About time for another catch-up of upcoming movies of interest (to me anyway, I know no-one else reads this).

JJ Abrams new "secret" project -"Super8".  This is being virally marketed much the same way that Cloverfield was.
Only a teaser so far but looks interesting at least:




Fresh insanity from Japan, for an upcoming animated TV show called "CatShitOne".  Based on a Manga series called "Apocalypse Meow", it's basically a war movie with cute animals representing different countries.  There is more details on the Wikipedia page




Very excited about this next one.  It's Luc Besson's latest project "Les Aventures Extraordinaires D'Adèle Blanc-Sec", and looks like a female Steampunk Indiana Jones, with dinosaurs.  It's French, but the trailer is subtitled.  Personally I think this looks amazing:

Next is George Clooney's latest "The American".  Clooney is one of my consistent favourite actors, he really has that "old Hollywood" charm about his work and this is no exception as it feels very much like something from late 60s / early 70s in tone and style.  Sign me up for this one:




I know next to nothing about The Green Hornet, except for the Bruce Lee conection to the old TV series.  Main draw for this is the director, Michel Gondry, who was responsible for Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and a number of amazing music videos.  There are a couple of flashes of his trademark camera tricks here, and the trailer looks quite good fun, but we'll see:




"Predators" is the sequel to the 80s classics.  Hopefully going to wipe away all memory of the AvP movies and get back to some great action - starting with a good director and a stellar cast is a positive start I think.  Adrien Brody, Lawrence Fishburn, Danny Trejo... I'm there when it opens next weekend




Finally, this just landed today - teaser trailer for the latest from David Fincher.  Called "The Social Network", it's the story of Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook.  Just having Fincher attached guarantees my ticket:

Tags: awesome, fincher, geek, graphic novels, japan, movies, sci-fi, space, video, trailer, youtube
Categories: Geek | Movies | Sci-Fi | trailers | want

Cute Asian chick in sailor suit?  Check.
Big sword? Check.
Vampires? Check.
Plenty of flying about on wires? Check.

What else do you need to know???  Oh alright then...

BTLV (as it shall be known) almost disappeared without trace as it was only on at the local multiplexes for a week, I guess the 18 cert and the potential for subtitles and therefore having to pay attention to the film would have put a lot of "average" cinemagoers off - at least the ones I seem to get trapped in a room with for a couple of hours every few weeks.  As for me, well it kind of got my attention for the same reasons.  I like movies with subtitles, if its the native tongue on the soundtrack then I'd always rather have that than a bad dub - even in animation.

Luckily for all concerned then that BTLV isn't dubbed, but is in English anyway.  The film follow Saya, who is half-demon half-human and is "employed" by a shadowy group known as The Council.  This isn't particularly well explored, and in fact after a bit of in-fighting between some Council agents they seem to disappear completely.

Saya is trying to find Onegin, most powerful of all demons and the murderer of her father.  The Council put her into a school on a US miltary base in Tokyo where she tracks down a couple of demons masquerading as students, and saves the life of Alice, who then follows her around watching as Saya chops her way through hundreds of the undead.

So far, so Blade.  

Anyway, going much further with detail would cause spoilers but I suspect that even with the sparse information I've given here you can pretty much map out the rest of the film.  This is not to say that I didn't enjoy it - I did,  I'm just saying that the general plot follows some pretty well-worn sterotypes.

I thought the wire-work was particluarly well done, the fight scenes were clear and well choerographed.  The blood is CGI and quite cartoonish which lend the film a degree of unreality which is probably just as well given its anime roots, and it didn't bother me at all.  What did bother me was some pretty piss-poor CGI demons and some work towards the end of the film which just made it look very straight-to-DVD.  Shame really.

This hasn't been released in the US just yet, so I'll be looking out for reviews on the major movie sites in the coming weeks, but the Asian Blu-Ray and DVD are out in October.  I'm pretty sure I'll get the Blu-Ray as I think with a good transfer the movie will look lush, and its the kind of thing I could watch again on a bored evening. 

All things considered, I'd give it a 7.5 / 10, dropping to 6/10 if you don't usually like "this kind of thing".  I'll leave you with the trailer:

 

Tags: movies, reviews, japan, geek, blood
Categories: Movies | Reviews

...they do straddle the line between insane and awesome much more easily than any other nation on earth.  It's one reason I love a good Japanese movie, you just never know what you're going to get - except that it's unlikely to be like anything you've seen before.  Even when they do take other ideas, they always go to the Nth degree.  

So without further ado, I give you ROBOGEISHA!!!  (trailer is just a little NSFW)

 

Tags: movies, japan, awesome, trailer, robots, weapons, blood
Categories: Movies