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- Christopher Nolan’s Films Ranked: #2 ‘Dunkirk’ (2017)
- Retro Review: 90’s Anime Series ‘Mobile Suit Gundam: 0083 – Stardust Memory’
- ‘The Devil is a Part Timer!’ Anime Season Two Release Coming in 2023?
- Comics Review: Silk #2 A New Spider for a New Age?
- Amazon Renews Robert Kirkman’s ‘Invincible’ for 2 More Seasons
| Christopher Nolan’s Films Ranked: #2 ‘Dunkirk’ (2017) Posted: 01 May 2021 05:00 PM PDT
#2 in my ranking of Christopher Nolan's films.
This is the work of a very clever genius, a filmmaker in complete command of every aspect of filmmaking and able to bend it all to his will. Christopher Nolan is able to combine art house construction with broad filmmaking appeal to create one of the most invigorating big screen adventures of the last few years, with one very small exception. Much like 1917 by Sam Mendes, Dunkirk represents a new generation of elite filmmakers tackling the subjects their forebears repeatedly mined for stories in interesting and fresh new ways.
Nolan's fascination with time and narrative structure is on full display with Dunkirk's three competing narratives. He tells the audience at the beginning what he's doing, but he's a bit cryptic about it. Personally, I didn't get it until halfway through my first screening. At my third or fourth, I know going in that the action on the mole takes place over a week, the action on the sea takes place over a day, and the action in the air takes place over an hour. It's exactly what Nolan says with his few titles, of course. This interesting structure provides Nolan leeway to tell an expansive, but somewhat generalized story of the Dunkirk evacuation, all coalescing around a single, exciting event.
The closest we get to a main character is Tommy, played by Fionn Whitehead, as a young soldier that, to me, recalls Tom, the main character from Stuart Cooper's Overlord. Detached from what's left of his unit at the beginning of the film when he's the sole survivor of an attack on the streets of Dunkirk, Tommy spends the movie trying to find a way off the beach. His being unattached allows him to move around to different parts of the action at the mole, showing the audience a lot more than if Tommy had been left to wait in the queue along with the majority of those waiting for rescue. He sees the sinking of two boats, one of which he's on, the despair of those on the beach, and is part of a desperate attempt to leave in a small Dutch ship that's been washed ashore at low tide.
The tale at sea contains the most emotionally affecting moments centered around Mr. Dawson, a dedicated older man who owns and captains the Moonstone, a small motor boat the British government has requisitioned for service to retrieve the stranded British soldiers, and George, a local boy and friend of Mr. Dawson's son, who jumps on for the ride because he wants to be useful and make something of himself. As they sail south to France, they pick up a young officer who's the last survivor of a U-boat attack on a ship, and he's shellshocked for the experience. The officer ends up fighting Mr. Dawson's effort to continue on, accidentally pushing George down the stairs to the lower deck and hitting his head fatally.
The tale in the air is of two fighter pilots after losing their leader in an initial dogfight, as they fly southward towards Dunkirk in an effort to do what they can with their hour of flying time. These sequences are the movie's most obvious standout moments. Filed on 70mm film stock with IMAX cameras, they capture the details of the seas, clouds, skies, and planes to such an incredible degree while also, when combined with the realistic dogfighting, makes for a wonderful sensational experience.
If I were to break the three different sections into three different narrative focuses they would be that the mole represents the movie's plot, the sea represents its heart, and the air represents its spectacle. It's a simplified look, but I think it fits.
One thing I've always maintained about this movie is that it is a triumph of character. You don't normally see that in a more procedural and task-based story, but Nolan populates each thread with such rich characters that I think it fits. I've seen criticism where people can't recall character names and imply this to mean that there's little character in the film, or that we don't know backstories so we don't know characters. Names and backstories are elements of building characters, but they are not the only thing about them. Looking at Mr. Dawson who will not let the navy take the Moonstone because it's his, and the duty to help those trapped at Dunkirk does not solely exist with the government. We get a line of dialogue about how he lost his eldest flying Hurricanes in the third week of the war, which provides him with grounding on which to aggressively and emotionally pursue one of the downed British fighter planes. Combined with his sense of duty to country and the young men fighting an old man's war, he's able to swat away any criticism that this isn't his fight. Mr. Dawson really is a rich character, and he's not the only one. George has the great emotional moment, assisted by Peter, Mr. Dawson's son, when he appears in the paper at the end, getting his moment of bravery told. Farrier, the last flying pilot played by Tom Hardy, gives up his opportunity to fly home safely in order to do his duty and fight the bomber threatening a troop carrier at sea. Really, the movie is a celebration of the traditional British character traits that would eventually help win the war against Germany.
Now, having said all that, there's one moment in this movie that takes me out of it completely. Tommy, having gotten onto the small Dutch ship with a few other British soldiers, waits patiently for the tide to come in. Being on the extreme Western edge of the British position, they have no support, hoping for subterfuge to be their saving grace. The nearby German troops decide to use the seemingly empty vessel for target practice, filling the hull with bullet holes that end up taking in water when the tide does eventually come in. Now, as the ship is gaining hundreds of pounds of water every few seconds, the most prominent other British soldier decides that the mute soldier who's been along with Tommy the whole way is a German spy and he needs to get off the boat in order to save them some weight so they can float. It's such a weird choice that feels all wrong, like an effort to build more tension out of a moment that's already full of it, to give the characters something to do rather than just wait for the ship to get carried away by the water. It's not that the concerns don't contain merit on their own, but combined with the situation around them and the other concerns, it feels like a mishmash more than anything else, and it stands out despite being over after just a couple of minutes.
The ending of the movie's plot is really the overall point, I think. All three storylines converge on a single point, the sinking of the Dutch vessel next to a troop carrier that's been hit by a bomb with the Moonstone picking people up and Farrier fighting off the last of the German air support at the same time. This is the kind of clever resolution that I know Nolan was getting the most excited about, and it works really well.
Overall, the movie has one small hiccup that keeps his from perhaps some kind of weirdly perfect film. Outside of that, it's beautiful to look at, surprisingly emotional with wonderful characters, and thrilling in individual sequences and in total construction.
Rating: 4/4
Originally published here. The post Christopher Nolan's Films Ranked: #2 'Dunkirk' (2017) appeared first on Bleeding Fool.  |
| Retro Review: 90’s Anime Series ‘Mobile Suit Gundam: 0083 – Stardust Memory’ Posted: 01 May 2021 03:00 PM PDT With innovation and originality in legacy entertainment now relegated to the past, I’ve been getting my fix from pre-Cultural Ground Zero properties.
The best part of revisiting the classics is sharing hidden gems with friends who’d missed them the first time around. When it comes to anime, the late 80s to early 90s is a dragon’s hoard of forgotten treasures.
That was back during the Bubble Economy, when animation club otaku working out of a shed could get real estate speculator sugar daddies to fund their splatterpunk OAVs. That era was the last time anime as a genre took risks, and it gave rise to an unmistakable aesthetic never seen before or since.
For those who are unfamiliar with anime, the closest American analog to the Bubble Economy startups would be the mafia-financed 1970s film scene. The key difference being that 90s anime looks timeless, whereas the 70s mob kitsch looks dated.
One of my personal favorite early 90s anime series is Mobile Suit Gundam: 0083 – Stardust Memory. Admittedly, this OAV series from one of the biggest franchises around flew under my radar on its first release. Like most American viewers, I didn’t catch 0083 until its US cable TV debut on Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim in 2002. The mechanical design, slick dogfights, and jazzy pop score hooked me right away.
0083 is remarkable for having had an unorthodox production at a time when weirdness was the norm. The series switched directors halfway through its thirteen-episode run. The results aren’t remotely subtle, either. As a prime example, two characters who obviously don’t recognize each other in episode one turn out to be former lovers in episode thirteen.
Contemporary viewers used to safe, by-the-numbers plotting might be thrown for a loop by 0083’s tendency to fly by the seat of its pants. Being a meticulous outliner myself, the series’ midstream tone and character shifts caught me off guard the first time around. But on rewatching, there’s no question that the changes introduced by the second director turned out to be for the better.
Stardust Memory is thirty years old now, well past the spoiler statue of limitations. There’s no need for a book-length plot synopsis, though. Three years after the original Mobile Suit Gundam, the victorious Earth Federation sends two new Gundam prototypes to Australia for testing. A Zeon remnant led by One Year War ace Anavel Gato steal the second prototype – which happens to have nuclear strike capability. Feddie test pilot Kou Uraki swears to Gudam engineer Nina Purpleton that he’ll recover her lost pet mech and sets out in Unit 01 to confront Gato.
That would be a pretty typical Real Robot style story if not for that fact that Kou utterly fails his mission.
He goes multiple rounds with Gato, and the best result he can manage is a draw. Every other time the Nightmare of Solomon takes the plucky Ensign to the woodshed for a thorough ass-whuppin’.
One of those stalemates also ends with both Gundams Kou vowed to bring back exploding.
Right after Kou shows up too late to stop Gato from nuking two-thirds of the Federation fleet.
Even then, the uncaring universe isn’t finished spitting on Kou Uraki, who suffers his crowning humiliation when he fails to avert a colony drop because Nina cucks him with Gato.
After that, being sentenced to a year’s hard labor is an uptick in Kou’s fortunes.
That’s right, Gundam 0083 pulled off the “Slimy, backroom-dealing brass totally shafting their valiant frontline troops” plot in a way not seen again Until Galaxy’s Edge.
Because 0083’s special role in the Gundam canon turns out to be as an origin story for the main villains of Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam, the tyrannical Titans.
NB: I hadn’t yet seen Zeta the first time I watched 0083. This time around, the cornucopia of Zeta Gundam Easter eggs bowled me over.
Fresh off another viewing, Mobile Suit Gundam: 0083 cements its place as step two in my recommended Gundam newbie viewing order. If you’re new to Gundam, watch the three original series compilation movies first, then watch 0083 before diving into Zeta. The peak early 90s look and killer action are well worth the price of admission.
Just don’t expect a happy ending. After all, this is war.
They may not make ’em like they used to anymore, but I do. To scratch your High 90s mecha itch, claim your copies of my military thriller saga Combat Frame XSeed on Indiegogo. Every backer gets the two newest eBooks, plus a free short story. The Pocket War card game playtest is still open, and we’re closing in on our Print-a-Mech stretch goal. Help indie mecha break into the mainstream.
Originally published here. The post Retro Review: 90’s Anime Series ‘Mobile Suit Gundam: 0083 – Stardust Memory’ appeared first on Bleeding Fool.  |
| ‘The Devil is a Part Timer!’ Anime Season Two Release Coming in 2023? Posted: 01 May 2021 01:15 PM PDT I covered The Devil is a Part Timer! just last month, and the exciting news of its anime adaptation getting a second season.
 While there was a trailer, there was no release date for the sequel season. Looper came through with something of a prediction based on how long an anime in production can take to be completed in their 04/26/2021 article – The Devil Is A Part Timer Season 2 Release Date, Cast, And Plot – What We Know So Far – , Jonah Schuhart writing:
The full article can be read here.
With a possible two year wait, it could be a decade between seasons when everything’s said and done. A long time, but not unheard of with anime. Mushishi received an anime adaptation back in 2005, covering a considerable amount of the manga's existing material at the time, and wouldn't cover the rest until a follow up anime series was released in 2014 (Mushishi – Next Passage), almost a decade later as well.
We can sit tight, and be content, as long as the end result is entertaining, fun, and as blissfully enjoyable like its predecessor was.
No hurry. The post ‘The Devil is a Part Timer!’ Anime Season Two Release Coming in 2023? appeared first on Bleeding Fool.  |
| Comics Review: Silk #2 A New Spider for a New Age? Posted: 01 May 2021 07:45 AM PDT |
| Amazon Renews Robert Kirkman’s ‘Invincible’ for 2 More Seasons Posted: 01 May 2021 05:15 AM PDT
Just before the debut of yesterday’s highly-anticipated finale, Amazon Studios announced that it renewed Robert Kirkman's hour-long, adult animated series Invincible for a second and third season. Seasons two and three will exclusively stream on Amazon Prime Video in more than 240 countries and territories worldwide. "I'm extremely thankful to Amazon for the support and dedication they've put behind Invincible," said Kirkman. "The comic book is truly a love letter to a genre that Cory (Walker) and I grew up reading and loving, and it's been a gratifying journey to watch our characters come to life again through the animated series. We're beyond excited to continue this story for at least two more seasons."
"Invincible is a crowning example of how a fresh and edgy approach to the superhero genre can resonate with audiences around the globe and we're so glad that Invincible, one of our earliest investments in the adult animation genre, has accomplished just that," said Vernon Sanders, Co-Head of Television at Amazon Studios. "Robert's no-holds-barred storytelling coupled with a first-class voice cast delivered on fans' wildest expectations and we're thrilled to be giving them more Invincible." The post Amazon Renews Robert Kirkman’s ‘Invincible’ for 2 More Seasons appeared first on Bleeding Fool.  |
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