Japanese Evangelion 3.0 Teaser

There are few films upcoming that I'm quite so excited for as "Evangelion 3.0:  Japanese subtitle".  The first one was decent, the second one ROCKED, and now the third film of the quadrilogy will be released come this November - in Japan.  The English dub probably won't be out until, oh say, 2014 or so.  But that's a different problem with different concerns, for now, here's the first teaser:

And in proper Evangelion fashion, the trailer makes no sense.  All we see is a psychedelic rainbow piano playing a song.  A very nice song, with very nice visuals, but hopefully this is symbolic of something or other instead of being an actually representation of what "Eva 3" will be like.  Because as wonderfully weird as a sudden shift to musical interpretations might be for this franchise, I would prefer to see Shinji and Asuka and Rei's storylines concluded, perhaps in a more pleasant fashion.  Maybe?  Considering how "Eva 2" ended with us virtually at Third Impact, the third movie in this series is hopefully going to be hard core.

So the review for this will be up... within the decade.  Beyond that, I'm not sure.  I don't think I can wait for dubbing this time, so there might even be two reviews.  All I know is that I really doubt I'll be disappointed.

However, if you're feeling trolled, here's a fan-made(?) trailer that seems to have more meat on it.

Final Fantasy VI LP Episodes 1 and 2

Hello children!  At the beginning of the month I promised that me and my FFWiki friends would be making an LP together, and as of now, the very first two hours of that great work have been completed and are on Youtube thanks to the work of my buddy, Scathey.

I'm on for the second hour, episodes 2.1-2.4, if you want to enjoy me, enjoy me.  Here is a link to the whole Playlist, where you can watch me if you are so inclined.  My audio isn't great but its something.

And now since this post is functionally over, here's a picture of Terra hugging a Moogle:

Cloud Atlas Trailer

"Cloud Atlas" seems to be a movie about everything.  Pirates, musical theory, mountain adventuring, lost love, found love, resurrection, literature, gangsters, explosions, huge flower structures, and the FUTURE!!!  The trailer below is nearly six-minutes long, and I don't think they could have sacrificed a second to fully explain this movie.

So since this trailer is just too amazing, I had to look up what the heck was actually going on during this trailer, since it seemed like the world's most gi-huge-mungous epic, a movie that could easily last nine hours - and don't think they haven't made nine hour movies before, they've made 175 hour movies. This is just two hours and forty minutes, about the length of "The Dark Knight Rises".  The reason its that long is because its actually an adaptation of "Cloud Atlas", a 2004 book by David Mitchell, which is not one continuous story over time, but actually six episodes of totally different people across something like a thousand years.  They're connected because every story features the characters hearing the stories of the previous people.

Altogether, "Cloud Atlas" looks like a great big feast of a movie.  It either will be an impressive adventure of recurring themes across time or a jumbled mess of confusing stupidity.  I dunno.  But it definitely is not something that should be missed.

Beasts of the Southern Wild

After "Batman 3", I had to be sure that the next movie I saw in theaters was something completely different.  I couldn't go out and see some huge action Blockbuster because no matter what it was, it would just pale miserably in comparison to "The Dark Knight Rises".  I didn't really have much hope for the remake of "Total Recall", since its pointless and they killed all the great 80s action charm, but it really will not stand any chance at all if it has to follow up the biggest movie of the year.  In that view, I went to see a completely different kind of movie:  a small Indie Neorealist film about poor people living on America's contracting frontier.  And since its a nice serious drama, I guess I need to shed the Batman fanboy persona and take on the academic one.  *Changes Hats*

"Beasts of the Southern Wild" is the first film directed by Benh Zeitlin, a first-time director, but probably not a last-time director.  His film has already made a huge splash amongst the stuffy elites of film criticism, even getting a Camera de'Or (the Best film made by a newbie director) at the Cannes Film Festival*, the Mecca of film academia, and it won the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance.  Interestingly, "Beasts" was filmed entirely without professional actors, instead using first-time people found locally in New Orleans, but it also stars Quvenzhané Wallis, a - then - five-year-old actress.  Usually working with a little kid of any age is a huge gamble for your movie, because unless you can get that kid to stop being cute and give the performance you need, your whole movie will just collapse.  Remember "Phantom Menace"?  But Quvenzhané Wallis is not just an aversion to that rule, she is the singular best thing about this movie.  If "Beasts of the Southern Wild" goes to the Oscars, it will be because of her more than anybody else.  She's that remarkable.

That's not to say the rest of the movie is unremarkable, its a filthy, grungy movie starring the poorest people in all of America.  These are people who live beyond the edge, sitting in the Louisiana bayous with the land slipping away below their feet.  Everything they have is falling into the sea, and while the rest of the world is already moved on, their holding onto everything they've ever known, but also living in abject, frightening poverty.  However, Benh Zeitlin isn't a crusading evangelist out to spread the word to save these people, his use of the camera seems to admire them.  He's not calling us to action, he's praising a culture that is literally drowning under the moving tides of the world.  Despite all their ignorance and lack of a future, they're still walking bravely into whatever life will bring them.  Zeitlin doesn't pity them, he admires them, and this is why "Beasts of the Southern Wild" is a very interesting movie.

Man of Steel Trailer

No, I'm not going to do a Super Movie Superdown for this movie:

Last year I mentioned that I thought that Superman was actually unfilmable, and... this trailer doesn't actually disprove me, but it sure goes a great way to show that I'm an idiot.  Very is only about ten seconds of Superman, but what little we see is incredible, the perfect teaser.  We see Superman working in blue collar mediocrity, we see Superman hitching a ride, we see a young boy running around in a cape, a slow montage of Americana set - oddly - to a song lifted from the Lord of the Rings.  Then we see the big deal:  Superman blasting away with a sonic boom, and that's it.

Well, even though this trailer tells us nothing, I'm hugely excited.  Zack Synder is directing, and it seems he's finally learned some kind of maturity with the camera if this teaser is to be believed, since it isn't just endless slow-mo attacks and anime cliches.  Henry Caville is Superman... and no, you don't need to know who he is.  He was the bland stonefaced here in "Immortals", which actually isn't a good sign since that movie wasn't even interesting enough to review when I saw it.  But as for a good sign:  Master Christopher Nolan is producing.  Hey, he hasn't failed me yet!  Especially when this teaser is promising an epic heroic poem for the Superman character, a level of maturity that none of the other films seem to have tried for.

"Man of Steel" is coming in 2013.