Comment on December 2014 Media Thread

Mon, 01 Dec 2014 16:46:50 GMT

Film:

The Shining: I watched it because it was a famous classic; it's very slow-moving movie which has the pacing problem of spending what seems like half the movie establishing the basic premise and then short-changes the descent into madness, which comes off as abrupt and unconvincing. The special effects are now tame enough that they're more amusing than frightening (the blood-hallway didn't inspire any unease in me, just some wondering how they did it - a miniature set which they could flood at will?) except for the rotting woman. I also couldn't get over how strange Shelley Duvall looks, and was a little offput by the Magical Negro character. Still, the hotel is a great setting and the ending works nicely, so I'd call it a good film.

The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (2013 remake); pretty decent, albeit very little like story, and a rather shoehorned in quest/Blue Bird of Happiness which undermines original short story's protagonist by implying he was a failure before & the core dreaming was escapism

TV (putting The Wire in a separate comment due to length):

Blue Blazes

Live-action Japanese TV series, 11 half-hour episodes: quasi-autobiographical account of the manga artist Kazuhiko Shimamoto's university years as he flailed around, drew manga, and finally got a break in a magazine's contest. The mangaka himself isn't particularly notable - he did the Blazing Transfer Student manga and apparently the Anime Tenchou commercials, which are "hot blooded youth" bombastic fun heavy on sketchy art to convey intensity & drama & speed, but I had to look up his WP entry to realize that he was involved in those.

The series is heavy on exaggerated emotion and facial reactions as the protagonist lurches from extremes of high and low, and draws on cringe-humor - you're laughing at the follies of his youth, not laughing with him. Tastes will vary for this kind of humor. Personally, I find some bathos is fine, but sustained over a series is a bit too much. The romantic subplots are also a misstep as they wind up being irrelevant, and inflicting a character on us whose voice is best described as a nasal whine.

The real interest of Blue Blazes is in the otaku culture depicted; it is stuffed with cameos (Hiroyuki Yamaga is the bartender in the scene about him forgetting to breathe; Toshio Okada plays Osamu Tezuka after Daicon; several manga editors have small parts), allusions and in-jokes, many of which I didn't even get (the episode intros are based on kyodai hero poses from Ultraman & other franchises, but I've never seen enough of them to recognize them) but some of which were hysterical (to me) - the manga club character dominates every scene he is in, eg after crushing the protagonist's dreams by critiquing his draft, remarks "One does not care to recall the mistakes of youth!" and rides away on his pink bicycle, declaring, "it's three times as fast!" (Char Aznable/Mobile Suit Gundam). In particular, I was surprised to learn that he had gone to the same university at the same time with some of the founders of Gainax, and it is depicting Hideaki Anno, Hiroyuki Yamaga, and the run-up to the DAICON films where it shines for me as it gives another perspective on early Gainax beyond The Notenki Memoirs. He apparently competed with them but was crushed; eg ep3 has Anno doing the Gendo pose after crushing everyone in animation (as expected from the master!). The character sketches are dead-on: when a room-mate's sister visits and Anno learns she has not seen Mobile Suit Gundam and shows his hospitality by marathoning 12 episodes with her, one senses this is something that really happened and which his friends have never let him live it down. Other incidents are interestingly reflective of the times: getting a new VCR to allow stepping through home-videos of animated series frame by frame, to better understand them; visiting an animation supply shop just to watch a loop of anime series intros on their TV; passing out slowly and dramatically, imitating a tokusatsu; re-enacting a sea fight in the baths. The student films shown seem to either be the originals or shot-by-shot remakes. Other aspects are... odd. If episode 8 is remotely accurate, Toshio Okada was crazier than a bag of honey-roasted peanuts and his nouveau-riche family (with terrible decorating taste) made their money off blatantly counterfeiting money, which undermines my generally positive impression of him.

Overall: a must-watch for anyone interested in Gainax; probably a good watch for anyone who liked Bakuman or Genshiken; maybe a watch for anime fans; probably better skipped by anyone else.

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