“As a sentient lifeform, I hereby demand political asylum!”
GHOST IN THE SHELL plays this weekend (August 10th and 17th) at The Tivoli at midnight as part of their Reel Late at the Tivoli midnight series.
Mamoru Oshii’s GHOST IN THE SHELL (1995) is one of the ultimate nerd movies. It’s science fiction anime aimed at smart audiences, and one that raised the bar for Japanese animation. Its complex story is set in a society where being a full-flesh human is no longer the norm. Is humanity losing its existence or is it loosely defined? Cyborgs are part human, part machine, and a continuation of a previously “whole” human entity. Major Motoko Kusanagi, a full-replacement cyborg in the national security division Section 9, is investigating a mysterious hacker who goes by the name “The Puppet Master.” It may be apparent throughout the film that many of its aspects and ideas have been borrowed for other films such as THE MATRIX (source code; plugging into the network) and INCEPTION (diving into another conscious).
Now lucky St. Louisans can experience GHOST ON THE SHELL when it plays on the big screen at The Tivolimidnights August 10th and 17th.
The Tivoli’s located at 6350 Delmar Blvd., University City, MO. Admission is a mere $8!
A Facebook invite for the screening can be found HERE
Reel Late at the Tivoli takes place every Friday and Saturday night and We Are Movie Geeks own Tom Stockman (that’s me!) is there on Fridays with custom trivia questions about the films and always has DVDs, posters, and other cool stuff to give away. Ticket prices are $8. We hope to see everyone late at night in the coming weeks.
Stay tuned here at We Are Movie Geeks for more updates on the Midnight series!
Another brilliant lineup of midnight movies for the ‘Reel Late at The Tivoli’ to kick off the summer 2018 season. It’s an especially good variety of titles that will draw the late night movie buff crowd with several retro surprises. The Midnight Movie experience has always catered to a college-age crowd and that’s the way it should be. The oldest film this time is David Lynch’s ERASERHEAD from 1978 and the most recent is THE WITCH from 2015. There’s a Miyazaki of course (SPIRITED AWAY) and a couple of standards including BILL AND TED’S EXCELLENT ADVENTURE and GHOST IN THE SHELL. I’ve been hosting the midnight show at The Tivoli for ten years now and I’m certain CRIMSON PEAK, BUT I’M A CHEERLEADER and THE WITCH, all new to the Tivoli midnight roster, will draw good crowds.
The Tivoli is located in St. Louis at 6350 Delmar Blvd. in “the Loop”
This week’s episode of our podcast WE ARE MOVIE GEEKS The Show is up! Hear WAMG’s Cate Marquis, Jim Batts and Tom Stockman talk movies. We’ll discuss the weekend box office and review T2 TRAINSPOTTING, RAW, GHOST IN THE SHELL, LIFE, BOSS BABY, SMURFS THE LOST VILLAGE, FRANTZ, WILSON, ISRAELI CUISINE, and PERSONAL SHOPPER. We’ll also discusss the upcoming ‘Classics in the Loop’ series that starts this week at The Tivoli.
If you are going to re-make a classic, fan favorite film, you might want to keep the original story. Oddly, the live action remake of the anime classic GHOST IN THE SHELL, based on the Japanese manga of the same name, recreates several scenes, sometimes shot-for-shot and keeps some of the same characters. But the American live-action version ditches the mystery, the atmospheric moodiness, and the philosophical aspects in favor of a standard, less-interesting action film story line. That is a lot of changes, without even getting into the controversy of a largely non-Asian lead cast in this manga-inspired story set in futuristic Japan.
Fans of the 1995 Japanese anime original GHOST IN THE SHELL will be disappointed with this hollowed-out, less-interesting live-action American remake. Those who never saw the Japanese original are likely to wonder what all the fuss was about over such a standard if violent film.
Sure, the visual effects look good – impressively good – as does star Scarlett Johansson. Johansson plays the Major, an anti-terrorist specialist who is also a human-cyborg hybrid. Set in a futurist Japanese city and in a time when the line between humans and machine is increasingly blurred, Major and teammate Batou (Danish actor Pilou Asbaek, A WAR, LUCY) work for the anti-terrorist division Section 9. They are tracking an elusive terrorist called Kuze (Michael Pitt), who is attacking the Hanka Corporation, a private company that provides cyborgs and technology-enhancements for humans for government use. Major’s and Batou’s boss is Aramaki (Beat Takeshi Kitano), a Japanese government official attached to Hanka Corporation.
Unlike the Japanese anime GHOST IN THE SHELL, the live-action one begins with an origin story for Major. Major is a herself a new step forward in human-cyborg combinations: an entirely artificial body or “shell” whose human component, called a “ghost,” is only her brain. Major’s brain was salvaged from her original body, which was too damaged to repair. Because of the extent of the damage, Major’s ghost, her human spirit, retains only vague memories of her former life. A scientist, Dr. Ouelet (Juliette Binoche), helps keep her cyborg body in top shape, and also serves as a kind of combination friend and mother figure for her.
Both the 1989 manga and the 1995 original Japanese anime film were hugely influential, winning fans around the world and sparking sequels, movies and TV shows. The film influenced a lot of filmmakers, notably the Wachowskis. The story in this live-action version combines elements of the Wachowskis’ THE MATRIX, along with THE BOURNE IDENTITY, TERMINATOR and other films thrown in. The story is gone but oddly, entire scenes, including some action sequences, are recreated in the new version, sometimes shot-for-shot. the film works hard to incorporate little elements from the original, like the trash truck, the diving scene and the spider-like tank. The live-action film does keep the high level of violence in the anime original.
The new film’s strong point is its breath-taking special effects, and Johansson’s action character performance. A lot of care has been put into re-creating the visual aspects of the anime film, right down to Johansson sporting the same haircut. Johansson wears a form-fitting, flesh-toned body suit to represent the nudity of the original animated character, who despite the film’s gender-role questioning, seems to spend a lot of time nearly bare. Of course, all that questioning is absent in this film, but viewers get a good look at a very fit, curvy Johansson.
The futuristic seaside city where the story takes place looks even grittier and grayer, and all those visual details are skillfully done. A dash of color and Japanese flavor appears in an early scene, where high-powered businessmen and government figures at a corporate function are served by lavishly dressed cybernetic geishas, a sequence that evolves into one of the film’s most violent and visually complex, as the cyborgs, hacked by a terrorist, attack the guests.
In the Japanese animated original, the terrorist that Major and Batou were hunting was a hacker known as the Puppet Master, a figure so shadowy that the authorities were unsure if “he” was male or female, or even human. In the live-action version, that mystery is gone. They know they are hunting a man, who is bent on destroying the Hanka Corporation and their cybernetic work.
Of course, one of the things that made GHOST IN THE SHELL so interesting was the philosophical questioning it raised. Not just its cautionary tale about technology, the commentary on growing corporate power and its intertwining with government power, but about gender identity and sexuality, larger philosophical matters, and even life itself. In the live-action film, all those intriguing elements had been eliminated, reduced to a little commentary on technology in the action movie plot, making for a far-less interesting film.
The visual effects and action in the new GHOST IN THE SHELL are well-done, and Johansson, Asbaek and Binoche try to squeeze what drama there is out of the standard action story. But it is not enough to maintain interest and audiences may be forgiven for nodding off, only to be jarred awake by the film’s outbursts of gunfire and mayhem.
The live-action GHOST IN THE SHELL is a disappointment for fans of the anime original. The flashy special effects alone may satisfy some film-goers but the standard action film plot unlikely to garner any new fans.
In the near future, Major (Scarlett Johansson) is the first of her kind: A human saved from a terrible crash, who is cyber-enhanced to be a perfect soldier devoted to stopping the world’s most dangerous criminals. When terrorism reaches a new level that includes the ability to hack into people’s minds and control them, Major is uniquely qualified to stop it. As she prepares to face a new enemy, Major discovers that she has been lied to: her life was not saved, it was stolen. She will stop at nothing to recover her past, find out who did this to her and stop them before they do it to others. Based on the internationally acclaimed Japanese Manga, “The Ghost in the Shell.”
Directed by Rupert Sanders and stars Scarlett Johansson, Pilou Asbæk, Takeshi Kitano, Michael Pitt & Juliette Binoche.
See GHOST IN THE SHELL in theaters nationwide on March 31, 2017 in REALD 3D and IMAX 3D.
WAMG invites you to enter for the chance to win TWO (2) seats to the advance screening of GHOST IN THE SHELL on March 29TH at 7PM in the St. Louis area.
Answer the following:
Scarlett Johansson stars as Griet, a young 17th-century servant in the household of the Dutch painter Johannes Vermeer in which 2003 film?
TO ENTER, ADD YOUR NAME, ANSWER AND EMAIL IN OUR COMMENTS SECTION BELOW.
OFFICIAL RULES:
1. YOU MUST BE IN THE ST. LOUIS AREA THE DAY OF THE SCREENING.
2. No purchase necessary. A pass does not guarantee a seat at a screening. Seating is on a first-come, first served basis. The theater is overbooked to assure a full house. The theater is not responsible for overbooking.
Toy Fair is an annual trade show where hundreds of toy companies get together to showcase their latest innovations for buyers and press. The following is a photo recap from the Funko booth. To see the rest of our coverage, click HERE.
As someone who gave custom Batman Funko Pops to the groomsmen at my wedding, I had to stop by their booth during my Toy Fair trip. Unfortunately their area was forever crowded so I had to settle for a quick walkthrough on my own. This does not come as much of a shock though. To say that Funko has transformed into a phenomenon these last few years is a bit of an understatement.
Funko’s Pop line of collectible vinyl figures started with Batman and now features thousands of characters from Film, TV, comics, and pop culture. There are also seemingly as many variations of Batman as there are total number of properties they license. The Pop brand has expanded to include t-shirts, household items, and several monthly subscriptions based on properties like Marvel, DC Comics, Star Wars and now Disney. Funko also sells Dorbz, Mystery Minis, Rock Candy, Vinyl Vixens, Super Deluxe, Hikari, and several different lines of action figures.
Comparing the first wave of Funko’s to the latest generation reveals stunning progress on these figures. They have an uncanny ability of capturing an actor’s appearance into a perfectly realized 3D vinyl caricature. Just look at the JOHN WICK, GODFATHER, TWIN PEAKS, WESTWORLD, and STRANGER THINGS figures. You do not need any packaging to tell you the identity of each figure.
While there were hundreds of Funko items on display, I tried to focus my photos just on the ones that are relatively new or have not yet been released. Below are some of my favorites, including a peak at some new lines…
“As a sentient lifeform, I hereby demand political asylum!”
GHOST IN THE SHELL screens at The Tivoli Tuesday, February 7th at 7pm (subtitled) and Wednesday, February 8th at 7:30pm (dubbed).
Mamoru Oshii’s GHOST IN THE SHELL (1995) is one of the ultimate nerd movies. It’s science fiction anime aimed at smart audiences, and one that raised the bar for Japanese animation. Its complex story is set in a society where being a full-flesh human is no longer the norm. Is humanity losing its existence or is it loosely defined? Cyborgs are part human, part machine, and a continuation of a previously “whole” human entity. Major Motoko Kusanagi, a full-replacement cyborg in the national security division Section 9, is investigating a mysterious hacker who goes by the name “The Puppet Master.” It may be apparent throughout the film that many of its aspects and ideas have been borrowed for other films such as THE MATRIX (source code; plugging into the network) and INCEPTION (diving into another conscious).
Now lucky St. Louisans can experience GHOST ON THE SHELL when it plays on the big screen at The TivoliTuesday, February 7th at 7pm (subtitled) and Wednesday, February 8th at 7:30pm (dubbed).
The Tivoli’s located at 6350 Delmar Blvd., University City, MO.
Get a first look at the new GHOST IN THE SHELL spot before it debuts in the Big Game on Sunday.
Based on the internationally-acclaimed sci-fi property, GHOST IN THE SHELL follows Major, a special ops, one-of-a-kind human-cyborg hybrid, who leads the elite task force Section 9. Devoted to stopping the most dangerous criminals and extremists, Section 9 is faced with an enemy whose singular goal is to wipe out Hanka Robotic’s advancements in cyber technology.
Directed by Rupert Sanders, the film stars Scarlett Johansson, Pilou Asbæk, Takeshi Kitano, Michael Pitt & Juliette Binoche.
GHOST IN THE SHELL opens in theaters nationwide on March 31, 2017 in REALD 3D and IMAX 3D.
In celebration of the upcoming film GHOST IN THE SHELL, stars Scarlett Johansson, “Beat” Takeshi Kitano, and director Rupert Sanders joined fans and influencers from across the globe in Tokyo on Sunday for the film’s global launch party.
Scarlett Johansson on stage during the Ghost in the Shell Fan Event at Tabloid in Tokyo, Japan November 13, 2016
Opening with Taiko drummers, including the legendary anime film composer Kenji Kawai, the event held at TABLOID began with a screening of never-before-seen footage from the film. Attendees were given an exclusive behind-the-scenes look at the costumes and props from the film, as well as an opportunity to capture their experience in a film-centric experiential photo booth – “Becoming the Major.” The exciting show concluded with Johansson, Kitano, and Sanders debuting the film’s global trailer, triggering its worldwide launch.
Based on the internationally-acclaimed sci-fi property, GHOST IN THE SHELL follows Major, a special ops, one-of-a-kind human-cyborg hybrid, who leads the elite task force Section 9. Devoted to stopping the most dangerous criminals and extremists, Section 9 is faced with an enemy whose singular goal is to wipe out Hanka Robotic’s advancements in cyber technology.
GHOST IN THE SHELL opens in theaters March 31, 2017.
Paramount Pictures and DreamWorks Pictures have announced that production is underway on GHOST IN THE SHELL, starring Scarlett Johansson (AVENGERS: AGE OF ULTRON, LUCY) and directed by Rupert Sanders (SNOW WHITE AND THE HUNTSMAN). The film is shooting in Wellington, New Zealand.
Paramount Pictures will release the film in the U.S. on March 31, 2017.
The film, which is based on the famous Kodansha Comics manga series of the same name, written and illustrated by Masamune Shirow, is produced by Avi Arad (“THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN 1 & 2,” “IRON MAN”), Ari Arad (“GHOST RIDER: SPIRIT OF VENGEANCE”), and Steven Paul (“GHOST RIDER: SPIRIT OF VENGEANCE”). Michael Costigan (“PROMETHEUS”), Tetsu Fujimura (“TEKKEN”), Mitsuhisa Ishikawa, whose animation studio Production I.G produced the Japanese GHOST IN THE SHELL film and television series, and Jeffrey Silver (“EDGE OF TOMORROW,” “300”) will executive produce.
Based on the internationally-acclaimed sci-fi property, GHOST IN THE SHELL follows the Major, a special ops, one-of-a-kind human-cyborg hybrid, who leads the elite task force Section 9. Devoted to stopping the most dangerous criminals and extremists, Section 9 is faced with an enemy whose singular goal is to wipe out Hanka Robotic’s advancements in cyber technology.
“We are so pleased to be in Wellington to shoot ‘GHOST IN THE SHELL,’” said producers Avi Arad, Ari Arad, Michael Costigan and Jeffrey Silver. “The city boasts state-of-the-art production facilities and a rich urban landscape that make it an ideal setting for a sci-fi action film. The crew-base in New Zealand working on the film is first class, and working with Sir Richard Taylor and the team at Weta Workshop is inspirational on every level. The people of New Zealand have been terrific partners in helping us bring this story and its beloved characters to audiences around the world and we are thankful for their continued hospitality.”
Paramount Pictures and DreamWorks Pictures have entered into a marketing agreement with the New Zealand Film Commission (NZFC), Tourism New Zealand (TNZ), Callaghan Innovation and the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment (MBIE) which recognizes the significant economic, cultural and industry development benefits the production will bring to New Zealand. The collaboration will further promote New Zealand’s growing screen industry, develop local talent and showcase New Zealand to the rest of the world.
“The production will broaden the perceptions of the diversity of New Zealand’s locations by showcasing a science fiction urban setting in New Zealand,” says Dave Gibson NZFC Chief Executive.
Tourism New Zealand’s Chief Executive Kevin Bowler said: “Tourism New Zealand is thrilled to be working with Paramount Pictures for the first time on ‘GHOST IN THE SHELL.’ Film tourism is an important element in Tourism New Zealand’s work to inspire people to visit New Zealand and we look forward to this new opportunity to showcase New Zealand to the rest of the world.”
The cast of GHOST IN THE SHELL includes Beat Takeshi Kitano (“MERRY CHRISTMAS, MR. LAWRENCE,” “BATTLE ROYALE” series) as Daisuke Aramaki, Juliette Binoche (“THE ENGLISH PATIENT,” “CHOCOLAT”) as Dr. Ouelet, Michael Pitt (“Hannibal,” “Boardwalk Empire”) as Kuze, Pilou Asbæk (“BEN-HUR,” “LUCY”) as Batou, and Kaori Momoi (“MEMOIRS OF A GEISHA,” “HONG KONG CONFIDENTIAL”). The members of Section 9 are played by Chin Han (“INDEPENDENCE DAY: RESURGENCE”), Danusia Samal (“Tyrant”), Lasarus Ratuere (“Terra Nova”), Yutaka Izumihara (“UNBROKEN”) and Tuwanda Manyimo (“THE ROVER”).
The film’s crew includes Cinematographer Jess Hall (“THE SPECTACULAR NOW”), Editor Neil Smith (“SNOW WHITE AND THE HUNTSMAN”), Production Designer Jan Roelfs (“FAST & FURIOUS 6”), and Costume Designers Kurt Swanson and Bart Mueller (“THE HUNGER GAMES: MOCKINGJAY – PARTS 1& 2”).
