Wednesday, September 30, 2015
The Pharonic Fantasy Theatre (2010-2015)
Welcome, internet traveler to The Pharonic Fantasy Theatre. This is a defunct blog in which you can peruse some opinions on movies, TV shows and such for your pleasure (or not). Seeing as how this is a dead blog any comments left will not be replied to. Have fun!
Out With A Bang
This is my final review, the last hurrah. This has been an interesting exercise in writing and ego but now I must go. Let us come full circle and end The Pharonic Fantasy Theatre with a review of an anime, and not just any anime but an anime film I had been waiting to see for ten years before it was finally released on DVD in the US for the first time at the beginning of the month. Will it live up to my expectations and hopes? Let's find out as I review
Yup, as you can see from the list of directors above, this is another anthology film involving Akira director Katsuhiro Otomo. You know the drill; time to go short by short.
Opening: This is a clever little bit to introduce the main title, seen above. I'm not going to give away what happens, you'll have to see it to believe it. It is cute, hilarious and deadly frightening all at the same time. Kudos!
Franken's Gears: A mad scientist tries to create life Franken-style, only with a ROBOT. Goes as well as you'd expect. This is one with no dialogue (the opening technically had dialogue but it was all in gibberish) which works fine (quite a few of the short films in Robot Carnival have little or no dialogue actually, which I can see made it ideal for importation to the West and explains its subsequent popularity on TV over here in the early 90s). This short is merely OK, nothing special but nothing putrid either.
Deprive: This is standard 80s anime fare, which is not standard for this movie. It involves a loyal robot rescuing a girl from alien invaders but the plot is meaningless as you are supposed to marvel at the action on display. I have seen enough of this type of stuff that all this short provoked from me was a ho-hum reaction. Easily the weakest segment of the film.
Presence: An inventor creates a robot girl but destroys her when she actually starts to think for herself. Years later his guilt catches up with him. Everyone else seems to love this one (it's also the longest part of the movie). I don't. The story itself is merely okay but the character designs are creepy, the animation is fluid but unnatural (something I forgot to mention by the way: most of the animation in Robot Carnival is done at a full 24 fps, which is very rare in anime) and the protagonist is not sympathetic at all. Oh well.
Star Light Angel: A girl goes to an amusement park, gets her heart broken then has an encounter with a romantic robot. This one is the opposite, people seem to hate this one the most but I actually kinda like it. It looks like an anime music video; all it needs to complete it is a J-Pop song.
Cloud: The *artsiest* short here. It's a robot boy walking in front of changing cloud formations. That's it. And yet, it becomes more than that. Subtle, meditative and beautiful, this is what anime should aspire to be every once in a while.
A Tale Of Two Robots: This is my personal favorite. Two robots, one Japanese and one European duke it out in Tokyo. Because it is the 19th Century however the results are hilarious. This one comes off as both a parody of WWII Japanese propaganda and of giant robot battles in general. It also has (in the Japanese version) the European antagonist speaking his lines in English and it alone is worth the price of admission.
Nightmare: Imagine Fantasia's "Night On Bald Mountain", only in Tokyo and with robots. It's okay but the influence is obvious. Come on, guys.
Closing: Like the beginning also cute, funny and frightening. A perfect way to end this movie.
In the end as with all anthology movies Robot Carnival is a mixed bag. Overall I would say that it is an above average effort, thanks to a few really good shorts and a consistently great level of animation. I'm glad I got it even though it wasn't the revelatory experience I was hoping for (it's not as good as Labrynth Tales or Memories). It was a fun watch. And even the failures are interesting failures (most of the time anyway). This movie represents a time back in the eighties when Japanese animators would actually experiment with stuff like this. Those days are mostly gone, although Otomo did release his newest anthology movie Short Peace only a couple of years ago and it is pretty good so there is still hope.
Well, I must now sign off and say adieu (or is it sayonara?). It has been an interesting six years, and I hope in another six I will be doing something more productive than writing movie reviews on the internet. But who knows? The future is always fluid but for now, for right now for The Pharonic Fantasy Theatre this is the
1987
Directors:
Katsuhiro Otomo
Atsuko Fukushima
Koji Morimoto
Hidetoshi Omori
Yasuomi Umetsu
Hiroyuki Kitazume
Mao Lamdo
Hiroyuki Kitakubo
Takashi Nakamura
Yup, as you can see from the list of directors above, this is another anthology film involving Akira director Katsuhiro Otomo. You know the drill; time to go short by short.
Opening: This is a clever little bit to introduce the main title, seen above. I'm not going to give away what happens, you'll have to see it to believe it. It is cute, hilarious and deadly frightening all at the same time. Kudos!
Cloud: The *artsiest* short here. It's a robot boy walking in front of changing cloud formations. That's it. And yet, it becomes more than that. Subtle, meditative and beautiful, this is what anime should aspire to be every once in a while.
Nightmare: Imagine Fantasia's "Night On Bald Mountain", only in Tokyo and with robots. It's okay but the influence is obvious. Come on, guys.Closing: Like the beginning also cute, funny and frightening. A perfect way to end this movie.
In the end as with all anthology movies Robot Carnival is a mixed bag. Overall I would say that it is an above average effort, thanks to a few really good shorts and a consistently great level of animation. I'm glad I got it even though it wasn't the revelatory experience I was hoping for (it's not as good as Labrynth Tales or Memories). It was a fun watch. And even the failures are interesting failures (most of the time anyway). This movie represents a time back in the eighties when Japanese animators would actually experiment with stuff like this. Those days are mostly gone, although Otomo did release his newest anthology movie Short Peace only a couple of years ago and it is pretty good so there is still hope.
Well, I must now sign off and say adieu (or is it sayonara?). It has been an interesting six years, and I hope in another six I will be doing something more productive than writing movie reviews on the internet. But who knows? The future is always fluid but for now, for right now for The Pharonic Fantasy Theatre this is the
Tuesday, September 29, 2015
Pain, Pain, Go Away
My personal life continues to deteriorate apace, with the universe offering promising hope and then snatching it away. The struggle is eternal. Symbolically, right now it is raining outside so hard that the frogs are trying to get inside. I kid you not.
Anywho.
This is the second to the last substantial post I am doing for this blog. Not only must I focus on other things, I've just gotten tired of writing about mere entertainment. I am weary.
Before I go though I figured I would do one more crappy list, and not a usual one. Instead of doing my Favorite Films Of All Time, I figured I'd give you two: my Most Overrated and Most Underrated Films Of All Time. And since I have always believed in getting the negative out of the way first, I'll start with the former. Please note that this does not mean that I necessarily *hate* the films in question (although a good amount of the time I do), I just feel that their reputation is undeserved.
The Most Overrated Films Of All Time:
Gone With The Wind (1939) - I *DO* hate this movie. Not only is it extremely racist and an offensive portrayal of the Old South (and keep in mind that this is coming from a white southerner), the characters are all really, really annoying and the melodrama gets old really, really fast. Why people idolize this film or the people in it as "classic" is beyond me.
Citizen Kane (1940) - This one is just overrated, and it has to be, being proclaimed by many as THE GREATEST FILM EVER MADE. Any film getting tagged with that moniker has to be at least a little overrated. Everyone oohs and ahhs over the techniques that Orson Welles employed in this, but German directors such as Friz Lang had been doing it a decade before.
The Godfather, Part II (1974) - This one is just a mess, and nowhere near as good as the original. This is the most overrated sequel of all time, actually. Splitting the film between two stories should have been a cool gimmick but just doesn't work - Coppola should have just stuck to making a prequel, as Michael's story just isn't as interesting as Vito's. Watching the young Corleone fall into evil in the first film is more dramatically captivating than watching him simply be evil in the second. And Diane Keaton's line "I HAD AN ABORTION!!!!" is so overracted ("OSCAR CLIP. OSCAR CLIP. OSCAR CLIP) that I laughed the first time I heard it. DRAMA!!
The Star Wars Series (1977-1983) - Prepare for the flamers to which I say "HA! This blog is ending soon anyway, motherfuckers! Besides, maybe I can actually get some readers before it dies!" And yes, I know it is an entire series and not one film but I had to get this off my chest. This series of space fantasy films (they are *not* science fiction) are not awful per se but neither are they great cinema... or even *fun* cinema for that matter. Give me The Thief Of Bagdad (either the 1924 or 1940 version) for pure wonder or Conan The Barbarian for pure adventure over this stuff any day. The original is just Flash Gordon meets The Hidden Fortress with bad dialogue. The Empire Strikes Back is better but tries to work in ham-handed "philosophy" along with plotholes so big that if you think about them they'll make you go mad (ex: with it's hyperdrive out, how is the Millennium Falcon able to travel from Hoth to Bespin on presumably sublight speed? It should takes years and years to get from one star system to another and yet at most the story of the film takes a few months. See why I said that these are not sci-fi?). Return of the Jedi is a commercial letdown with teddy bears and an ending so perfunctory that it's laughable. Acting in all three is abysmal to merely decent with dialogue that will make you shudder. And all of this wouldn't bother me so much except for the fact that these are some of the most revered movies of all time. Fans of these movies have basically made a religion out of them. If you admit that you don't like them prepare to be burned at the stake for heresy. Well, I guess I'm gonna burn, baby, burn because I think that they are ridiculous. And before you say "you've lost all sense of wonder and fun from your childhood!", a) I am an adult now and have moved on from most of my childish tastes and b) I devoted an entire month of this blog to a series of movies where men in rubber lizard costumes beat the shit out of each other so there. Yes, I think Godzilla is more awesome than Star Wars. Flame away.
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989) - Speaking of George Lucas.... People love this one. Me not so much. Other than Sean Connery this entry in the franchise doesn't have much going for it in the originality department. Indy fights the Nazis *again*. He searches for a biblical artifact *again*. He teams up with Sallah *again* (and don't get me wrong, I like Sallah). This combined with the fact that they made Marcus a bumbling moron and that John Williams lays on the syrup too thick in his score means that I actually prefer Temple of Doom to this one. Yeah, I just went there.
Star Trek: First Contact (1996) - See? I can do Star Trek too (but not Star Trek II... badum ching!). A lot of Trekkies love this one but to me it's just IV with ACTION instead of comedy. You have a threat in the future, the Enterprise crew has to travel to the past to fix it and all sorts of hijinks ensue with the denizens of the time period. But instead of witty banter with San Francisco marine biologists you have Captain Picard gunning down Borg with a tommy gun whilst screaming like Sam Kinison. And that's something that has bothered me about this movie since I was kid by the way: didn't Picard get over his hatred of the Borg and his desire for vengeance back in the season 5 TNG episode "I, Borg"? I know. NERD!
The Avengers (2012) - Flame On! Sorry, wrong Marvel comic. But seriously, more flames for me! The sad fact is that Joss Whedon is simply not a good director. Serenity sucked (and I would have included that movie on this list except that even a good number of Firefly fans didn't like that movie) and I have never warmed up to any of his TV shows. He can write witty dialogue but that's about it. Other than that (and some of the acting performances) this is just another superhero movie with more plotholes and contrivances than you can shake a (soul-stealing) stick at.
Interstellar (2014) - Zing! Knew I would do it!
And now on a more positive note:
The Most Underrated Films Of All Time:
All Monsters Attack (1969) - I know I said this back in 2013 for my review of it, but this movie was made for little kids. Lay off, Godzilla fans.
Moonraker (1979) - Listening to Bond fans you would think that this is called Moonraper. Come on, it's a Roger Moore Bond film, what did you expect? Turn your brain off and enjoy the ride.
Conan The Destroyer (1984) - This *is* an inferior follow up to the awesome Conan The Barbarian but it's not as bad as people would have you believe. Some of the characters and unorthodox casting are interesting to watch (Grace Jones! Wilt Chamberlain!) and there's less sex and violence than the first but this is a decent little fantasy film from the eighties. As long as you don't expect the (occasional) brilliance of its predecessor you will be alright.
Star Trek V: The Final Frontier (1989) - This one is like The Motion Picture (which I covered a while ago) in that people like to crap all over it. Could it have been better? Hell yeah. But it's still fun to watch and for all its flaws you can sense the potential in it. William Shatner is actually not that bad of a director, he should try it again sometime (stop laughing at me). Oh, and the Jerry Goldsmith score rocks. Of course.
The Star Wars Prequels (1999 - 2005) - No, these are not good movies. They have nonsensical stories and wooden acting. Buy you know what? They are not that much worse than their predecessors (let a whole new round of flaming commence!). If the kids like 'em, let them like 'em. You should be doing something to contribute positively to the human race anyway instead of telling youngsters why their entertainment sucks.
Indiana Jones and The Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull (2008) - Again, people take this shit waaaaaay too seriously. It's not that bad. I'm not even mad with the whole "nuking the fridge" thing or the space aliens. You have to laugh, because the people who had no problem with the Ark of the Covenant burning peoples' faces off and an evil cultist manually ripping hearts from chests and the Cup of Christ being able to heal bullet wounds suddenly find nuked fridges and space aliens to be "unrealistic". These are fantasy films for a reason, people. The only thing I *hate* is the fact that Shia LeBeouf is in it with predictable results (yuck).
Well, there you go. The rain has stopped in the time taken to write this. Hopefully my metaphorical rain will leave soon too. But even if it doesn't at least I can still count on one thing: some things in this life are going to be overrated by people, and some things underrated. The trick is to find what works for you and to disregard everyone else when it comes to your entertainment.
Anywho.
This is the second to the last substantial post I am doing for this blog. Not only must I focus on other things, I've just gotten tired of writing about mere entertainment. I am weary.
Before I go though I figured I would do one more crappy list, and not a usual one. Instead of doing my Favorite Films Of All Time, I figured I'd give you two: my Most Overrated and Most Underrated Films Of All Time. And since I have always believed in getting the negative out of the way first, I'll start with the former. Please note that this does not mean that I necessarily *hate* the films in question (although a good amount of the time I do), I just feel that their reputation is undeserved.
The Most Overrated Films Of All Time:
Gone With The Wind (1939) - I *DO* hate this movie. Not only is it extremely racist and an offensive portrayal of the Old South (and keep in mind that this is coming from a white southerner), the characters are all really, really annoying and the melodrama gets old really, really fast. Why people idolize this film or the people in it as "classic" is beyond me.
Citizen Kane (1940) - This one is just overrated, and it has to be, being proclaimed by many as THE GREATEST FILM EVER MADE. Any film getting tagged with that moniker has to be at least a little overrated. Everyone oohs and ahhs over the techniques that Orson Welles employed in this, but German directors such as Friz Lang had been doing it a decade before.
The Godfather, Part II (1974) - This one is just a mess, and nowhere near as good as the original. This is the most overrated sequel of all time, actually. Splitting the film between two stories should have been a cool gimmick but just doesn't work - Coppola should have just stuck to making a prequel, as Michael's story just isn't as interesting as Vito's. Watching the young Corleone fall into evil in the first film is more dramatically captivating than watching him simply be evil in the second. And Diane Keaton's line "I HAD AN ABORTION!!!!" is so overracted ("OSCAR CLIP. OSCAR CLIP. OSCAR CLIP) that I laughed the first time I heard it. DRAMA!!
The Star Wars Series (1977-1983) - Prepare for the flamers to which I say "HA! This blog is ending soon anyway, motherfuckers! Besides, maybe I can actually get some readers before it dies!" And yes, I know it is an entire series and not one film but I had to get this off my chest. This series of space fantasy films (they are *not* science fiction) are not awful per se but neither are they great cinema... or even *fun* cinema for that matter. Give me The Thief Of Bagdad (either the 1924 or 1940 version) for pure wonder or Conan The Barbarian for pure adventure over this stuff any day. The original is just Flash Gordon meets The Hidden Fortress with bad dialogue. The Empire Strikes Back is better but tries to work in ham-handed "philosophy" along with plotholes so big that if you think about them they'll make you go mad (ex: with it's hyperdrive out, how is the Millennium Falcon able to travel from Hoth to Bespin on presumably sublight speed? It should takes years and years to get from one star system to another and yet at most the story of the film takes a few months. See why I said that these are not sci-fi?). Return of the Jedi is a commercial letdown with teddy bears and an ending so perfunctory that it's laughable. Acting in all three is abysmal to merely decent with dialogue that will make you shudder. And all of this wouldn't bother me so much except for the fact that these are some of the most revered movies of all time. Fans of these movies have basically made a religion out of them. If you admit that you don't like them prepare to be burned at the stake for heresy. Well, I guess I'm gonna burn, baby, burn because I think that they are ridiculous. And before you say "you've lost all sense of wonder and fun from your childhood!", a) I am an adult now and have moved on from most of my childish tastes and b) I devoted an entire month of this blog to a series of movies where men in rubber lizard costumes beat the shit out of each other so there. Yes, I think Godzilla is more awesome than Star Wars. Flame away.
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989) - Speaking of George Lucas.... People love this one. Me not so much. Other than Sean Connery this entry in the franchise doesn't have much going for it in the originality department. Indy fights the Nazis *again*. He searches for a biblical artifact *again*. He teams up with Sallah *again* (and don't get me wrong, I like Sallah). This combined with the fact that they made Marcus a bumbling moron and that John Williams lays on the syrup too thick in his score means that I actually prefer Temple of Doom to this one. Yeah, I just went there.
Star Trek: First Contact (1996) - See? I can do Star Trek too (but not Star Trek II... badum ching!). A lot of Trekkies love this one but to me it's just IV with ACTION instead of comedy. You have a threat in the future, the Enterprise crew has to travel to the past to fix it and all sorts of hijinks ensue with the denizens of the time period. But instead of witty banter with San Francisco marine biologists you have Captain Picard gunning down Borg with a tommy gun whilst screaming like Sam Kinison. And that's something that has bothered me about this movie since I was kid by the way: didn't Picard get over his hatred of the Borg and his desire for vengeance back in the season 5 TNG episode "I, Borg"? I know. NERD!
The Avengers (2012) - Flame On! Sorry, wrong Marvel comic. But seriously, more flames for me! The sad fact is that Joss Whedon is simply not a good director. Serenity sucked (and I would have included that movie on this list except that even a good number of Firefly fans didn't like that movie) and I have never warmed up to any of his TV shows. He can write witty dialogue but that's about it. Other than that (and some of the acting performances) this is just another superhero movie with more plotholes and contrivances than you can shake a (soul-stealing) stick at.
Interstellar (2014) - Zing! Knew I would do it!
And now on a more positive note:
The Most Underrated Films Of All Time:
All Monsters Attack (1969) - I know I said this back in 2013 for my review of it, but this movie was made for little kids. Lay off, Godzilla fans.
Moonraker (1979) - Listening to Bond fans you would think that this is called Moonraper. Come on, it's a Roger Moore Bond film, what did you expect? Turn your brain off and enjoy the ride.
Conan The Destroyer (1984) - This *is* an inferior follow up to the awesome Conan The Barbarian but it's not as bad as people would have you believe. Some of the characters and unorthodox casting are interesting to watch (Grace Jones! Wilt Chamberlain!) and there's less sex and violence than the first but this is a decent little fantasy film from the eighties. As long as you don't expect the (occasional) brilliance of its predecessor you will be alright.
Star Trek V: The Final Frontier (1989) - This one is like The Motion Picture (which I covered a while ago) in that people like to crap all over it. Could it have been better? Hell yeah. But it's still fun to watch and for all its flaws you can sense the potential in it. William Shatner is actually not that bad of a director, he should try it again sometime (stop laughing at me). Oh, and the Jerry Goldsmith score rocks. Of course.
The Star Wars Prequels (1999 - 2005) - No, these are not good movies. They have nonsensical stories and wooden acting. Buy you know what? They are not that much worse than their predecessors (let a whole new round of flaming commence!). If the kids like 'em, let them like 'em. You should be doing something to contribute positively to the human race anyway instead of telling youngsters why their entertainment sucks.
Indiana Jones and The Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull (2008) - Again, people take this shit waaaaaay too seriously. It's not that bad. I'm not even mad with the whole "nuking the fridge" thing or the space aliens. You have to laugh, because the people who had no problem with the Ark of the Covenant burning peoples' faces off and an evil cultist manually ripping hearts from chests and the Cup of Christ being able to heal bullet wounds suddenly find nuked fridges and space aliens to be "unrealistic". These are fantasy films for a reason, people. The only thing I *hate* is the fact that Shia LeBeouf is in it with predictable results (yuck).
Well, there you go. The rain has stopped in the time taken to write this. Hopefully my metaphorical rain will leave soon too. But even if it doesn't at least I can still count on one thing: some things in this life are going to be overrated by people, and some things underrated. The trick is to find what works for you and to disregard everyone else when it comes to your entertainment.
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