Ninja Scroll Gets Real

I appears that Hollywood is getting tired of remaking Japanese horror movies and Spanish thrillers and has moved on to elsewhere for their source of "new" ideas. Coming to a theatre near you in the next few years are remakes of Anime classics Battle Angel Alita, Akira and Astro Boy and you can now add one more to the list.

Today Warner Brothers announced that they have acquired the rights to, and will be making a live action remake of, Ninja Scroll. IMDb's plot outline for the original reads, "A ninja-for-hire is forced into fighting an old nemesis who is bent on overthrowing the Japanese government. His nemesis is also the leader of a group of demons each with superhuman powers."

I'm not sure how Warner Bros. will tackle some of the scenes from the anime like the giant rock-man raping the poisoned ninja girl or the naked woman whose snake tattoos spring to life and writhe around her body or the endless limb slicing and body hacking. Either they make an R Rated film which the fanboys will poo poo and won't make much money or they make a PG film which the fanboys will poo poo but will make a lot of money... hmmm.

I'll keep my eyes on this one.

Red vs Blue Goes Animated

I can't put my finger on the date or time when "cartoon" became "anime" but according to Joystiq (and the following video) Red vs Blue, probably the most famous machinima ever to grace our computer screens, has now gone all animated.

At first I thought this was a bizarre turn of events seeing as the whole POINT of the series was that it was *in* the Halo world but after watching the clip it appears as though the banal banter and stupid humour still stands meaning RvB is still RvB.

In a world where everybody is jumping on the CG bandwagon it's good to see someone jumping off the bandwagon and back to the good ol' days (of bad 80s cartoons). It's a bit hard to see through the shaky cam video so I'll reserve my final judgement until I've seen the final product.

Now back to this misuse of the word "anime". Anime is Japanese animation often based on a manga (comic) and is not a general word to describe any and all hand-drawn or CG animation. Blame Nickelodeon for the poor kids these days who don't know the difference.

ReelAnime 2008 presented by MadMan Cinema

It's been a while since I saw a (good) anime film at the cinema so I was stoked to see an email from MadMan Entertainment declaring that not one but FOUR anime films are to be shown during July across Australia.

The films on show between July 3 and July 16 are:

- APPLESEED EX MACHINA
- BATMAN: GOTHAM KNIGHT
- VEXILLE
- THE GIRL WHO LEAPT THROUGH TIME

More info: http://www.madman.com.au/reelanime/