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Naturally the internet naysayers are out in force already, but this looks pretty good to me, sticking, as it seems to do, to the spirit of the original tale. Love the beanstalk!

The story’s most-notable previous cinematic re-telling was Jack the Giant Killer (US-1962; dir. Nathan Duran), which featured 60s “historical hero” Kerwin Mathews (who had become well-known thanks to the 1958 classic The 7th Voyage of Sinbad) and the stop-motion work of an assortment of animators, most notably the uncredited Jim Danforth.

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The film still has undeniable charm, but was never one of the great stop-motion classics, despite the power of nostalgia to evoke negative online comparisons with the as-yet-unseen 2012 CGI-based remake.

• Written by Robert Hood

Source: Quiet Earth via Avery Guerra

Giant squids/octopi — along with their soul-mates, the sea-serpent — are frequent visitors to the pages of ship logs and newspapers throughout the ages. They crop up in the indices of weird-shit books and magazines with a sort of casual inevitability that must be the envy of celebrities everywhere.

Source: Pierre Denys de Montfort (1810) reproduced in R. Ellis (1994), Monsters of the Sea. Robert Hale Ltd. — via wikipedia.

Sometimes the really big ones are identified as the legendary “Kraken”, star of Pirates of the Caribbean 2: Dead Man’s Chest (US-2006; dir.  Gore Verbinski) — though the visualisations of the Kraken in Clash of the Titans (US-2010; dir. Louis Leterrier) and indeed Ray Harryhausen’s version in the original 1981 film weren’t overly squid-like, apart from the tentacles. Still, it’s all grist for the fantasy mill, scientific accuracy or not.

Apart from the above mentioned, famous giant squids/octopi from the cinema include the nameless beastie from various renditions of Jules Verne’s 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (in particular, the 1954 version directed by Richard Fleischer and starring Kirk Douglas as Ned and James Mason as the infamous misanthrope Captain Nemo), Ray Harryhausen’s tentacle-deprived Really Big Octopus from It Came From Beneath the Sea (US-1955; dir. Robert Gordon), the Whatever-It-Is from Deep Rising (US-1998; dir. Stephen Sommers) and the co-star of the recent “classic” Mega Shark vs Giant Octopus (US-2009; dir. Jack Perez/Ace Hannah).

Early book illustration of “The Scene” from Verne’s 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea

Then there’s the whole Lovecraftian tentacle-fest known as the Cthulhu mythos — but we won’t go there though if you’re interested you could go check out this Undead Backbrain article).

What this is all about is just my typically roundabout way of introducing you to a new giant squid movie. This one’s a short animated film called Giant Squid, directed by Maxwell O. Perry and released by Dimly Lit Films.

Created in the “limited animation” style of South Park, it tells the tale of a very nasty and very big squid and the poor sods who hunt it.

Synopsis:

When Elise’s boyfriend is abducted by a giant green killer squid in the Atlantic Ocean, she enlists the help of a marine biologist and a drunken squid poacher to track the squid before it is too late … but the squid has other plans.

Giant Squid has everything you need in a giant squid movie. This includes:

1. A large green squid:

2. Beautiful women:

3. Gore in abundance:

4. A beautiful woman in a bikini covered in blood:

5. An attractive female scientist complete with lab coat and glasses:

6. A expository scene delivered by the attractive female scientist:

8. A panicking naval commander:

6. A crusty old sea-dog who’s the only one that knows how to deal with the Squid:

7. A climactic scene where the giant squid trashes stuff:

8. A concluding scene (But who will prevail?)

Anyway, check out the trailer below:

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Giant Squid will be playing in the 1pm Matinee Block of films on Saturday 23 July (between films from South Korea and India) at the 15 Minutes of Fame Film Festival in Palm Bay, FL. For those in the general vicinity of Florida, the Festival takes place at the Palm Bay Dollar Movies at 160 Malabar Rd. Tickets are $2.00 each. Bargain!

Meanwhile there are some “Making of” videos that you can watch starting here.

Source: Dimly Lit website; Facebook page; YouTube Channel. Via Avery Guerra. Written by Robert Hood

Reviewed by Robert Hood

Mecha is one of the most popular sub-categories of anime and has produced some of the best and longest-running animated sci-fi series ever. Though quintessentially Japanese when considered in terms of this genre, mecha’s tropes and central characteristics have also been adapted across cultural borders. Godaizer, a luminous, 18-minute animated film made by an independent creator, comes from Singapore. Producer/director Yeo plays upon the genre’s Japanese heritage in many different ways, not just via signage.

Godaizer is not the kind of frenetic anime that is all action and noise, certainly during its opening third. In some ways it is more suggestive of Miyazaki’s cinematic style (not so much visually as in general ambiance). Its opening sequence, showing the start of what is obviously another typical day, is slow and contemplative, as the youthful main character, awoken by a bedside clock, looks out upon the morning and the chooks, pushes open rusting gates and then pulls switches to start up the vast repair shop in which he lives. The roof slides back to let in the sun, service gates grind open and lights come on.

A wealth of information, both situational and emotional, is conveyed in this initial sequence, all without words. As the boy shuffles through a vast workshop, we see that it is full of large robots of various kinds, from toy-like to militarist: a virtual history of giant robot design. This robot construction and repair shop has clearly seen better days, however, and its staff – the boy and an old man he finds asleep under one of the machines – are to an extent just going through the motions. The glory days are past.

Mecha anime features huge robots created for military purposes and most typically controlled by youthful pilots. Sometimes the relationship between human and machine is simply that of pilot and aircraft. But the nature of the bond can also be metaphysical, as in Neon Genesis Evangelion, or based on deliberate physical and mental imprinting. Often, the particular human pilot is the only one able to effectively control the giant machine.

In Godaizer, it becomes clear that the boy is the pilot of the workshop’s ultimate robot – the largest most impressive in the building – and to do so effectively, mental discipline is required. But both he and his robot have seen little action for some time and the air of ennui he exudes resembles a “holding pattern”. Yeo gives us a glimpse into the past through the simple device of a wall covered in newspaper clippings and a photograph of a youthful pilot and his family – clearly the boy’s father with wife and young son. The implied tragedy is never elaborated upon. However, the emotional significance is clear. Can the boy live up to the past and the expectations of his grandfather? Will he be given a chance to do so?

As a genre, mecha crosses over into daikaiju (or “giant monster”) territory, as the giant machine becomes Earth’s only effective defense against monstrous giants and gargantuan alien invaders. In the 70s and 80s in particular several television series tried to exploit the immense popularity of Ultraman by taking this approach, as in, for example, the 1972 series Iron King. Such is also the case in Godaizer. After the opening sequence, the film cuts to a modern scientific laboratory just as an experiment is taking place. As a result of the experiment a huge creature awakens and breaks out of its confinement, heading off to engage in the kind of rampage through city streets and countryside that Godzilla and his friends made famous. So our young protagonist is required to don the uniform and put aside self-doubts to face the challenge.

Godaizer embraces the dynamics of daikaiju conflict as thoroughly as it exploits the tropes of the human/machine dynamic lying at the heart of the genre. It is a superb work of animation – lacking the “clean” lines of both traditional cel animation and modern CG imaging, but replacing them with a luminous, painterly quality that emphasises brush strokes and texture. It comes over as an animated painting, beautifully rendered, colours vibrant and surfaces finely textured. This enhances the story, what there is of it, very effectively indeed. In some ways, this artistic execution is more important than the plot.

A mecha/daikaiju classic in miniature, Godaizer may be short, but what it lacks in direct narrative complexity it makes up for in attention to suggestive detail. Everything is there, conveyed through beautifully rendered visuals (by Ray Toh), an artist’s attention to emotional detail, and an effective soundtrack that may be wordless but is not lacking in suggestiveness. The film is truly cinematic in the sense that it is the imagery and the atmosphere created by the art and the sound effects that carry the narrative and emotional meaning — by implication rather than through dialogue. Though it doesn’t exactly work like a film from the early silent era, it has adopted the visual essence that is the soul of cinema – and the result is both entertaining and accurate to its genre.

See it when it comes to a festival near you – or when it appears on DVD. You won’t regret it.

• Film website: www.godaizer.com

Laputa: Castle in the Sky

Reviewed by Robert Hood

There is a distinctly steampunk — or perhaps more accurately retro, post-Industrial — aesthetic  to Hayao Miyazaki’s typically luminous fantasy anime, Laputa: Castle in the Sky. Technological imagery combines with more fantastical elements to create the sort of magical ambiance  quintessential to Miyazaki’s grandmaster status in the field of animation. Though science fiction in general appearance, replete with flying machines, robots and advanced, if ancient, technology, much of the film feels like magic. The combination makes for a wonderful two-hours of family entertainment — profound simplicity, darkness wrapped in auras of light.

After an opening scene in which a young girl (Sheeta) falls from a huge dirigible while trying to escape both a mysterious enemy and air-pirates, the action shifts to Pazu, an engineer’s apprentice at work in a vast mining construct, clearly well past its prime. He sees the young girl not so much falling as floating down from the sky, apparently carried to safety by the glowing pendant she wears around her neck. He catches her in his arms.

This encounter is the beginning of an adventurous journey that involves spectacular chase scenes, pseudo-fascist troops, air battles, puzzles to be solved — and a mythical flying castle that is what remains of an ancient civilisation whose power had been vast but has long since been lost to ground-dwelling humanity. Many seek the source of that power, however, and Pazu must not only help Sheeta escape them, but also unravel the mystery of who she is and how she is connected to Laputa.

Though the sinister pirates convincingly turn into eccentric comrades during the unravelling of the narrative,  and the overall tone of the film is one of well-meaning optimism, there is a dark and melancholy undercurrent as well. It is this that creates the film’s complexity and gives an effective texture to the story. If nothing else, evidence of human civilisation here is in various stages of decay — from the mining township of Slag Ravine, which appears to be living under the shadow of economic decline, to Laputa itself, which is the last evidence of an advanced civilisation that has now all but disappeared. Parts of it are overgrown, crumbling, with only the natural reserves — kept up by a strange and strangely endearing robotic ecologist — surviving to the end. In that end the island in the sky becomes more or less a huge tree (the Tree of Life?), with the debris of greatness entangled in its roots — a significant symbol of the continuity of the natural world and the ephemeral nature of humanity’s creations, no matter how magnificent.

This new Blu-ray edition of Laputa: Castle in the Sky is absolutely beautiful, evidence, if any were needed, that traditional cel animation can stand up to scrutiny against CGI and in some areas perhaps even surpass it. Apparently 69,262 traditional “cels” and 381 colors were needed to give Laputa its radiant splendor, and there is no stinting on the quality of the animation itself. The luminosity of this transfer to Blu-ray has to be the best the film has ever looked and is more than worthy of this great work of animated cinema.

If you love Miyazaki’s work, you will need to upgrade to this edition, which you can watch with its original Japanese soundtrack or with an effective English dub. If you don’t love Miyazaki’s work… what’s your problem?

Laputa: Castle in the Sky is released on DVD and on Blu-ray by Madman Entertainment.

Reviewed by Robert Hood

Anyone who knows anything about anime knows Ghost in the Shell. Based on the classic manga of Masamune Shirow, Ghost in the Shell was a stunning work of SF animation in 1995 and, I’m happy to say, remains so now. It visualized and enhanced the cyberpunk aesthetic of writers such as William Gibson in his Sprawl trilogy, and directly influenced such important live-action SF as The Matrix, spawning a franchise that includes two more films (Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence and Ghost in the Shell: S.A.C. Solid State Society) and two television series (Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex and Ghost in the Shell: S.A.C. 2nd GIG). All of them are worth seeing.

Read the rest of this review on Robot War Espresso.

But before I give you the details, read the Backbrain’s review of Evangelion 1.11: You Are (Not) Alone (Japan-2007; dir. Masayuki Yamaguchi, Kazuya Tsurumaki and Hideaki Anno) here.

Have you read it?

Good.

The Details:

To win a copy of this Madman Blu-ray edition of Evangelion 1.11: You Are (Not) Alone, simply send your name and postal address to: backbrain@gmail.com. Put the words EVANGELION BLU-RAY in the subject header. The only proviso is that you must live in Australia. Oh, and you can only enter once. One week from now all entries received will go into the draw and I will get my cat Pazuzu to randomly pick a winner from the box. He’s become quite good at it and hardly ever cheats. The prize comes courtesy of Madman Entertainment.

Go for it!

Blu-ray edition reviewed by Robert Hood

Giant robots (known as mecha) and giant monsters (known as daikaiju): two of the most iconic elements of Japanese fantasy cinema. Evangelion 1.11: You Are (Not) Alone mingles the two to surprising and indeed complex effect.

When Neon Genesis Evangelion came on the scene back in 1995/1996, it proved to be a massive success, both as a 26-episode TV series written and directed by Hideaki Anno and as a “supporting” manga by Yoshiyuki Sadamoto. A remarkable work that profoundly influenced anime as a genre, it became compulsive viewing for many — as well as a lifetime obsession for Hideaki Anno, its primary creator. It has since been built upon, extended, re-worked … and yet never completely finished. Anno (in conjunction with others) has taken several shots at the ending, which, in the original series, was so metaphysical and abstract as to be well-nigh impenetrable — fascinating and suggestive without a doubt, and giving rise to interesting speculation, but slightly unsatisfying as well, with animation that was reduced to a series of static and surreal images by budgetary restraints. The show’s subsequent popularity allowed its creator to re-edit the penultimate episodes into Neon Genesis Evangelion: Death and then to re-do the ending in a less narratively opaque manner in Neon Genesis Evangelion: Re-Birth, and again, later, as The End of Evangelion – an alternate view of how the events played out. Yet still Anno’s ambition for the franchise remained incomplete.

In 2006 Gainax (the show’s production company) announced the coming of an animated film series referred to as Rebuild of Evangelion. It would be a four-film remake of the anime series, intended to finally fulfill Anno’s ambition for it — something he could not realise with the meagre budget and technology of the time. The animation would be upgraded according to modern technological advances and the story edited into a more cinematic narrative structure. The first two of these films have been completed: Evangelion 1.0: You Are (Not) Alone (aka Evangerion shin gekijôban: Jo; 2007) and Evangelion 2.0: You Can (Not) Advance (aka Evangerion shin gekijôban: Ha; 2009). Evangelion 1.0: You Are (Not) Alone achieved the distinction of being 4th highest grossing anime film at the Japanese box office during 2007, and then went to DVD and further success, though the latter version was subsequently tweaked after complaints about overly dark scenes and various technical glitches. This led Anno to release Evangelion 1.11: You Are (Not) Alone, which has now arrived on Blu-ray, with colour-correction, contrast fixes and the insertion of new footage. It would be easy to describe the result as a masterpiece if the original show itself hadn’t already appropriated that status.

In essence the story of Shinji Ikari is that of a boy, his father and a “squad” of hybrid robots — classic Japanese mecha — though that description nowhere near does it justice. It’s what Anno has done to the standard tropes of the mecha subgenre that makes the franchise so distinctive. Metaphysical nuancing, psychoanalytic examination of human relationships, political intrigue and narrative complexities abound, as a group of teenagers — born in the aftermath of the near-apocalyptic “Second Impact” (part of a complex back-story that only gradually reveals itself) — are revealed to be the only ones capable of piloting huge humanoid mechanisms, Evangelions or Evas, ostensibly built by the mysterious para-military organization NERV to fight a string of monstrous creatures known as “Angels”. These “Angels” arrive one after the other — bizarre in appearance and apparently malicious in intent, threatening a devastating “Third Impact” and the destruction of humanity. The narrative uses this framework to weave a complex set of themes that range from personal issues of depression and alienation to the nature of existence itself.

The Blu-ray of Evangelion 1.11: You Are (Not) Alone is a wonder to behold. Rich in colour and detail, it has a powerful soundscape, flowing animation and stunning imagery – a mingling of traditional cel-animation and CGI that works beautifully. It comes with the original Japanese soundtrack (featuring excellent voice actors whose interpretation of the characters is definitive), clear and readable English subtitles, and an English-language dub option. Some decent extras (including the 1.0 version) and a 20-page booklet complete the package.

Despite being criticized as a “dumbing-down” of the first six episodes of the series, Evangelion 1.11: You Are (Not) Alone remains a complex, metaphorically rich work that plays well in its own right. Dramatically it is more coherent than the original, though some depth may be lost through the tightening of events and the loss of story detail. Nevertheless this remake is a stunning upgrade of the earlier material. Visually it is rich and dynamic; narratively it remains exciting, intellectually challenging and emotionally involving. Though much is left unanswered by the end of this first film, it should be obvious even to the uninitiated that there are many aspects of the plot and the mysteries surrounding NERV, the Evas, the Angels, the teenage pilots and the connections between them left to be unraveled, and that subsequent films are likely to be doing just that. It isn’t a matter of there being no answers (as those who have seen the original Neon Genesis Evangelion would realize); simply that gaining those answers is the whole point of the series. In fact, the “re-build” should not be seen as replacing the original show, but as part of an ongoing dialogue between Anno and his vision – and a rebuild that can be easily appreciated by those unfamiliar with Neon Genesis Evangelion and its developmental history. One way or another, this is a must for anyone interested in anime or indeed in involving, intelligent SF/fantasy cinema.

Evangelion 1.11: You Are (Not) Alone is available in Australia on Blu-ray (and on standard DVD) through Madman Entertainment.

Spectacular, isn’t it? These are some of the monsters that feature in the Ultraman franchise, one of two paintings by Toshio Okazaki published in Shōgakukan’s 1979 edition of Ultra Kaiju (Shōgakukan Nyūmon Hyakka Series #97) (Source: Pink Tentacle)

I have to say that the various Ultraman series fascinate me. They should fascinate you, too. Sure, there are many reasons why you might be scornful or dismissive, but there are plenty more that suggest that the Ultraman phenomenon has much greater depth and power than you might have realised.

Go to the Monster Awareness Month website now, where you can see the other one of Okazaki’s paintings and read some of my thoughts on the Japanese superhero/daikaiju spectacle that is Ultraman — a franchise that has survived since the 1960s and is still evolving and feeding the box office in its native land. Arguably more popular than Godzilla, and certainly more undying on Japanese TV and in cinemas than the King of the Monsters has proven to be, it offers one thing at least that should attract readers of Undead Backbrain: really weird monsters. Lots of them.

I love it. If you want to know why, go read the article “Reveling in Absurdity: The Monsters of Ultraman”.

You can follow up by reading Ruth Merriam’s excellent appreciation of Ray Harryhausen’s Jason and the Argonauts (1963).

Source: Hollywood Reporter via Stan Hyde