Sky Crawlers

animedreamer240

animedreamer240

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[sadht]Sky Crawlers[/sadht][sadhl=2334]the-sky-crawlers[/sadhl][sadhdc][/sadhdc]

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Is anyone else looking forward to this? Just the pretty visuals alone makes me want to watch it! :love:
 
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Re: The Sky Crawlers [Sukai Kurora] 2008

Didn't know about this one before I saw this (or your reference to it in the 'what are you looking forward to...' thread). Thanks for the tip! :)

Looks interesting. Will definately check it out.
 
Re: The Sky Crawlers [Sukai Kurora] 2008

Penguin said:
Didn't know about this one before I saw this (or your reference to it in the 'what are you looking forward to...' thread). Thanks for the tip! :)

Looks interesting. Will definately check it out.
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Yay!! I'm happy that at least one person responds. x3 -gives you a big strawberry cake- The Sky Crawlers looks like it's right up my alley. I discovered this anime by pure accident when I was looking for a trailer for something else. xD -ish lucky- :@_@:
 
Re: The Sky Crawlers [Sukai Kurora] 2008

The official Japanese website for Mamoru Oshii's next film, The Sky Crawlers, has revamped itself and announced the main cast. Rinko Kikuchi, who was nominated for a Supporting Actress Academy Award for her Chieko role in 2006's Babel, will voice Suito Kusanagi. Kusanagi is a commander of a base in an alternate-history aerial war and one of the two leads in this Production I.G adaptation of Hiroshi Mori's hit manga. This will be Kikuchi's second anime role, after a part in the Studio 4°C anime anthology Genius Party.

She will be joined by another prominent Japanese film actor, Ryo Kase, as the voice actor for the protagonist Yūichi Kannami. Kase, known to Western audiences for playing Shimizu in Clint Eastwood's Letters From Iwo Jima, was also Todoroki in Hideaki Anno's live-action Cutey Honey and Mayama in the live-action adaptation of the Honey and Clover manga. In the story, Kannami has been transfered to Kusanagi's base after he lost all of his memories. Chiaki Kuriyama (Battle Royale's Takako, Kill Bill's Gogo) and Shosuke Tanihara (Vexille's Leon, Lovely Complex's Maitake, Fudoh: The New Generation's Fudoh) will voice two supporting characters, Midori Mitsuya and Naofumi Tokino, respectively.

The website has also announced that theaters will start selling advance tickets on Saturday with three different mobile phone straps as a free gift. Each buyer can choose a strap with a super-deformed figurine of Suito, Yūichi, or Sanka (the story's retro aerial fighter). Finally, the website has unveiled the new poster (PDF format) that lists the four main castmembers. When it opens on August 2, the project will be Mamoru Oshii's first fully animated film since his 2004 Ghost in the Shell sequel, Innocence.

Thank you to Brian Ruh for the news tip.
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http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2008-04-16/oshii-casts-oscar-nominated-kikuchi-for-sky-crawlers
 
Re: The Sky Crawlers [Sukai Kurora] 2008

I love all of this new anime/cg prettiness thats been coming out recently. I was blown away by Vexille. The visuals were stunning, and the sci-fi story line was superb. The soundtrack had some excellent work by Paul Oakenfold, so I hope this is as good!

Thank you for pointing it out to me^^

H.
 
Re: The Sky Crawlers [Sukai Kurora] 2008

what that.. why is my quote here, i didn't reply to this thread. Oh well, i have very high expectations for this movie, especially when i saw the trailer, it looks really really good. i didn't read the book but man it got planes in it.. you know what that means.. lots of destruction
 
Re: The Sky Crawlers [Sukai Kurora] 2008

The CGI sequences look really nice and the story sounds interesting. Unfortunately It'll prolly be a while before I get a chance to see this one.
 
Re: The Sky Crawlers [Sukai Kurora] 2008

Oh yeah. This movie is going to played in Love & Anarchy festival (Rakkautta & Anarkiaa festivaalit) in here, Finland. I hadn't heard of this movie until just few days ago actually, but I am interested of it. Definitely going to see this along with Vexille and Evangelion: 0.1 You Are (Not) Alone.
Thought, that's gonna be some expensive fun, 7euros per ticket for movie. Thought, it's all okay considering it's on big screen.

I actually just moments ago booked myself the tickets for those three movies.
Luckily I got one of the remaining five tickets for Evangelion.
 
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This film has one three awards and sony is putting this animated film for an oscar. OHHRAH..

Anyone knows when the release date by sony is for Australia, I seriously want to get my hands on this and I don't want to watch it online. grr grr
 
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Anytime now, it should be released, I am currently waiting for the DVD release instead of downloading or streaming it....

I am a major fan of the direcotr's work... especially since he did director ghost in the shell and Jin roh
 
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I loved the trailer personally, and I'm definitely going to check this film out. Sounds like my kind of movie in every sense (and truthfully Oshii is just generally a director I tend to like).
 
Re: The Sky Crawlers

What I just watched is an ambient movie, meaning there is no real plot and little changes between the beginning and end.

About the structure, spoils when but not what happens:
You get 105 minutes of pretty boredom, one climatic scene, credits, a glimmer of hope, and after two hours it's over.

That's a good thing, if you like learning about another depressing world.

There's a lot of English dialogue mixed into the Japanese, part of which is only slightly off, which I found cringeworthy.

The design, shots, and Basset hound look like any other Oshii picture: stagnation on a very high level. A second viewing may reveal that the script is superbly crafted, but I can't be bothered.
 
Re: The Sky Crawlers

Just seen this, I think alexander is fairly dead on about this film. I've heard some people call this one of Oshii's more commerical films and I'd respectfully disagree - while it's probably more accessible than any of his other post-Innocence projects, it is still by no means another Ghost in the Shell or even (though he didn't direct it as alexander noted) another Jin-Roh. Hell, Jin-Roh is a crowd-pleasing popcorn muncher compared to this picture.

This is, simply put, a terribly inaccessible film that is very slow and features a dry, mostly monotone cast who are underplayed to the point of banality. If you're looking for an action film, or a slow-paced romance, or any sort of non-very-arthouse film you may have inferred this film to be from the trailer, well, that is not what Sky Crawlers is.

I can only recommend this movie to people who like arthouse films, even moreso to those who like Oshii, and even still there's a possibility they may not care for this movie. Think a Hou Hsiao-Hsien film given a veener of science fiction and WW2 elements with a plot that coalesces together in a couple of drips and you have more or less the basic idea.

What did I think of it? Well, I was truthfully on the fence for most of the film, however:

alexander said:
A second viewing may reveal that the script is superbly crafted, but I can't be bothered.
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I really think it is at least fairly well crafted. There's a point to this film and as much as the tone belies it this is ultimately something of a bizarre farce. This isn't quite the melodrama I had expected from the lush romantic beauty of Kenji Kawai's title music, it's both more mature and more mercilessly detached from its puerile characters. I felt the final act brought these elements together rather well,
particularly in undermining the intellenge, sanity and humanity of the entire cast. The sequence with the gunplay as to who would shoot whom, all of them responding with a vague, detached indifference was a total indictment of the humanity that had been sucked out of these child-things. Unsurprising given their memory and identity keeps getting screwed around with, playing their lives on an endless repeat that never changes or ages. Combine that with their odd movements throughout the film - repeatedly doing childish things and responding in childish ways or bland ones - one gets the impression this is not so much a tragedy than it is a farce about beings lacking any depth. This is a rather scathing film with little sympathy for its immature subjects, whose perpetual youth as cogs in a war machine has left them as bathetic in their emotional responses as they are flat in their conversation. When it comes down to it this film is as coldhearted about man as anything Kubrick's done.

Mulling over this movie - and it did give me plenty to mull about - I'm not altogether sure what I think of it, but I think I like it overall. I'll probably need to rewatch it to clarify my thoughts, and I look forward to that.

Still, while not a particularly enthusiastic recommendation from me, Sky Crawlers will find its audience, however small.
 
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Re: The Sky Crawlers

ending
valondar said:
one gets the impression this is not so much a tragedy than it is a farce about beings lacking any depth. This is a rather scathing film with little sympathy for its immature subjects,
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The original is just one novel in a series. It covers the finale, so the rest may have more action. But the Japanese like to wallow, especially in Weltschmerz, so I think it is intended to be sympathetic. More with the Kildren than with their fans. The prostitutes are in the middle.

Why else would the main character (conveniently named Kusanagi) go on living, and thereby remembering? The final scene feels like she waited for the boy's return, as a source of strength, to do something about it all.

The achievement of the script is that early in in the film we get inconspicuous hints, among them that Kusanagi could be trouble for the system: after they weren't warned of the bombers she rushed to see "the man who wanted me dead".

EDIT reminded me of Kino no tabi, but I've only seen ep1, so I can't vouch.
 
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Re: The Sky Crawlers

alexander said:
ending
The original is just one novel in a series. It covers the finale, so the rest may have more action. But the Japanese like to wallow, especially in Weltschmerz, so I think it is intended to be sympathetic.
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I've done a bit of reading on the film since my post, and apparently Oshii intended the film version - rather than the novel - as a rather angry critique of hikikomori lifestyle, with the main character an intentionally bland avatar trapped, as they are, in a perpetual man-child state. Whether or not they're sympathetic in the novel is another thing, Oshii is known for putting his own mark on stuff he adapts (cf: Ghost in the Shell, naturally, but also his Urusei Yatsura film Beautiful Dreamer), and, of course, giving a damn about the characters is usually not his strong suit.

I think that probably backs up my feeling that this movie just does not like its cast at all, but eh. I can see why someone would feel the opposite - I just wound up feeling that the film is something of a bait and switch, promising a touching melodrama about characters it cares about and then quite frankly refusing to deliver. Since it's still structured like that I'm sure many would feel it's just a failed attempt at such a melodrama; certainly the approach the film takes leaves it spectacularly dry, even for Oshii. Innocence had more warmth. As such I'm still a little uncertain where I stand on this film, it's a quite interesting one to think about but a rather difficult one to watch.

EDIT reminded me of Kino no tabi, but I've only seen ep1, so I can't vouch.
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I've seen the series, I really don't think there's much similarity.
 
Re: The Sky Crawlers

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valondar said:
I've done a bit of reading on the film since my post, and apparently Oshii intended the film version - rather than the novel - as a rather angry critique of hikikomori lifestyle,
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Google only finds one mention of that, on ANN. Personally I think it's a load of. Starting with how often it's alluded that nobody else understands this film. This is why I don't read reviews.

If it were true Sky Crawler would be a bigger failure, because apparently no one picked up on it. I certainly didn't think of hikikomori or otaku when Yuuichi lies on his bunk while Mitsuya explains the world. Those types would protest.

The forum for that article yields an interesting fact: the movie ends differently. In the novel Kannami shot Kusanagi. So Oshii actually made it more positive and hopeful! That reviewer calls it cynicism...

EDIT checked out the guy, he works in the industry, which is more than I can say. IMHO the review format just brings out the worst in otherwise sane people.
 
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Re: The Sky Crawlers

alexander said:
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Google only finds one mention of that, on ANN. Personally I think it's a load of. Starting with how often it's alluded that nobody else understands this film. This is why I don't read reviews.
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The reviewer claims the interpretation comes from notes he was given on the film. The bit about the movie being specifically about otaku and the anime industry is apparently just his own extrapolation, though, but apparently Oshii did state he intended for the film to be a critique of hikikomori.

If it were true Sky Crawler would be a bigger failure, because apparently no one picked up on it.
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I never would have inferred this to be the point of the film at all, it would be far easier for me to read that kind of meaning into, say, Neon Genesis Evangelion. As commentaries go this one is too self-absorbed and obscure to really have any kind of resonance.

But I did get how little the film liked its characters and were fairly critical of them as immature non-beings, so I'd argue it's not a completely extratextual inferrence. I certainly felt the movie was terribly cynical and deconstructed its own premise a tad, though I never in a million years would have made the leap to 'hikikomori critique'.

Anyway, does it want a happy ending for them at the end? I'm not sure what to make of that ending really, because how does one feel happy for characters so thin and non-there? Are we to infer they are finally waking up from their long dream of non-being or what? (I guess so, I suppose I'm meant to sympathise not with the nonpersons they are but rather they persons they will become... or something?)

So does it all work? *shrug* I'm just not sure. I haven't felt so ambivalent and conflicted about a movie in a long time; and usually I fall instantly in love with an Oshii film long before I try to understand them - I get Angel's Egg now, but when I first saw it it was just an out-of-body experience. I think that's an apt comparison because much like that film the point of Sky Crawlers is not at all clear on a first viewing, or even maybe several viewings.
 
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Re: The Sky Crawlers

valondar said:
The reviewer claims the interpretation comes from notes he was given on the film.
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My bad, I overlooked that post. Those notes would be interesting. I imagine the PR people seeing the finished movie, having a heart attack, and clobbering together buzzwords to get more people to watch it. Because it was expensive.

(even googling in Japanese I can't find another mention of Sky Crawler and hikikomori)
 
Re: The Sky Crawlers

alexander said:
(even googling in Japanese I can't find another mention of Sky Crawler and hikikomori)
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Yeah it doesn't seem to be a common tack to take from the movie. Anyway, I mainly brought that up just to point out I don't seem to be the only person who thought the film's attitude to its characters was intentionally detached and callous.

As for the expense, if anything this looks like a visual step down from Innocence, at least in terms of character movement and design. Certainly, though, this is by no means box office material and is not going to sell like pancakes like the first Ghost in the Shell. I can see why it underperformed in Japan and I think the same pattern will be repeated here when it's released.
 
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