Spirited Away Wins Award; Cowboy Bebop Opening Soon

May Kasahara writes "Hayao Miyazaki's Spirited Away just won the Best Animated Feature award from the Los Angeles Film Critics Association. Note that last year's winner in this category was Shrek, which then went on to win the Best Animated Feature Oscar. The article says it's still too soon to detect a pattern, but IMHO, Spirited Away is the best film among this year's eligible Oscar selections, and at any rate, it's good karma :)" And rnb writes "I'm not sure when the listing was created, and unfortunately, I don't have much more information, but imdb has a January 2003 release date for the Cowboy Bebop: Knocking On Heavens Door. Yahoo also has a listing that seems to indicate this limited release may only be in LA and NY, but I'm still hoping to get it in at least one theater here in Philadelphia."

Comments

Metropolis

[nuhonda]

bummer that Metropolis got skipped due to timing.

Bebop

[The Raven]

I'm glad that the Cowboy Bebop movie is finally out, though I have only a slim chance to see it in theaters... I'll probably have to wait for the DVD.

For those who have not heard of Cowboy Bebop, it's a dark humor anime with a very unique soundtrack... very stylish. 26 OAV episodes, 13 of which were released for TV, 13 only on OAV... you can often tell which are which pretty easily, since the OAV only episodes are darker and carry more of the plot. It's worth a view if you like anime, and if you don't like anime... well, may God save your soul! ^_^

Re:Bebop

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought that the Seatbelts were a fictitious band comprised of those individuals whom Yoko Kanno had called upon to perform. The actual band, the Seatbelts, was in the Bebop timeline and these musicians were merely playing their roles in the Seatbelts.

Coyboy Bebop - Movie. Not out yet?

[Kenja]

Sheesh, I watched that thing almost a year ago. In truth its not that good. Its just like a long episode with better art. The story does nothing for the over all series. Which is a disapointment as I was hopping for somthing that tied everything together with regards to the char' history.

Re:Coyboy Bebop - Movie. Not out yet?

[Imperial Tacohead]

I disagree. It's been a while since I sat through the movie, but I remember thinking that it tied into the series very well, with a lot of foreshadowing for the final two episodes. A lot of dialog (especially the stuff about dreams) is paralleled in the Real Folk Blues, and the fact that Spike saw himself in the character of the crazy terrorist gives you some insight as to how he felt at the very end. Not to say that I wouldn't have traded the movie for another Vicious episode...but I thought it was pretty good.

I think Disney was right...

[dagg]

I think Disney made the right call on waiting to blitzkrieg the public with Spirited Away ads. If they wait until it gets tons of awards, then they'll surely make more money.

Re:spirited away?

[jacoplane]

I saw the movie here in Switzerland last christmas, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. I'm not Japanese (Dutch) and didn't feel there were any parts of the story I didn't understand because I don't know anything about Japanese folklore. Your argument might have made sense for Princess Mononoke, which was based on a Shintoist myth if I recall correctly. Which parts of the storyline exactly did you think were not clear to you?

Re-rendered Shrek in high resolution 3d IMAX...

[fingal]

Recently, I had the pleasure of attending the VFX 2002 conferance where I was treated to a preview of the new render of Shrek by Don MacBain on behalf of PDI / Dreamworks. This was an extension of the work that they had done on Antz and basically consisted of:-

• re-rendering for IMAX. As a result of the larger screen format, a lot of the cuts where no longer appropriate so they changed a load of the camera views and speed of pans to make it more palatable on an IMAX screen (no motion sickness).
• Upping the resolution. I forget what the original resolution of render was but the target for this version is (from memory) 4000 x 3000 pixels.
• Rendering the whole thing as fully polarised-light 3d.

They only had one scene completed which was the crossing the rope bridge over the lava scene, but I can say that it was the most incredible bit of computer animation that I've ever scene. Don't know when the final thing is going to be finished, but I would definately recommend it to anyone...

Cowboy Bebop: Opening soon? Try a year ago.

[autopr0n]

Holy crap... is there really anyone out there who hasn't already seen the fansub of this, like, a year ago? If you ask me, these anime companies are really shooting themselves in the foot by delaying American desireada by so much.

If there's one thing about the free market, it's that people will always create things people want. That's why the war on drugs doesn't work. Of course, in the case of CB:KOHD, it was distributed for free, possibly throwing my free market analogy completely worthless. but. um. the point is that a high quality English translation of the film has been available for over a year.

If internet geeks could do it in that short time, why couldn't the company? It seems to me they would have made a lot more money if they were putting out a movie that most people were excited to see a year ago...