After reviewing Zachary Oberzan‘s one-man Rambo adaptation Flooding with Love for the Kid, we thought it would be appropriate to shine a little spotlight on a short of his as well. Although this clip is an abridged version of the complete short film, the pleasantly weird storyline is still intact.
Tag Archives: 2007
CAPSULE: EVANGELION 1.11: YOU ARE (NOT) ALONE (2007/2010)
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DIRECTED BY: Masayuki, Kazuya Tsurumaki, Hideaki Anno
FEATURING: Voice actors
PLOT: Tokyo-3 is under assault by mysterious robot-like creatures known as “Angels”; two teenagers pilot the mechanical Evangelions that are the only things that can defeat the invaders and save humanity, while simultaneously dealing with pop quizzes and high school bullies.
WHY IT WON’T MAKE THE LIST: How do you assess the weirdness of anime, a fantastical genre in which underage nude sexpots with powder blue hair and blood red eyes don’t raise an eyebrow? An average anime is pretty damn weird to the uninitiated, but like other specialized subgenres (such as the kung fu film) anime follows its own conventions. Once the seasoned viewer internalizes those rules, the resulting films don’t look quite so strange. That means that, to be considered as a candidate for the List of the 366 Best Weird Movies of All Time, an anime needs to be weird even by Japanimation’s exalted standards of oddness. By reimagining stock giant robots as avenging angels in a mystical scenario worthy of a pop-art Book of Revelations, but embedding the messianic tale within the ordinary travails of an extremely wimpy high school freshman, Evangelion 1.11 nearly vaults over this raised weirdness bar. The hurdle this particular film can’t quite overcome, however, is the fact that it’s incomplete, only part I of a planned “rebuild” series of four movies—and that there’s already a previous entry in the franchise it’s remaking that reputedly blows 1.11 away with its bizarreness.
COMMENTS: Forget the plentiful, and plenty spectacular, duels between giant robots. (Obsessive fans of the series may stress to you that neither the Angels nor the Evas are technically giant robots, but don’t be fooled: if it looks like a giant robot, clatters like a giant robot, and shoots death rays from its fingertips, it’s a giant robot). Set aside the fantastic visions like the giant mutating cube that drops a diamond drill bit into downtown Tokyo-3. Even overlook portentous (pretentious?) lines of dialogue like, “The Apocrypha of the Dead Continue reading CAPSULE: EVANGELION 1.11: YOU ARE (NOT) ALONE (2007/2010)
SATURDAY SHORT: THE SCRITCH-SCRATCH OF BUSY LITTLE HANDS (2007)
Even a boy’s talent for sketching pictures that come to life can’t make him “cool” in this animated fable about the ups and downs of childhood popularity. Joy and Noelle Vaccese have done numerous bumpers for film festivals, and we love their trade name: “Twins are Weird.”
SATURDAY SHORT: I MET THE WALRUS (2007)
A brave 14 year old, Jerry Levitan, was able to sneak into John Lennon’s hotel room in Toronto and talk him into a Q&A session. Thirty-eight years later, Jerry worked with Josh Raskin, James Braithwaite, and Alex Kurina to make an animated video to accompany the recording.
“I Met the Walrus” was nominated for the 2008 Animated Short Academy Award, and won the 2009 Emmy for New Approaches.
SATURDAY SHORT: THE ADVENTURES OF MR. COO #4 (2007)
In this fourth installment of The Adventures of Mr. Coo, Mr. Coo turns into a carrot, explodes as a castle, makes amends with a car, etc. Although this is the fourth episode, it won’t make much more sense than the first three. This series is focused more on awe-inspiring animation than plot.
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