"And day breaks, and the night bird calls out."

"Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence" (feature)
Dir: Mamoru Oshii
Produced: Toshio Suzuki (Studio Ghibli)
Premier: 2004
Viewed: 4/3/09
Comment: The film was finally given a decent DVD release since Dreamworks' gaffe back in 2005. A lot of this blog is a reference to "GitS" in one form or another. It happens to be one of my all-time favorite animated franchises. It's heavily influenced by films like "Blade Runner". I saw this dubbed, and was glad I did. During the theatrical release, I was too busy reading the heavy and layered script at the bottom to notice the famous visuals. I didn't even recognize half of the shots... The English voice cast was the same from the rest of the franchise, which I consider a personal favor.

And now for some name-dropping! As it turns out, Steven Speilberg aquired the rights to the franchise for live-action. I should've known from the Dreamworks release, but I'm glad things worked out that way. Especially after seeing "Minority report" and "A.I.".

Ugetsu

"Ugetsu" (feature)
Dir: Kenji Mizoguchi
Premier: 1953
Viewed: 2/23/09
Review: I learned a great many cinematic tricks while watching this film. Theres a wierd principle in film making where if you take an element from live-action, rip it off deliberately and post it in animation, it's considered a reference and adds color to a film. And the door swings both ways. I watched Resevoir Dogs in the AAU DVD lounge and was surprised to see references to Fantastic 4 as well as references to animation. The crossover wakes the viewers up, and calls their attention. But if you steal a sequence from Jungle Book and post it in your own animation, you're called a hack and rightfully so. But I digress.

I've seen Tantino use veeeeeeeery long takes. I feel that idea was taken from films like this one, where the actor is charged with a large monologue and must perform for unusually long takes. I also liked the use of ghosts to further the story. Japanese ghosts tend to not be superficially scary like in American horror. They tend to be more cerebrally scary, teaching life lessons through brutalo and terrifying honesty. The film used cheap editing and set tricks to seamlessly pass the viewer between the human world and the spirit world.