Girls with horns
The feeling after watching the 13 episodes (plus the OVA interspersed between episodes 10 and 11) of Elfen Lied (Elven Song) can not be other than uneasiness. Unlike what happens with Denno Coil, the first Elfen Lied episodes have a very much lower animation quality than the last ones, and contrary to what happens to Yozakura Quartet, or Michiko To Hatchin, in which some excellent designs are not enough to make of for the lack of a good script, Elfen Lied has an exciting story, full of explicit and bloody violence scenes, crippled young girls and people with traumatic past, and despite their visual quality is pretty mediocre, and the script is full of gaps (and the failures of both, the drawing and the plot, came from the same source, the comic by Lynn Okamoto, which develops others sub plots and a different ending, but is also a unsuccessful story). Finally, the reason for put up with nearly 5 hours watching the whole series, is the argument. We would have liked a remake, well designed and well animated, actually, instead of a TV Series, an animated feature-length film that could be as good as the best films of David Cronemberg or Dario Argento. Elfen Lied has many faults, but also a few virtues, there’s a lot of controvery about the initial 13 minutes in the chapter 1, characterized by the most explicit violence than can be seen in animation, but certainly, the last 13 minutes on chapter 13, are also unforgettable. And the icing on the cake, in the final episode of Elfen Lied (but not in its final scene): one of the few animated kisses with some dramatic value (but even this sequence is poorly drawn, what a shame!)
Filed under: animation | Leave a Comment
I Love Sarah Jane
I can’t say this is the best zombie short film ever made (I haven’t seen so many zombie shorts either), but I can assure that it is one of the best short films I’ve seen, regardless of subject, and in its thematic therefore it is better than many zombie stories (movies, comics), especially the recents. Selected for Sundance this year, “I Love Sarah Jane“, by Spencer Susser, is a beautiful and brief love story in the middle of the apocalypse
Filed under: Cinema | Leave a Comment
- Crumb (Terry Zwigoff, 1994), was an excelent movie. It was impossible to suposse that the old boring members of the Academy awarded it with an Oscar, but the movie was nominated to best Documentary.
- With the same Crumb’s Director (see arbitrariness #1), and a luxurious cast,The film Ghost World is absolutely inferior than the incredible graphic novel in whish was based, Ghost World by Daniel Clowes. Enid (Thora Birch), makes a lot of stupid things, completely inconsistent with the original character. We adore Enid, in the comic-book, but we despise Enid, in the movie. With her neurosis and her weakness, Enid, in the comic, was not a bitch.
- The tenth chapter of “Masters of Horror” 1st season, Sick Girl, is an original story, written and directed by the brilliant and very talented Lucky McKee (his film “May” is a little master piece too). Despite the Zwigoff attempts, Sick Girl is very much closer than the 90’s indie comic spirit, and not only to the great Daniel Clowes, but to the universe created by Jaime Hernandez in his Locas series, on the legendary Love and Rockets magazine.
- Art School Confidential? I don´t know, I didn’t see it, actually, I didn’t want to see it.
Filed under: arbitrariness | 2 Comments
House Of The Blind Bird 