

It’s now 2010, HBO Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks go for round two with another 10-part WW2 mini-series simply titled, The Pacific. This second series will move from the European Theater of Operations over to the Pacific. Like the first mini-series, The Pacific will tell the story of the war from the eyes of a couple men on the ground. This time the men are Marines of the 1st Marine Division and through the eyes of some of these men we see WW2 fought in the Pacific and despite being fought in the same war it distinguishes itself for it’s sheer brutality. Audiences will learn such hallowed names such as Guadalcanal, Peleliu and Okinawa.

So, March 2010 people who enjoyed Band of Brothers should definitely tune in to HBO and watch it’s bookend series: The Pacific.

The Pacific Trailer