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Altered Carbon: Resleeved–New anime film is the next great animation feat

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April 16, 2020

Review by C.J. Bunce

Audiences have seen some great animated films in recent years, with movies upping the ante on technology and visual magic, whether in Ferdinand or Spider-Man: Into the Spider-verse or Spies in Disguise or Klaus. Netflix’s new anime movie, a sequel to its live-action, futuristic, sci-fi hit Altered Carbon, takes animation and visual effects even further. Altered Carbon: Resleeved is part Blade Runner 2049, part Marvel’s The Punisher (season two), and part Wu Assassins. Live-action action sequences are rarely as thrilling as those choreographed in this film.

As with the live-action Altered Carbon, the inspiration from Syd Mead’s trademark futurism is all over this film, and that world looks just as stunning in anime form. The storyboarding and layouts, the surprise screen angles, wipes, and character movements are like nothing you’ve seen before, and the details are at times life-like and three dimensional. The story and execution is a vast improvement on the second season of the live-action show, which was a really good season of episodes to begin with.

Two years after the end of season two we catch up with Takeshi Kovacs, resleeved and working a job for Mr. Tanaseda, who has him pursuing a girl named Holly, a tattoo artist with cybernetic eyes and pawn of the yakuza, who carries some critical secrets. Working for CTAC is Gena, a badass agent carrying secrets, who clashes with Kovacs early on. It’s two days from an ascension ceremony–the anointing of a new mob boss–and in that time Kovacs must figure out why Mr. Tanaseda has set him on this job. The anime film, available with English subtitles or dubbed, has a new hotel and a new concierge named Ogai (voiced in the dubbed version by Chris Conner, who plays the concierge, Poe, and hotel manager in the live-action series). Ogai is a holographic Japanese man loyal to the new boss, but fond of Holly. Fans of the series will find his hotel to have equally exciting defensive feature’s as Poe’s hotel, The Raven.

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borg’s Best of 2019–The Year’s Best Movies

Filed under: Fantasy Realms, Movies, Sci-Fi Café, Superheroes — Leave a comment

December 27, 2019

When we created last year’s preview of 2019 movies we were pretty sure we were going to have some great movies this year, but we were surprised by what ended up being the best. All year we tried to keep up with what Hollywood had to offer and homed in on the genre content we thought was worth examining. We went back and looked at it all and pulled together our annual picks in our Best Movies of 2019.

Genredom. As always, we’re after the best genre content of the year–with our top categories from the Best in Movies. There are thousands of other places that cover plain vanilla dramas and the rest of the film world, but here we’re looking for movies we want to watch. What do all of this year’s selections have in common? In addition to those elements that define each part of genredom, each has a good story. Special effects without a good story is not good entertainment, and we saw plenty of films this year that missed that crucial element.

Come back later this month for our print media picks, and our annual borg Hall of Fame inductees. And if you missed it, check out our Best Kick-Ass Genre Heroines of 2019 here. Wait no further, here are our movie picks for 2019:

Best Film, Best Superhero Movie, Best Re-Imagining on Film – Shazam! (Warner Bros.). Movies are supposed to be a wonder, right? What brought the magic of the movies back to theaters more than Shazam? Why did DC take so long to adapt a superhero to the scene perfectly? Who cares–they finally did it. Faithful to the character from the #1 selling superhero book of the 1940s, this was the superhero movie many of us have been waiting for for the past 50 years (or more). Full of superhero fun, one of the best training montages ever, Zachary Levi’s boyish hero was perfectly matched to Jack Dylan Grazer’s take on best pal Freddy. It’s also the only superhero movie we can think of that got better as it went along, culminating in a fantastic, satisfying third act and finale. This is what we want more of. And it was the first DC superhero movie of the millennium that could be watched and enjoyed by the entire family. Honorable mention: Glass (Universal), Spider-Man: Far From Home (Sony Pictures).

Best Fantasy Movie, Best Adventure Movie, Best Comedy Movie – Jumanji: The Next Level (Columbia Pictures). The only issue with this film was that its status as a sequel will prompt some to not recognize it for the gigantic success it truly is. With adventure scenes bigger and better than anything in the entire Indiana Jones franchise, two movies in and director Jake Kasdan proved a sequel can actually be as good as the original. The four stars didn’t miss a beat, swapping roles and adding new laughs, and the new characters inside and outside the game were perfectly spliced in to tell a new tale. The bridge crossing scene is now the adventure film scene to beat. An epic fantasy that’s loads of fun. Honorable mention for Best Fantasy Movie: Shazam! (Disney/Marvel), Captain Marvel (Disney/Marvel).

Best Movie Borg, Best Borg Film – Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Carl, Terminator: Dark Fate (Paramount Pictures). It would have been almost impossible for James Cameron and director Tim Miller not to get this right, a new thread through time reuniting Linda Hamilton’s Sarah Connor and a new T-800 with Arnold back with another take on his greatest borg of all time. New characters and new effects kept the franchise from getting boring, but this was more than just getting by, a big sci-fi spectacle with great cyborg battles, and easily the best cyborg fix this year.

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Tags: 6 Underground, All is True, Ben Mendelsohn, Best Movies of 2019, Best of 2019, Captain Marvel, Chasing Portraits, CNN Films, Dane DeHaan, Dark Star: H.R. Giger's World, Edward Norton, Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw, Fathom Events, Felicity Jones, Field of Dreams, Glass, Happy Death Day 2U, Hilary Swank, I Am Mother, Jack Dylan Grazer, Jake Gyllenhaal, Jumanji: The Next Level, Karen Gillan, Kenneth Branagh, Kevin Costner, Klaus, M. Night Shyamalan, Michael Giacchino, Motherless Brooklyn, Netflix, Ready or Not, Samara Weaving, Sanja Hays, Sarah Paulson, Shazam, Spider-Man: Far From Home, Spies in Disguise, Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, The Aeronauts, The Battered Bastards of Baseball, The Highwaymen, The Kid movie 2019, The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part, The Muppet Movie, Thomas Newman, Three Identical Strangers, Warner Animation Group, Woody Harrelson

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Klaus: The Art of the Movie digs into concept art and innovations in hand-drawn animation

Filed under: Backstage Pass, Comics & Books, Fantasy Realms, Movies, TV — Leave a comment

November 26, 2019

Review by C.J. Bunce

The next level of books on film animation is here. But Klaus: The Art of the Movie, a behind the scenes look at the new Christmas movie from Netflix, doesn’t dig into the next advances of CG-animation. Instead you’ll find a story about a group of creators wanting to advance the style of animation before the advent of CGI. And that’s what they did, finding new ways to take hand-drawn animation forward in a way that will appear just as exciting and new to movie audiences.

Written by Ramin Zahed, Klaus: The Art of the Movie is a peek inside the mind of long-time animator Sergio Pablos, who has worked on his share of popular animated movies that have taken a more typical approach to the modern animated movie, as co-creator of Despicable Me, in addition to serving as animator on Disney movies like The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Hercules, Tarzan, and Treasure Planet, plus more modern films like Rio and Smallfoot. This book is the next step for students of animation techniques, following in a long line of movies whose behind-the-scenes accounts have been reviewed previously here at borg, like Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse–The Art of the Movie, The Art of Ferdinand, Alita: Battle Angel–The Art and Making of the Movie, Planet of the Apes: The Art of the Films, Jonny Quest Speaks, Harryhausen: The Lost Movies, and Special Effects: The History and Technique.

Although you may be distracted from the background details by the stunning, innovative use of light and shadow in Klaus, this book features dozens of double-page artworks that allow you to take your time, marveling over the techniques used to create everything from snowy peaks to old, dusty floorboards. It’s then that you see the influence of the styles of Christmas classics from Rankin & Bass and early Walt Disney Studios on the artists that worked on the film. With decisions like having animal characters act like real animals instead of the typical talking comedy foil, stark contrasts in the direction of the story’s various environments, and vivid color choices, all the key production creators are able to point to what specifically sets their movie apart.

Here is a look inside Klaus: The Art of the Movie:

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Tags: animated movies, animation, hand-drawn animation, Klaus, Klaus movie, Klaus: The Art of the Movie, Klaus: The Art of the Movie book review, Netflix, Ramin Zahed, Sergio Pablos, Spanish animation

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Sergio Pablos’s Klaus–First Netflix animated film may be your next holiday classic

Filed under: Fantasy Realms, Movies, Retro Fix, TV — Leave a comment

November 24, 2019

Review by C.J. Bunce

For years it seemed like new Christmas classics were few and far between. It usually takes some time for a movie to gain “classic” status, and that itself is, of course, in the eye of the beholder. Early on audiences stamped the label on Miracle on 34th Street, It’s a Wonderful Life, and White Christmas. You have your A Charlie Brown Christmas, your How the Grinch Stole Christmas, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, and a bevy of Rankin & Bass stop-motion animated shows like Frosty the Snowman. Then more modern fare came along, like A Christmas Story, National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation, The Muppet Christmas Carol, and Elf. Oh, and we can’t forget Die Hard. All stamped with an anvil as “classics.” If you want to see more movies from cinema history, check out the Turner Movie Classics book Christmas in the Movies, reviewed last year here at borg.

Putting aside the modern made for TV movies, if you’re younger, you may count as a classic something like The Polar Express, with Tom Hanks. It’s that kind of recent film category where you can add in Netflix’s new movie–its first animated feature, Klaus. Both of these movies are animated in interesting ways that will keep you entertained simply from a visual perspective, Klaus from its unique lighting and color choices and a strong Spanish comic art style (as seen in Dog Mendonça and PizzaBoy). They also share a certain traditional storybook look, and their tales also look back to nostalgia for their ideas. Klaus is another origin story take on Santa Claus. Audiences have seen this many times, including in the not to be missed films Santa Claus is Comin’ to Town (featuring the voices of Fred Astaire, Mickey Rooney, and Keenan Wynn) and in books like L. Frank Baum’s The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus and more recently, the brilliant Santa: My Life and Times, with artwork by Bill Sienkiewicz (we reviewed it here).

Spain’s Sergio Pablos directed Klaus intentionally stepping away from modern Disney-style CGI animation to traditional hand-drawn art, so it looks more like Disney’s top technical achievement, the Oscar-winning Beauty and the Beast from 1991, and less like The Hunchback of Notre Dame. The story is cute, and contrasting with the traditional visual style, is the inclusion of humorous dialogue told by voice talents famously known for being snarky. We follow a postman named Jesper, who couldn’t look or sound more like David Spade, actually voiced by Jason Schwartzman. Jesper is a non-achiever, and his father sends him to a distant Scandinavian town to learn to be successful at his job. The town ends up like a lawless town out of the Old West. His job is to get people to use the mail service again. Along the way he runs into a Hatfield-McCoy conflict, with one part voiced by Joan Cusack, and an old man with a house full of toys named Klaus, voiced by J.K. Simmons.

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