Posts Tagged ‘evangelion’
3 items.
Sorry for the lack of blog posts lately. Planning season has lasted a lot longer than I anticipated, and I’ve been pulling mad hours at the office (12+ hour days several times throughout a week). When I get home, I’m typically too drained to write a review or do anything beyond eat dinner and pass out. But enough of the negative, let’s focus on the positive: UTADA HIKARU – IN THE FLESH!
“But wait, who is Utada Hikaru,” some of you may be asking. No worries, I got this a lot at work when I told them that I was skipping the premiere of LOST to go see this woman in concert at the House of Blues – one of several of her nationwide sold-out shows.
I first became familiar with Utada Hikaru back in college when my Malaysian friends introduced me to a song called “First Love.” Having listened to several mixes (her regular version, a solo piano version, and a dance remix version) I decided to try to find more of her music. I ended up downloading several albums worth of her Japanese songs, and a few years later she came out with an American release album, having gained some traction in the states with her theme song to the popular video game Kingdom Hearts.
I’m personally a fan of the Japanese version of her Kingdom Hearts themes (“Simple and Clean” for the first game, and “Passion” and “Sanctuary” for the sequel). Her songs have also appeared in a lot of animes, including the critically acclaimed “Evangelion :01″ that I reviewed a few months ago.
So suffice it to say, she’s a bi-lingual singer known mostly for her pop music, but she has an amazing ability to transfer great emotion into her voice for her songs.
And her concert was SOLD OUT.
So the ticket said that doors opened at 7pm and it was a warmer (28 degree) evening than we have been experiencing, so my goal was to run from the office to the doors of the House of Blues, which is only a block away. Boy, did that not work in my favor. The line extended from the entrance to the bridge over the river (approximately a block and a half). I stood out in the cold without my coat (why pay for coat check when the office is only a block away, right?), chatting and making friends with much warmer / smarter people in line who were bundled up.
We eventually made it inside the building, a very unique-looking structure with a three-tiered balcony system and bars on all the walls. I was on the ground floor up against a bar, crammed in by people (who eventually became obnoxious) but with easy access to the adult nectar.
We found out that Utada wasn’t supposed to take the stage until 9pm, so there was an hour of a guy from New York spinning the same 7 songs over and over again. It was certainly better than silence, but the crowd was not as forgiving as I was. They wanted Utada. I made friends with a group of people by the bar, and we joked that her delayed stage presence was probably related to the Tivo in the hotel not working so she could record the premiere of LOST.
Whatever the reason, Utada took the stage to a thunderous applause promptly at 9pm – and she was GORGEOUS. After two songs, she took a moment to address the audience, exclaiming that the space was so small (which I took to mean that we were all really close to the stage). My fear had been that she was only going to sing her American songs, since her second American album had just been released, but thankfully like any good performer, she knew her audience wanted more. She did a pretty even split between her American and Japanese songs, as well as her old and new stuff.
After every few songs she would take a moment to talk to the audience about her tour, her music, or her life. She explained that she was having a low self-esteem day, that she felt like she had dressed like a witch (in her black see-through shall and white top, and poofy 80s dress with her hair full of mouse and spray. She then started talking about how this was her first time in Chicago and how during her day off the previous day she had gone to the Art Museum to see the Picasso paintings. At this point, the less mature audience members stopped caring and started shouting out song requests (thus reaffirming my hatred for attending events in public). But her words made me think: how much does one tend to have in common with a celebrity like her? If I had been at the museum at the same time, would I have noticed her in a crowd? Had we struck up a conversation, would we have become friends?
Utada performed for a full hour and forty minutes before exiting the stage very abruptly. The crowd, however, continued to cheer for an encore. After about 10 minutes of cheering at an empty stage, Utada and the band reappeared and performed for another 40 minutes.
Utada was the first concert experience that I’ve had at the House of Blues, and certainly the first from an international performer. And I was not disappointed. Her performance was insightful, moving, and tons of fun. She makes singing seem effortless, and her voice is like a welcome summer breeze on a hot day. I’d skip LOST any day of the week to see her perform again.
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Movie Review: Evangelion 01 – You Are (Not) Alone
Director: Masayuki, Kazuya Tsurumaki
Official Website
Plot: In the not-too-distant future, 14 year-old Shinji Ikari has been summoned to Tokyo-3 by his estranged father who he has not seen for many years. Upon arriving, he finds the city under siege by a giant monster called an “Angel.” Picked up by a young woman who works for Shinji’s father’s organization called Nerv, she drives him to their underground base (a giant geo-front) and orders him to pilot a humanoid mechanized unit called Evangelion. When Shinji refuses, realizing that his father only summoned him here because he had a use for him, his father orders another 14 year-old pilot into the cockpit. However, this pilot, Rei, is severely injured from a previous experiment activating a previous Eva Unit, and can barely stand.
As the Angel attacks from above, the base begins to shake and Rei is thrust from her medical bed, blood leaking through her bandages. Shinji agrees to pilot the Eva, and is projected to the surface face to face with the monstrous Angel. However, not having any previous experience with the Evas before, he can’t even walk and the Angel attacks without mercy. Breaking his wrist and cracking his helmet armor, Eva Unit 01 is rendered broken and in the silence the human race watches as they are about to be wiped out from all existence by Third Impact.
Suddenly, Eva Unit 01 reactivates and goes berserk. It attacks the Angel with a ferocity and forces the Angel to blow itself up in an attempt to take Shinji with it. However, Shinji walks away with some minor physical wounds…but a whole lot of psychological trauma to deal with.
And this is only the first 20 minutes of the movie….
Those familiar with the popular (and highly controversial) anime series will see this as a rehash of the original footage. Let me put your fears to rest by saying that while there is a lot of footage from the original series and the beginning of the flick is a very sped up version of the first two episodes of the series (re-edited), the footage has been cleaned up to an amazing degree! There’s also new footage throughout, and while it’s mostly b-roll (stuff happening in the background or during voice overs), they do start to add more and more as the movie progresses. The battle with the 6th Angel is almost completely different, in fact. They’ve even added digital effects to many of the Eva and Angel sequences, and even some new conversations to help bring the audience up to speed.
For those of you not familiar with the series, you’re probably going to be completely lost watching this movie. But, like those of us who experienced the series, that’s part of the fun of it. Evangelion is brutal with it’s question asking, and not for forgiving with the giving of the answers. But, like modern TV shows like LOST, that’s part of the fun of it. For fans of the original series, they introduce some elements earlier on, making me think that later installments of this 4 movie series are going to be much much different. I also question if they’re going to follow more to the manga series (which has yet to finish, to my knowledge) which establishes more of the character relationships (specifically between Shinji and Rei), and builds Shinji more as a character instead of diminishing him like the series did.
I won’t go into the spoilers from the series, but in the movie they certainly lay the groundwork for a lot of the questions that many fans are still asking themselves after the conclusion of the series and the two movies that “finished it all off.” It is not a requirement for you to have seen the series to watch this movie; as I started before the beginning of the flick is the first two episodes in fast forward, and it just builds from there at a steady pace. The theatrical version of the movie that I watched was dubbed, and while I hate dubbed anime, this was tolerable to me because 1) new voice recording, so the voices are slightly less obnoxious, and 2) I was just so damn excited to watch this movie it wasn’t even funny.
Walking away from the theater, I just want to pop in the series again and start from the very beginning.
Shinji’s journey is a difficult one, as he not only has to deal with being a 14 year-old kid with all of the social skills of a mute, but also because the fate of the human race literally rests on his shoulders. And he’s not your regular hero. Shinji is incredibly flawed, and that helps make his journey that much more interesting to watch. At the end of the movie, in fact, the desperation of his struggle is made all the more clear by a speech given to him by an adult about the world that they live in. The audience feels the weight of his burden as they watch the drama unfold, and his last-ditch effort to save humanity from the onslaught of Angels barreling down on Tokyo-3.
If you loved the series, you should totally watch this movie. If you have never heard of Evangelion but enjoy anime, then you HAVE to watch this movie. Then go out and get the series and thank Lilith that you didn’t have to wait for them to come out like the rest of us. If you don’t like anime and have never heard of Evangelion (but enjoy shows that ask you questions, like LOST) then you could probably get into this series.
From the opening sequence described above to the dramatic conclusion of the final battle against the 6th Angel, this movie is loaded with everything you love (or will love) about this series. And a closing song by Utada Hikaru (who did the theme song to Kingdom Hearts, for those of you unfamiliar with Japanese singers), and this movie is definitely going into my DVD collection. It may be a scam to get more money out of me years after the series has ended, but you know what – it worked, and I don’t mind at all. And the promise of things to come in the next installment (stay until after the credits for a teaser), and I’d say that a new generation of anime lovers is going to get hooked – and the previous generation will get hooked again.
I’ll leave you now with the closing credits song by Utada Hikaru, entitled “Beautiful World.” I have to dust off my DVD box set of Evangelion now and go nerd out….
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_OGncC04dRI
So I found out that a movie I’ve been waiting to be released in the US for two years has finally hit our shores in a limited (and unfortunately dubbed) release at a local theater called Music Box.
I guess they play all kinds of classic films, currently playing Wizard of Oz and Rashomon – and it looks like they play The Rock Horror Picture Show around this time of year!
So I want to review this flick, and I’ll be watching the flick at some point this week. I’ll try to put my bias towards dubbing and love of the original series to the back of my mind when I do the review.
If you don’t know anything about this series (and shame on you if you don’t), be sure to check out the wikipedia page and catch up on what people have called one of the most controversial anime series of all time (so much so that people are still talking about the series 15 years after it finished…and are now making 4 new movies about it).
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On a side note, I want to apologize to everyone for the lack of blog updates on Tuesdays and Thursday lately. I pride myself on updating the website blog every day during the week, but haphazards in life and work have prevented me from having the time to do that. My job is somewhat seasonal in it’s “busy season,” or “planning season” as we call it, and that time is right now. This means that I’m in the office for about 12 hours every day. Add into that the commute time of about 40 minutes one way, and the fact that I need to cook food and clean dishes, and there’s barely enough time to sleep, much less go to the movies or pop in a video game and review it.
And currently, I have house guests visiting from Texas and we’re working diligently on the next @$$hole! story arc based on the very popular Drunk Duck Awards presentations that we’ve put together for two years (2008 and 2009) in a row. People have been begging me to do something with this, so Amanda and Jess were kind enough to take a vacation and come visit me for a week so we could take pictures (and they could do some things for my story that they wouldn’t normally do).
So be sure to be on the lookout for that.
Until later, I’ll hopefully be able to blog some more as planning season starts to slow a bit (but it doesn’t often end before February of the next year). I’m working on putting together my con appearances for 2010, though, so it’s going to be an exciting year!
