Wow. If you never saw Ghost in the Shell you missed one of the best-looking animated features ever. And this one ... wow. The imagery, details, use of light and movement ... wow. It looks phenomenal and draws upon looks resembling everything from Taiwanese parades to Blade Runner to the cathedreal in Milan to Griffin and Sabine to Coruscant to the dreams of William Gibson. And on top of that it's actually trying to make a meaningful statement. It's an entirely different sort of thing from most of the films that make "best of the year" lists, but I think deserves to be on more of those.
Posted by armand at January 6, 2005 03:54 PM | TrackBack | Posted to Moviessaw it in the theatre a couple of months ago. in fact, a local theatre also showed the first a week or two before it got a hold of the sequel, and i saw both there (my first real experience with anime).
visually stunning, no doubt, but as for the "meaningful statement" it's trying to make, i must have missed something. both movies, particularly the second, seemed designed to confuse, but to the extent i derived any intended message (and the idea of a "message" is in itself so often repugnant to good art), i think it was some sort of neo-luddite cliche.
so what did i miss that warranted your use of three "wows" in the first four sentence, one of which was just "Wow?"
Posted by: joshua at January 7, 2005 10:23 AM | PERMALINKI was just "wowing" the visuals, not the statements. The visuals are incredible.
The statements? Well, it seems to be making points (albeit not entirely clear ones) about man feeling the need to make creations in its image and to pass life along - be it through AI, dolls or pet dogs. And I suppose it's also trying to make you think about "what is life?" or "what is a soul?".
Posted by: Armand at January 7, 2005 10:58 AM | PERMALINK