The Movie That Will Never Be Made, But Should Be...

The first movie that so should be made, but will never be is a simple one-

Ghost In The Shell by Michael Mann.

Why? Because...when I first saw Heat, I realized that this film could so easily be adapted to the vision of a post-cyberpunk world that I saw Mamoru Oshii pull off in his production. Mann is an artist with color...all the scenes that are of a character in the film are shot in a particular color type (the character of Neil McCauley, played beautifully by Robert DeNiro, tends to be stark, simple, and blue while Vincent Hanna-played superbly by Al Pachino-is colorful and complicated. We never see Vincent in anything other than complexity, all the angles filled). All the shots are stylized-night is the "normal," all the daylight shots are flat and bleached out.

Ignore the gunfights-which are beautiful, by the way. Ignore the crime drama. Ignore everything else...at the heart of it is two stories of two lonely, alienated men-Neil due to the discipline he maintains ("Don't let yourself get attached to anything you are not willing to walk out on in 30 seconds flat if you feel the heat around the corner") and Vincent whom is working on pretty much failed marriage #3 and personal relationships that he's willing to toss aside for anything that gets in the way of catching guys like Neil. Two guys that admit that they respect each and like each other, but one day will probably have to kill the other because that's the discipline they're both under.

Ghost In The Shell is about alienation as well. For Major Kusanagi, does she really exist? Is there a brain in her skull, a ghost in her soul? Or is she just all software that mimics human existence? There's an iconic scene in the movie where Kusanagi is on a boat, and she sees a woman that might as well be her twin sister-or somebody using the same cybernetic body (the video is here on YouTube, 0:39 to 0:52). There's the last chase, as Section 9 hunts down the team that stole the Puppetmaster body from them for Section 6, using this iconic music as a part of the chase scene.

I can damn well see, in my mind, the film-shot for shot-with Michael Mann directing it. I can see the Major and Batou in their boat, talking about their circumstances. Or the chase scene through the market...not a shot for shot adaptation but one where Batou grabs items to make himself seem a bit more like the crowd as he hunts for an invisible man. And, the final, climatic gun fight...man vs. machine vs. man.

Of course, a US version is being made by Steven Speilberg, but I think that he'll miss the point, which is awful. Still, one can dream.

UPDATE: A great blog posting on the real life locations that inspired the movie. Worth looking at, and the rest of the blog, too.

Anime Here And Not...

Well, Steve DenBeste has hit about the same problem that I've had with the difference between getting stuff bit-torrented vs. waiting for the legal, official download. To rehash the issue from my perspective...

1. There are some series that will probably never make to the US. Legend of the Galactic Heroes will probably never see a US release-it's nearly 25 years old (and the animation was good for the era-but, still, 25 years old), nobody could afford to handle the dubbing track for the series (it would probably run to about 60 hours worth of dialog), etc, etc, etc...
2. There are some series that nobody could afford to bring to the US. Macross Frontier probably has a license cost that runs in seven+ digits, you would probably have to provide a high-level dub track that would include redoing all the songs in English (okay, some of Sheryl Nome's songs done in Very Good English would be very cool), -even ignoring the whole "who exactly owns it for handling overseas release" (I've heard everything from Harmony Gold to Big West to nobody having a clue).
3. There is some stuff that is so...esoteric that the fan base is very, very small. No question about it, there are some very rare things...
4. Time is not on your side in some ways. Fans can get fansubs of a show (usually of good quality) in less than 48 hours. Assuming your show does get picked up by a US distributor, we're talking anywhere between a year to two years before you get four episodes on a DVD at a time.

So, how would I solve this? If I had a great deal of money, I'd go into the anime distribution business myself (as a labor of love, not for profit...), and one of the things I'd insist upon as a part of my contract with the anime studio that we would get HD masters of the show in enough time to produce, subtitle, and distribute in HD the show on iTunes within 48 hours of the episode being shown in Japan.

However, I don't think I could get away with it...the US market is still viewed as a niche one in Japan for anime, and I don't think there's any way to get away with it...