Screenhead

It is now entirely possible that, for the first time since the inception of the Oscars, fully FIVE FILMS could stand for Best Animated Feature.

There have never been this many eligible nominees, thus it’s entirely possible that the field could be expanded to be commensurate with the availability of entrants.

Folks, the field is positively MAMMOTH.  There are fully twenty eligible films.  I’ve seen several of them, and heard of most of the rest.  There are some really obscure pieces there, and worse, there are some that never should have been nominated to begin with.  For instance, Up, Coraline and Astro Boy are on the list, and those are indeed sweet titles. We reviewed them right here.

But Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakuel?  That’s just an insult.  And surely we can all do better than “Tinkerbell and the Lost Treasure”.  Wasn’t that direct to video?  Or did it actually play in L.A. for a while?

Still though, a great big field goes into play soon–good luck to the nominees, whoever they may be.

As long as it’s not Alvin and the Chipmunks.

Watching Astro Boy, the mostly new remake of the original anime / manga, was a lot like using a new version of Windows for the first time.  It’s got a whole lot of fancy bells and whstles, and it’s downright charming in some senses, but it’s also got a whole lot of serious problems that get in the way of realizing its full capability.

The plotline is where most of these problems crop up.  When young Toby Tenma, an unaccountably brilliant lad who’s so hated by his classmates that they’re throwing things at him when he leaves a room, is accidentally killed by a new military robot, his grieving father (who, just incidentally, happens to be the father of modern robotics as well) decides that he’s going to build a replacement son.

Naturally, it’s not long before what he has a “what hath science wrought??” moment and figures it’s for the best to just shut the boy down.  But after the Toby-robot, later called Astro Boy, escapes and makes his way to the wreckage outside the town (actually BENEATH the town if you want to be specific) he briefly grew up in, he discovers that most everything and most everybody serves some purpose in life…even those things that were formerly unwanted.

Let’s get the problems out of the way first.  The plot has so many holes in it it’s a wonder how it manages to stay in one piece.  Enormous segments of events will be left utterly unexplained.

For instance: if the surface dwellers could just fly up to Metro City in any old hovercar, as they’re shown doing in the end, why didn’t they just pack up a few dozen busloads and take back the town themselves?  And while I’m at it, how did Cora manage to leave Metro City in the first place?  Don’t even get me started on why the Peacemaker robot, which is clearly absorbing EVERYTHING IN SIGHT when we first see it, up to and including the barrier in front of it, suddenly becomes SELECTIVE about his absorption capabilities in the final minutes.  He could’ve absorbed the entire city at the rate he was going.  And where did that ALIEN come from in the last thirty seconds?  Seriously?  Can we get a few BIGGER plotholes?  It’s almost blocking daylight at this point!

But.

But…Astro Boy is, let’s face it, a charming little romp with a hyperkinetic boy robot that features lots of high-speed action and sufficient gunfire to keep any anime or action buff occupied.  The only bad things that happen in the end are to the people who deserve them.  The ending could not be much happier.  They will even SAY as much IN THE FILM ITSELF.  You can’t telegraph a punch any more clearly than this one was.

The Screenhead Ten Scale likes a feel-good movie you can’t help but feel good about, but at the same time realizes that this dog will NOT hunt in terms of plot, and thus hands it a thoroughly mixed-bag five out of ten.

Ultra special treat for you today, folks–I’ve got an interview here with the ORIGINAL chair and founder of Kuzuricon, Joe Wall.  And from what he’s told us, he’s got a LOT to talk about concerning plenty of behind the scenes drama at the recently-launched anime convention.  So settle in for a treat and brace yourselves as we go five questions with Joe Wall.

1. Let’s start off with some background.  Who are you in relation to Kuzuricon?

I am the original chair.  I am also the cons founder.  I started “Project Con” back in July of 08.  I wanted to see a con that wasn’t just about Anime, but about gaming as well.  So I hung fliers and orginized the business.  What I didn’t realize is what kind of power I was giving these people by letting them sign the articles of incorporation.  It was my intent to give them power by policy, but not by law. At this time I don’t do anything for Kuzuricon as they have removed me from my position.

2. What is your actual affiliation to Kuzuricon?  Are you its original founder?

See the previous question, I answered in that, that I am the original founder.

3. Give us some background on the “takeover” you describe throughout your blog.

Well, this group of friends that currently run the con as we speak, were all part of a group called Otakazoo.  I don’t know if that’s in any relation to the fact they drove off anyone that wasn’t in their group, but it does explain why they chose to go with Samantha Nicles artwork instead of another artist’s (I’ll just say Lisa for now).  It appears they kept Cody around, because he does not have an important role in the con.  I can show you some of Lisa’s artwork if you wish to see it.  They basically claimed I was power tripping and playing favortism, which I never was.  They constantly refused to ask me any questions or work with me on anything and constantly acted on their own.

4.  Could you explain the “Kuzuricon Abridged” comic you posted here on your With Dint page’s blog? It’s hilarious but I don’t understand much of the references.

Frame 1:  Basically me introducing myself to the staff of Kuzuricon.  I’m explaining that I’m trying to start a con, even though I know how and what to expect, I don’t have any actual experience doing this.

Frame 2: This is just me announcing to the staff our planned date to have the con. Originally we were going to have it a week before in the Radisson of Kalamazoo. But something happened to where they were no longer contacting us.

Frame 3: This is explaining how things were interfering with me personally with the con.  The staff constantly fighting (Mostly rooted from Samantha Nicles) How I had just taken on a new job in Grand Rapids that was full time and required my full attention (software engineer and on call for Diamond Phoenix).  How even though with this new job, the lack of funding to start things was an issue.  We tried many attempts for sponsorships and other things, but I can only assume I and Cody were the only two people working on that. Hotel troubles, as explained we originally wanted the Radisson, but they wanted WAY to much for use of the hotel.

Frame 4: Basically Sam starting to be pugnacious towards me, and some being, “Why are we doing this” but at the same time supporting her.  This frame probably is mostly my speculation of what she was thinking. Obviously replace, “Flying the plane” with “running the con”.

Frame 5: This frame is pretty self explanatory.

Frame 6: the bar across the door, “Fire the staff” is to show how in attempts to battle their acting on their own. I scheduled two meetings that they chose not make, and because they didn’t, by policy of or con they were fired.  Using their own, “Acting on their own” attitude against them.  But what is not explained is why I did this to fire them.  Well, they were fighting constantly over nothing, not showing any kind of progress towards the con, constantly acting on their own, and one thing samantha was noted for, belittling my position to nothing.  Now to explain, “Belittling my position to nothing.”: I was the con chair.  As con chair our constitution, (That I wrote….) stated, “This individual is usually M.C. and is president of all operations. Oversees all projects, trains staff as needed, and gives suggestions as needed.”  She constantly misquoted this and only used, “Oversees all projects” to make everyone else think that I had a lesser role in the con.  And her definition of “Overseeing” was only that of a security guard… As in she explained it, that I was to watch the staff and report to the e-board of any problems I witness.  This is obviously not what the position entailed and not what I wrote this to mean.  So they were fired, and for about 2 weeks, everything was going good, as me and Rachel noted, more work was accomplished on the con than they did in 6 months.

Frame 7: Everything was going smoothly until I got a call from a lawyer, who I still wonder if he is a legitimate lawyer, calls and states that I need to cease and desist.  And tells me I need to give all my materials involving Kuzuricon to who he claimed was the, “Current staff” which is the staff that was fired.  He claimed that since they all signed the articles of incorporation, they had legal right to the con. Which is true and probably where I shot myself in the foot.

Frame 8: This is me basically looking back at it and reflecting how much I hate mediocrity.  I figured all or nothing. If these are going to be dead weights fire them and try to do it better, or have them fire me (I did threaten to quit on a few occasions because of how poor of a job they were doing.)  But it’s also to show that they have no idea what the hell they are doing, and thus why the con was pretty bad from what I could tell.

Now another rumor that’s going around is I was fired for being a hard ass, well that hardly makes sense, seeming it’s my job as a chair to make sure they’re doing their jobs.  And yet another rumor that’s going around is I was fired for dating Rachel, who was the artist alley coordinator.  And is part of the favoritism crap they were spewing.  I offered to help all of the staff, but they never asked me any questions.  Rachel, Cody, and pretty much anyone on the outside of that collective group of friends, were there few who actually asked me to help them. And I did.  There was Brian on the occasion, but his job wasn’t really that difficult.

5.  Will you be involved in the production of Kuzuricon 2010 in any way?

Maybe, If it even happens, I’d imagine the hotel is pretty angry at them, as well as a few other people.  But I won’t be doing anything unless they specifically want me involved.  I was thinking web admin… Since Brian has this spelling and grammar issue…  but only if I was invited back.  I did attend the con has a, “Bury the hatchet” move.  But I don’t foresee any of them planning to interact with me in the future.

And so, there you have it.  Seems that Kuzuricon was actually a gigantic hotbed of drama.  I’ve actually extended a five-question set to Kuzuricon press rep Melissa Caswell to see if we can get some rebuttal on this.  More on that when–if–it develops.

More news out of Kuzuricon for you today, folks–a panel featuring Todd Haberkorn was laden with data about several upcoming Funimation releases.  Trailers for Blassreiter and D. Greyman were played to wild cheering from the audience, as well as a few audition voice recordings, but where the news shone was in Darker than Black.

Haberkorn actually disseminated a bit of news about the long-running anime series, saying that it was to be “more realistic” and have a “more cinematic quality”, suggesting that they’re gunning for higher detail all around.

This is a double-edged sword as far as news goes–while it means that the final product will be plain old spectacular, it also likely increases the amount of time we’re all going to spend waiting to get our hands on the next installment of Darker Than Black.

At last report, volume six of Darker Than Black was now in stores, but volume seven may take a little longer than expected, especially with the expected upgrade in quality.

Studio Ghibli and co-founder Hayao Miyazaki must be very happy this year. Their children’s anime Ponyo is their biggest success in the US to date, earning $14 million dollars, 4 more than the worldwide hit Spirited Away. But the Japanese studio certainly won’t be resting on their laurels just yet. Not only are they developing a video game for the Nintendo DS, but their next film has been announced.

The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter is an adaptation of the first known narrative tale in Japan’s history. It tells the story of a strange child found inside a bamboo plant. The child grows up to be a beautiful woman, courted even by the Emperor of Japan himself, but soon her true nature, and her strange relationship with the moon, is revealed.

However, fans of films like Spirited Away and Princess Mononoke should know that Tale of the Bamboo Cutter will not be directed by Miyazaki himself. Instead, co-founder of the studio Isao Takahata will take the reins. Isao’s anime films, which tend to feel slightly more real than Miyazaki’s fantasies, are less known in the Western World, although his Graveyard of the Fireflies is considered to be one of the best animated films of all time. Tale of the Bamboo Cutter will be out next year.

Sometimes, you’ve got to have a bad idea to make a good movie.

This is the first ever, as far as I and Google can tell, review of the movie Hobocon, a screener of which I was given by the film’s three lead actors–Benny (Rob Couch), Doctor Boxcar (Jason Slingerland) and The Pixie (Wilhelm Rumpf)–during my recent appearance at Kuzuricon.

They propose one great and terrible idea: to go to Gencon, one of the biggest gaming conventions on the planet, and attempt to live there for three full days on nothing.

No money. No motel room.  No food.  But can they survive on the kindness and the good will of their fellow gamers, a collection of homemade pins that they intend to use as trade goods, as well as three misappropriated press badges (they’re not technically press) to get through three days?

The answer?  Yes, but just barely.  Sleep deprivation is not pretty.

They’re going to do a whole lot of things with this movie–you can get a general idea of what Gencon is, you can see some interviews on why people come to Gencon, and of course, tips on convention-going for the truly desperate, including “how to cadge free food”, “sleeping in anime rooms”, “night security guards are douchebags”,  and of course “hand sanitizer is your all-around hygienic friend”.

Naturally, this is a horrendously bad idea, but one thing is crystalline clear: this is a great movie if you’re even vaguely interested in the convention scene.  The Screenhead Ten Scale, meanwhile, recognizes that this is an excellent example of a movie only a handful of people will be interested in, and grants it accordingly an eight out of ten.  It’s only too bad that many people likely won’t care.

You ever hear voice actor Robert Axelrod talk?  I have, after attending the anime convention Kuzuricon in Battle Creek, Michigan, over the weekend.  It was actually a pretty awesome convention, even if I spent most of my time there feeling like the creepy old guy in the room.  I swear, if it weren’t for my press pass they would’ve wound up putting me up for Carousel.

Anyway, Robert Axelrod.  You might not recognize the name, but you’ll know his work a whole lot more.  He’s the guy who voiced Lord Zedd, among a great many others, and if you don’t remember Lord Zedd then I don’t know where you were in the 1990s.

He delivered a pretty sweet panel, in which he gave the history of his voice acting career, and how it extended upward through years of work.  Interesting points:

1. Robert Axelrod owns a thirty-year-old chunk of his own hair.  It’s a huge ponytail from his musical days.

2. The band “John Castle and the Junkyard Angels” had only one Junkyard Angel.  It was Robert Axelrod.

3. There are actually several ways to get into the Screen Actors Guild.  None of them are simple.

All of these interesting facts and more were part of a terrific panel, so kudos to Robert Axelrod for putting on a great and deeply informative show.  And there’s actually a fair chance he’s reading this since I gave him the link to us, so if you are reading, sir, hello again and don’t we all wish you could’ve stuck around for the Rumble Roses tournament.  It might have even gone off that way.

Big news for all you anime buffs this week–we’ve got a whole bunch of new and interesting things lined up over the course of the next couple days that starts right here, with a nearly live report from the depths of Kuzuricon, a new anime convention that just wrapped up in Battle Creek, Michigan.

And when I say new, I mean it–this is the first one they’ve ever had, though I had thought that there were more than this one.

Today we’re going to kick things off with a couple of photos I brought back–you can see from them why I’m not a photojournalist.  Though it’s not hard to feel a little like Frank West walking into this thing–you can see from the shot at right that the whole thing was taking place in an environment that felt downright terrifyingly like the Willamette Parkview Mall.

However, there was one great sign, that you can see right here, as the game room which was kept open almost twenty four hours daily invited patrons in in the grandest Kevin Smith style.

Anime buffs out there, you’re likely to want to keep an eye on Kuzuricon–once it gets its feet underneath it and pounds out its many dents (the Smash Brothers tournament, much like the game itself, was epic-scale lunacy on par with herding cats on heavy doses of mescaline and paint thinner, and the promised Rumble Roses tournament failed to materialized due to a double-dip curse of a lack of participants and a nigh-total lack of anyone over the age of eighteen) it will likely be the same kind of grandiose anime bacchanal that the word ACen brings to mind.

Quentin Tarantino is a director who loves to talk… and talk… and talk. He has a reputation of talking up his next projects only to leave them on the shelf or else dump them in the bin. His recent success, Inglourious Basterds, was a project he had been talking about ten years ago. And now, during the promotion of said war flick, Tarantino is now claiming that he is going to revisit Kill Bill. In a press conference in Mexico, Tarantino has said he plans to revisit the violent life of The Bride ten years later (both in reality and in the narrative). This does coincide with a previous Tarantino claim that the daughter of one of The Bride’s victims would eventually seek revenge on her.

But the real question is whether Quent will follow through. Let’s not forget that several years ago he had planned to make a sort of prequel to Pulp Fiction and Reservoir Dogs, following the early lives of the Vega brothers (John Travolta’s character in Pulp, Michael Madsen’s in Dogs), which never emerged. Not only that, but Tarantino once talked about producing several anime sequels to Kill Bill which also never saw fruition. Hell, we still haven’t seen the promised special edition Kill Bill DVD collection that joins the two parts into one “Bloody Affair” (though QT has said he’s back working on it).

There is, of course, the other issue of whether we really need to see another Kill Bill film. The first films were excellent but also distinctly closed by the end of Volume 2. Is a sequel so necessery? Is Tarantino brimming with new and exciting ideas, or is he out of ideas for new, original films and just furthering his career by retreading old territory? Regardless, Tarantino plans to make one film before the Kill Bill follow-up, and is considering a Western or a “30’s-style gangster” film.

It’s happening this weekend Toy Story and Toy Story 2 in 3-D double feature at select movie theaters.  You can watch an even cooler trailer at MSN Movie Trailers by clicking here.