Disagree (duh), agree (haven’t seen it since it was new though), disagree!

So I could blather on about Appleseed, but in short: the faces of the characters were too artificial, the story was very superficial and I actually like the 1988 version better. In fact I even rate it higher than Ghost In The Shell, which I think is extremely overrated.

I can understand the “too artificial” debate about the characters look, but really, it still looks great. Cellshading was never meant to look realistic, it a stylised CG interpitation of a manga. The plot is alot more thought out and interesting the other orginial 1988 film with a much better storyline. Shirow overviewed the production of this film, and it fits all more to the orginial manga that he wrote because if it. I don’t believe that it’s “very superficial”, but more of an action story than say Ghost in the Shell. As I said on the podcast, there is more in this world than meets the eye, and hopefully this film will setup a great sequel.

Ghost in the Shell is one of my faviourte franchises… so I think I will leave my comments for a future podcast on all things Shirow.

these podcasts are getting smuttier and smuttier, but luckily funnier and funnier, I’m glad you guys decided to get this sign-up thing cooking, I fucking hate spammers more than anything, absolute scum.

Not wanting to gang-up on Henrik, but I have to agree with you’re guys views on Napoleon Dynamite, I really wanted to like it a lot more than i did, but it bored me slightly, and a lot of the stuff just missed the mark with me. I didn’t hate it with as much passion as the coolshiteres did but I really couldn’t understand why this movie was so hyped by everyone, and when I came to watch it I wasn’t sure if I was missing something.

Went to see Downfall last night, amazing, amazing film, all about the end of the 2nd world war, such a heavy film (not a date movie I might add) with some incredible acting. Coming out of germany means this film is all the more brave. One of only two films i’ve ever been in when people clapped at the end(the other being return of the king)

also watched tatoo (the german se7en supposedly, It was less than i hoped, very ‘film school’ lots of pointless arty shots, lacking pace) when i got home, so I had a day of watching germans get killed, In retrospect I should have watched something else….. a cheech and chong movie or something….

anyway…

I have the dvd of appleseed but haven’t got round to watching it yet, but off the back of you’re review I’m gonna check it out tonight.

have any of you guys watched the new ghost in the shell movie yet?

I rewatched the movie and both series last week and geekgasmed everywhere….. somethings you can watch time and time again and they never get tired… spaced is that for me

Thanks for the shout out.

To save Bruce the effort of posting my comment from the email I’ll do it myself here with a few edits.

I’d say I mostly agree with your views on Napolean Dynamite. I saw it on the back of some pretty vague publicity and it was not what I was expecting. From the trailers and mentions I had seen I got the impression it would be a classic geek makes good type movie. But the characters (pretty much all of them) struck me not so much as geeks than mentally subnormal. The editing was pretty poor and over all it had the feel of a number of funny ideas that had been strung into a movie. That said I found it very funny. Some of it’s shortcomings are explained, though not excused, when reading the trivia notes for it on IMDB.
It’s released here in th U.K. today and I’m not ashamed to say my copy should be falling the letter box any time soon.

I’ll have to get hold of They Live as I only saw it once on T.V. many years ago.

I too have the 1988 Appleseed and remember it being not as cool as my more youthful self had hoped. Dominion Tank Police, on the other hand, kicks ‘em in the cutlery and laughs at the tears.

On the subject of Spaced I agree with Tom. It rocks. I remember watching it when first broadcast and loving it. The number of movie and T.V. refernces - even down to 20-year-old public information broadcasts - in those to series is incredible.
Dubious and frankly abysmal claim to fame - I worked with a girl who as a child had her hair cut by Simon Pegg’s Mum and she also once gave him a valentines card.
Also my fiancee and I were going to be extras in Shaun Of The Dead but due to the complexities of a property purchase were ultimately unavailable on the day of filming.

Annoyingly Spaced (on DVD) has recently fallen victim to the criminal trend of re-releases with extra features. I bought each series as they became available and the content on the discs was damn good even then. They were then released as a double pack. Then that was repacked with a Matrix style cover (due to new Matrix movie and the homage in S2E1). Now they have been re-released in a 3-disk set with Star Wars style cover art and a disk full of further bonuses. It kind of pisses me off.
Any views on the constant re-packaging/editing/formatting/releasing of the same movies? I wonder if Predator II would have had a special re-release were it not for AVP?

Rant over. I’ll write less next time.

The very masculine,
Jules Allen.
p.s. Bruce - I am brunette and my arse is to die for.

Yeah I hate them re-releasing dvd’s, I don’t mind when they release new amazing Special editions, but when the differences are minimal (as they are in the case of the spaced dvds) it really bugs me, especially becuase i’m weak, and will probably end up buying the new dvd

Hey also, weird coincidence….. well not really….nerd circles are small…… but I was sposed to be an extra on shaun of the dead aswell, but had a job interview the same day and had to call it off….

to be a zombie extra is still a dream unfufilled.

Incase anyone is wondering….. They Live has a good release on UK R2 dvd (with a nice commentary track by carpenter and rowdy) I have it, it rules, and it’s cheap as hell now….. you can grab it on some R2 dvd site for like £5…..

**shrinks back into his nerdy dvd shell**

Henrik….. we finally agree on something…. much respect man

or something like that.

Spaced should never be overlooked. I think the C-Shites have seen some of it, I’m sure I saw it mentioned somewhere in the site.

To get an idea of what we (the royal We) judge the worthiness of a film against, I’d say the scale goes like this:

Cool: Shaun of the Dead…………………………………………………….Shite: House of the Dead

It’s kind of like the Love/Fear life line from Donnie Darko but a lot dorkier.

I have intentions to re-watch Shaun of the Dead sometime soon with a stunningly hot chickybabe, chakka wow wow wakka wakka, oh yeaah. Incidentally, I had her over to watch American Psycho a few weeks ago too. She loved it! I maintain that it’s one of the best date movies ever.

Best line from Spaced so far (in the comic shop)…

“Oi!”
“What”
“Babylon 5 is shit!”
“Get out!”

Hmm, taken out of context it just looks stupid. Well, you all know what I mean!

I can’t detatch myself from the animation style, It’s the designer in me..
my point of reference when at the animation of anime is always the bike chases from AKIRA…. and still, even today, CG et all, nothing comes close in my opinion.

R.E Spaced……

my favourite visual gag is mike eating the instant coffee from the can when they break into the comic headquarters….. “mike….. leave ittt”

I could watch spaced all day and be happy.

Has anyone read anything more about edgar wright adapting ’scott pilgrim’s precious little life’ … or the new pegg/frost project ‘Hot fuzz’?

Shaun of the Dead sucked…. joke.

We will review that too… jezz our list is getting big.

I’m a big The Thing fan. I’ve watched the shit out of that movie. I almost always pull out my Thing when I meet someone new. They are invariably impressed by the size… of my collection.

but shaun of the dead was one of the films that really kicked the cool shite into gear, we all loved the shit out of it and praised it (rightly so) as the kind of movie that we should be watching and more people should be making.. and the fact that someone said i looked like simon Pegg was also a dubious compliment…

Spaced i need to go through again, i tried to watch it and got a bit lost on my own but i’ll get it back from my mate soon… season one that it.

the thing rocked a lot.

appleseed, yeah can’t argue, the faces were odd, but i didn’t care it was all too cool. and pretty , though confusing to a simple boy like me.

and i personally didn’t go much on ghost in the shell either… pretty but where was the story? i can still remeber the plot to dominion and Akira, even winds of amnesia ten years on, but two days after i had watched ghost i couldn’t tell you what it was about. see i am one of those crazy fools who likes content… not just pretty, thats why casshern was such a disappointment.

anyway, good to have the feedback and some new voices too, thats very cool.

see y’all soon Q Dog

I’m confused. Or maybe you are?

ok bruce mate, maybe i’m wrong but i watched ghost in the shell and came away thinking… WTF? of course i watched the film once nearly eight or so years ago… i didn’t get it and was a bit confused and or bored… just personal preference but the only anime that has actually engrossed me in the last five years has been trigun and cowboy bebop. pretty much everything else has left me cold. i think a part of me is just basically (opposed is to strong a word) to the japanese way of storytelling. maybe i need to retrain… i dunno.

the dog.

I ain’t buying into this debate, yet.. I really can’t be fucked typing that much. A death-match-eque podcast will need to be done… BRING IT BITCHES!

hehe