BACCANO!

New York, 1930ish. Amid the violence of Prohibition, gangs battle for control of territory and booze. But there's a very special brew making the rounds much more potent than alcohol. And various Mafiosi simply aren't dying, despite the bullets being fired into them. Added to this already volatile concoction are an assortment of passengers battling aboard a transcontinental railway, as well as a pair of decidedly wacky and costume-crazy thieves.



Spun from a series of light novels by Ryohgo Narita, BACCANO! plays fast and loose with chronology, plot, time, storytelling, maybe reality itself. Its bizarre structure lets its characters roam and act freely, and its nonlinearity is constantly shedding new light on previously established events. Which would be maddening if it weren't so damn fun - for all the bloodshed, the series manages to keep tongue firmly in cheek, and heart stapled to sleeve. Without losing any of its suspense, the story is generous to its characters, rewarding the innocent and even allowing its myriad psychopaths to discover their hearts (on their own neurotic terms, of course).

The generosity extends to us, as well: the open-endedness of its story, and its insistence on non-endings, allow the characters to remain with us even after the series stops. Not ends. Never, ever ends.

TRIGUN: BADLANDS RUMBLE

A daring robbery spearheaded by the hulking, ambitious bandit Gasback is interrupted by the notorious gunman Vash the Stampede. Twenty years later, Gasback is settling scores against his henchmen in that robbery, and a rogues gallery of bounty hunters assemble to take their shot at the bounty on his head. Vash is also waiting in the wings, but seems more interested in a gun-toting young woman with her own score to settle.



This was your proprietor's first trip into the insane world of Trigun, but God willing it will not be the last. The energy on display in this film is unmistakable, and the clever script plays a very long game over its brisk 90 minutes. The film is filled with faces familiar to longtime Trigun fans, but enough of the backstory is suggested to keep newcomers up to speed. The western elements are well-maintained within the film's colorful, sci-fi desert milieu (FIREFLY fans note: this is the Real Deal), and the various showdowns, character moments, and reveals are an absolute joy, each and every one.

THE ANIMATRIX: A DETECTIVE STORY

(What you are about to read is a contribution to For the Love of Film (Noir): The Film Preservation Blogathon, the details of which can be found at post's end. I have made a donation to the Film Noir Foundation, and hope you will do the same - link's at the end.)



When the brothers Wachowski commissioned some of Japan's finest animators to add short films to their ever-expanding Matrix franchise, director Shinichiro Watanabe was an ideal collaborator. Watanabe's landmark anime series Cowboy Bebop quickly found a devout cult audience for its story of planet-hopping bounty hunters, leavening its stylized anime action with a strident musical score and a generous dose of film noir style and fatalism. Watanabe's noir influences move front and center for his tight, nine-minute Matrix prequel, A Detective Story...


A Detective Story's protagonist is Ash, a put-upon private eye to whom we are introduced near the end of "the case to end all cases..."


But first things first: we go to the beginning of the case as Ash fields a client's call in a P.I.'s office straight out of Noir City:



Though fearing another domestic case, Ash finds that his generous client wants him to track down a mysterious computer hacker known as Trinity. Familiar as we are with Matrix lore, we know immediately that Ash is being set up as a pawn to pursue an agent of freedom by a conspiracy larger than he could possibly imagine. But like so many noir heroes before him, Ash takes the money and goes to work, unaware of the bad, bad hand fate has dealt him.

Ash's tools of the trade are both classic...


...and downright avant-garde, including a weirdly high-tech rig with multiple flatscreens and phone tech from some alternate universe's 1930s...


Ash soon finds out that other investigators seeking Trinity have wound up either dead or, in the case of one poor bastard, insane. A visit to the latter man's home does yield a disturbing, if visually striking, clue:


Several online, Lewis Carroll-coded communications later, Ash finds himself on a train to nowhere and, finally, face to face with Trinity:


Ash quickly realizes that there's much, much more to Trinity than he could have imagined. Just as, in The Matrix, Keanu Reeves' Neo was awakened to the world underneath his perceived reality, Ash finds the world he knew slipping from his grasp, and having made the trip through the looking glass finds himself in the grip of a reality that is simply beyond his comprehension. Ash is forced to make a crucial decision when several of their fellow passengers turn into Agents that move to eliminate them both.



As the agents draw nearer, Ash feels himself being physically transformed into one of them. Trinity must defend herself, and thus executes the function of femmes fatale from across the years.


Like other noir heroes before him, Ash seems to find a kind of comfort in the shadow of death's oncoming embrace, though he remains bewildered by his too-short life beyond the looking glass.


And Watanabe again engages our familiarity with the Matrix's overall story to give Ash what many noir creators refused their heroes, a simple moment of grace as Trinity confides in him her highest compliment: "For what it's worth, I think you could have handled the truth."


And so Trinity leaves, and even as the agents encroach on Ash, Watanabe's streak of generosity leaves him a final burst of energy to buy Trinity some time, to look death in the eye, and to enjoy one last cigarette.



Lights out.

Watanabe's most distinctive gift is his talent for combining disparate genres and cultures into bizarre but effective hybrids. That he would reach across decades to bring the high-tech, colorful, and action packed world of The Matrix into the lower tech, black-and-white, and somber world of film noir in A Detective Story only seems perverse in retrospect. In fully embracing the noir aesthetic Watanabe has crafted a lovely Matrix miniature, both a fine self-contained prelude to that sprawling (some would argue over-extended) franchise and a dark little gem in its own right. Pleasingly mind-bending, and simply noir as hell.


For the Love of Film (Noir): The Film Preservation Blogathon is hosted by Marilyn Ferdinand of Ferdy on Films and the Self-Styled Siren. You can go here to read more about the Film Noir Foundation, here to read a cogent interview with FNF head Eddie Muller about its preservation projects and why they matter, and you can go here to make a donation.)

THE GARDEN OF SINNERS

Spun from a visual novel by Kinoko Nasu, this gorgeously atmospheric anime series chronicles the efforts of a closely-knit group of individuals to take on an array of disturbing crimes. The story skips back and forth over a five year period, and hinges mainly on the relationship between the mildly schizophrenic and mystically powered Shiki Ryōgi and the physically average but perceptive young man Mikiya Kokutou. Though Shiki is the strongest member of the group, evidence points to her as the most likely suspect in a spree of killings early on, and Mikiya sets out at extreme personal risk to prove her innocence. To Shiki herself as much as anyone else.

Blood runs red, and deep, in these films, and yet the overall mood is one of quiet alienation, melancholy. There's a pleasant lack of distracting fanservice, and a powerful attention to the quiet moments and character details. During a presentation of three chapters of this saga at San Francisco's Viz Cinema, key creative team members confirmed that it is the quieter moments, rather than the intricate and supercharged action scenes, that often pose the most creative challenges to the makers of anime. Given their devotion to the original vision of Kinoko Nasu, the Garden of Sinners team have realized an abundance of such moments, crafting a dark but precious jewel in the anime corpus.

SUMMER WARS

An invitation from comely classmate Natsuki brings young Kenji to the Japanese countryside, where he tries to balance working remotely on the super-social-network Oz with the challenges posed by Natsuki's family (particularly her formidable grandmother). But all of these concerns quickly evaporate in the face of a threat posed by the Love Machine, a sinister program that Kenji unwittingly unleashes upon Oz and the world.

The latest feature from venerated anime producers Madhouse, Summer Wars is an absolute delight. Madhouse runs riot in the scenes set in Oz, with colorful icons waging ongoing battle against the escalating threat of the Love Machine. But the film's real world sequences are every bit as moving. The film's extended supporting cast, including what feels like twenty members of Natsuki's family, are all vividly realized, and each has a role to play in the film's intensifying battle scenes.

The comparisons that have been drawn between this film and the work of Miyazaki are misleading - the film is as madly inventive, but not rooted in Miyazaki's whimsy. The film takes in myriad genres and subgenres of Japanese film - anime cyber action dances between seasonal scenes straight out of Kurosawa. Though profoundly sensitive viewers may take issue with the film's quiet endorsement of Japanese militance, Summer Wars is a rare anime that examines Japanese traditions and values in terms of today's globally interlinked cyberworld. Your proprietor was pleased by the film's balance between its gentle attack on American isolationism and its keenly-expressed family values.

REDLINE afterglow

4F: 4F is up
House: heeeeeeeeeeeeeee!
House: that is a gorgeous piece of writing
House: it's a difficult film to write about without giving too much away, or sounding insane
4F: I love that film
4F: I do
House: me too
House: happily, it seems that it'll be widely released next year
4F: Yayyyy
House: its international and US distributors seem to know that they have something truly special on their hands
4F: Fab!
House: i feel like i had your hand in a vice-like grip thru the whole second half of the movie
House: i apologize for any discomfort
4F: Haha. Me too.
4F: No. I mean I was squeezing too
House: when the mechanic busted into the gangster's room to save frisbee, making the two of us gasp at once
House: i think that'll turn out to be my favorite moment at the movies this year
4F: Ha!
4F: Excellent
House: capping the night off watching the fiery moon descend to a tiny ember in the fog was the icing on it
House: thanks, d.
4F: Yes. XO

REDLINE

The eyes of an entire galaxy seem to be on Redline, a superturbocharged racing event featuring a disparate array of contenders. Notable among them is 25000-to-1 long-shot Sweet JP, a racer who had lost a qualifying event when his car exploded inches from the finish line. Like JP, whose youthful dreams of racing glory have been largely quashed by the criminal entanglements that have ensnared him, all of the Redline's competitors bring colorful and dangerous backstories to the event. And all of their dreams may end prematurely when Redline's unwilling host, the ruler of the militarized Roboworld, hires a psychotic colonel to annilihate all competitors.

Showing simultaneously in San Francisco with its Japanese premiere, Takeshi Koike's anime racing film is seamless, energizing, absurd, thoroughly entertaining, and completely uplifting. For all the insane details that are jammed into the film, its narrative line is surprisingly clean, hitting the beats well-established by other sports movies. Koike delivers a striking ensemble of colorful, driven characters (any of whom could hold the center of their own film), introducing each one and establishing their respective personalities, goals, and ambitions with efficiency and verve, giving each one focus and fleshing out a number of fantastic and bizarre subplots.

After the qualifying Yellowline event sets a high bar for action, Koike and his collaborators push the story and design of the film to more and more extreme and absurd realms. But the ongoing propulsive action never becomes numbing - it's so engaging that something in you seems to accelerate to accommodate the unique pulse of the unfolding spectacle. And yet the balance of the film's brief oases of quiet creates a powerful emotional stake in the action, and when the film finally reveals its romantic side, you're grabbed by the heart as strongly as the eyes.

So much contemporary cinema seems flaccid, sexless, joyless next to REDLINE. The film never flags, never cops out, and always has something batshit crazy and wonderful coming right up. The seven years the film spent in development were well spent, and yet it feels like it's inventing itself and exploding fresh before your very eyes.


ETA: From Anime News Network comes the welcome news that Manga Entertainment, clearly aware that they've got something special on their hands, are releasing the thing subtitled across the U.S. next year.

on Film on Film

Dismayed as your proprietor is to see IRON MAN 2 dominating the Castro Theatre for the foreseeable future, I'm delighted to have a nice alternative going up tomorrow night at Oddball Films. Our friends at the Film on Film Foundation has a spiffy event happening tomorrow night. Bricks in the Wall: Humans and Their Built Environment looks to be a well-chosen batch of films detailing our relationships to the worlds we create, and I hope to see you there.



The presence of 70s Godzilla movies at Viz Cinema did much to help the SFIFF post partum depression, and the week of anime beginning today promises more of the same. I'm particularly keen on seeing, for the first time, Royal Space Force early next week.

More substantive posts to come. Promise.

MOBILE SUIT GUNDAM UNICORN

The long-running Gundam franchise begets yet another iteration. Spun from a light novel set in the franchise's original timeline, Mobile Suit Gundam Unicorn contains many of the metaseries' most beloved tropes: a reluctant young hero who grows to accept a destiny he can powerfully sense but barely define; intricate politics and protracted debate; and of course all manner of high-flying, devastatingly-equipped, and painstakingly-designed military mecha.

Though it is no less dense than previous Gundam stories, "Day of the Unicorn", the first episode of a planned six, offers enough grounding in the story to give newcomers at least a basic grasp of the world at hand. Banagher Links is a compelling young hero, given solid voice by Steve Staley, who articulates Links' innocence and faith beautifully. The scene in which Links is confronted with the full story of his destiny, and given the keys to the truly spiffy titular weapon, is offered both a mythic weight and human emotion that the franchise has rarely (in your proprietor's admittedly non-encyclopaedic experience) attained.

The friend I took to the screening, a neophyte to anime and Gundam, leaned into me during the credits and simply said, "More, please." Your proprietor could hardly agree more, and eagerly awaits the remaining five installments.

DEMON CITY SHINJUKU

A gorgeously malignant and atmospheric anime from the early 90s, DEMON CITY SHINJUKU is the tale of a demonic zone that erupts in the middle of Tokyo. Ten years after its appearance, a warrior must travel to the zone's center to face the evil that killed his father, and quash a scheme that would turn the zone into a portal for demons bent on world destruction.

Eschewing science and logic (and the tentacle porn that would come to define this kind of horror), the makers of DEMON CITY SHINJUKU create a memorable and colorful nightmare. A number of impressive creatures enter the fray on both sides, but the movie's real strength is its surreal mise-en-scene. The noodle vendor and his cart, serving the city's denizens in the dead of night. Puddles that become vast underwater worlds. The unspoken back stories of the humans who live among the demons in the shattered city. The dream-like fantasy outweighs the often questionable soundtrack and largely sub-standard English dub, and the vivid primary-colored imagery lingers in the subconscious.

MUSASHI: DREAM OF THE LAST SAMURAI

A fanciful animated documentary (possibly the first anime documentary, though your proprietor hesitates to presume), MUSASHI: THE DREAM OF THE LAST SAMURAI offers an animated recreation of some of the key battles in the history of Musashi Miyamoto, one of Japan's most renowned and influential swordsmen.

Though directed by Mizuho Nishibuko, the auteur to whom this film is being credited is writer Mamoru Oshii, writer/director of the GHOST IN THE SHELL films and various other anime and live-action projects. Though Oshii had said that he wanted this film to be unlike any other, it's limited by some of his choices. Musashi's various accomplishments are given strong context within military and Japanese history, but the cute on-screen narrators (an SD historian and his clumsy but well-meaning female assistant) often distract from the material at hand (an interesting choice, given the excision of the comic relief from Oshii's GHOST IN THE SHELL adaptation).

Throughout the film I was put in mind of Peter Greenaway's REMBRANDT'S J'ACCUSE, a visually-loaded documentary outlining various clues to the criminal conspiracy captured in Rembrandt's famous painting The Nightwatch. Oshii's film traverses its terrain in ways very similar to Greenaway's: both filmmakers use similar strong visual tactics and effective dramatization to explore their subjects. It's curious that the tone of Greenaway's film is more strident than Oshii's, considering the patriotic agenda of the latter. Both films are open-ended, but Oshii's film stops practically in mid-sentence - it reminds us that Musashi's swordsmanship was a deciding factor in a 20th century battle, but offers no detail on which battle.

MUSASHI does offer some intriguing historical analysis of its subject. Better still, unsurprisingly, are its powerfully-depicted action scenes, including Musashi's storied battle with Sasaki Kojiro on Ganryu Island. I'd be intrigued to see Oshii launch another anime documentary - perhaps it will finish the job that this film, alas, only starts.