I stayed up ungodly late to binge half of it. 4 more eps to go tonight.

Easily the best live action anime adaptation Netflix has put out to date. By miles and miles and miles. It is doing its best to tone down the goof-assery of the og One Piece, while still keeping just enough zany to make it fun. Storylines are compressed obviously... and some of the acting is pretty piss poor at times (at other times it's great), but you can tell they are putting a lot of love into it and are doing their best to remain faithful.

The biggest flaw is it suffers from that same "We're working with a much lower budget than what we needed" quality that is endemic to every genre show on Netflix thanks to the execs just throwing their cash at every shitty script that comes across their desks.

Still... it looks... good enough to not make me constantly wince the way the trailer had me cringing.

 

@KHAAAAAAAN!! On board with you. That said…they put 17 million on each episode.

 

And it's clearly not enough. Or it needs to be better managed at the very least. Witcher was getting 20 mil per ep in the later seasons and it has the same problem to a lesser degree. An extra 3 or 4 mil per ep going into set/costuming/fx would help their "big" shows so so much.

They could easily afford it if they trimmed the unpopular fat from their bloated catalogue.

 

Finished it. I think the final two eps stumbled a bit trying to recreate the big shounen-y emotional beats of the anime. Some of it just came off way too cheesey and cringe for live-action.

That said, I still enjoyed this so much more than I expected I would. It is a huge step forward in the right direction for anime adaptations.

I hope they get several more seasons and a bigger budget.

 

Just finished the season. I *really* liked it, and most of the changes were for the better. Definitely some parts that could have been cleaned up, and more budget obviously wouldn't hurt, but I'm pretty sure this falls pretty clearly into the "good anime adaptation" bucket.

I'm definitely hoping they get at least a second season. I'm really curious if they maintain the really quick pace. I'm also insanely curious how they'd do Chopper.

 

I liked it a lot. Especailly small inclusions of stuff that wouldn't be introduced until later, like Shank's crew listening to Binks' Sake in the background.

Honestly I'd even go so far as to say that the live action handles the introduction to the world better than the manga/anime, where the East Blue did feel a bit like a drag.

 

I haven't seen any current movies this year but have caught a few older ones. Most interesting was probably the Queen's Gambit Netflix series if that counts. Also "The Host", a great Korean monster film from the 1990s that has a cult following.

 

The new Castlevania is such a let down. Characters are bland. Dialogue is shit. Plot is all over the place.

And as an adaptation of Rondo/Symphony it isn't even recognizable.

The only thing that is on the level of the first show is the animation, which continues to be excellent.

 

I saw the new Hunger Games movie, Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, and I can’t recommend it enough. I had 0 expectations going into it but thought it was pretty stellar. The music is also top notch, ive been catching myself humming the songs all week. Rachel Zeigler and Tom Blyth both put in star-making performances.

I don’t think you necessarily need to have seen the Hunger Games either to enjoy it. If you’ve ever enjoyed a scheming Harry Potter in Slytherin story, you’ll enjoy Coriolanus.

 

Godzilla Minus One is definitely worth the watch. It’s probably the most human centric Godzilla film in years.


Really enjoyed the film. It’s definitely a throwback to the days of original Godzilla.

It’s not a spectacle but definitely a film I could see being utilized in a cinematography class.

 

My complaint about the current iteration of Godzilla films has been that they're too human centric so that's an interesting take.

Thinking mostly about the useless baggage crying child tagalong in the first one though.

 

Hmm..I can see what you're saying. I think the human characters in recent Godzilla films are there more to exist as reactors to the destruction/offer justification for why Godzilla is doing what he's doing. Humans are Godzilla's "sidekicks."

In contrast, Godzilla Minus One places more agency in the place of humans and it's Humanity vs. Godzilla. It leans more into the original films and Godzilla acts as a metaphor for PTSD/Trauma of the Japanese people coming out of World War II.

 

About to go see The Boy and The Heron. I am prepared for this movie to absolutely eviserate me and leave me in an emotionally destroyed state foe the rest of the week, will update afterwards

 

Looking forward to your take on it. I heard about it on the radio and I'll probably go see it, but I'd be more certain if I know it's good.

 

It’s pretty good. My only real complaint is that the first half is slow and the second half is a bit rushed. It’s as beautiful as any Ghibli movie, and the opening packs a wallop of an emotional punch. They do this cool thing in the opening where

Spoiler

as the main character gets more and more frantic his surroundings get less distinct/other characters sort of become outlines as he’s focused on making his way through a firebombed Tokyo.

Robert Pattinson is bringing his fucking A game. Even knowing the Heron was him I would’ve said it was voiced by Willem Dafoe with how unrecognizable the voice is.

Honorable mention: Florence Pugh is also great as the voice of an old lady, and Dan Stevens has a fun moment as a giant Parrot.

I would say it’s a 4/5. Not as emotionally devastating as I thought it would be, but still a very enjoyable movie and a good swan song for Miyazaki

 

Late to the party. Watched Oppenheimer and Barbie.

I approached Oppenheimer with zero expectations. On the positive side, it's better than Dunkirk because it actually has characters. On the countdown to the Trinity test I was still hoping against hope it's secretely a scifi flick and that it would really set the atmosphere on fire. It's technically outstanding, but what else does one expect from Christopher Nolan? I was definitely feeling bored at points. It's better than I thought it would be, but I still prefer Nolan's scifi films and the Batman trilogy.

Barbie was way funnier than I expected, I laughed out loud at several of the jokes (the snipe at the Snydercut takes the crown here). Enough laughs to keep me watching the whole way through, enhanced by the meta-context of the outrage from incels and manosphere YouTubers who apparently found this movie hateful, when all the movie does is take shots at the most overplayed stereotypes that could only be offensive if you have the personality of a cardboard cutout of Ben Shapiro. The movie says nothing insightful, it's not clever--Greta Gerwig simply knew how to use her lead actors. Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling knocked it out of the park. It's a funny 2hr movie and it doesn't need to be anything else.

 

Ouch, fighting words. Dunkirk had great characters.

 

I honestly can’t remember anything about Dunkirk apart from some cinematography.

Tenet is also largely forgotten.

Interstellar and Inception though, I remember those movies.

 

I wish the Yu Yu Hakusho adaptation had come out before One Piece so I could still be living in my "Netflix has finally learned how to do live action anime correctly" reality.

They just went straight back to the formula of 'hire japanese "tarentos" instead of method actors and compensate with cgi/overexposition.'

Sigh.

 

Rebel Moon sucked. I fully get why Disney passed on that toiletpaper script.