 Blast of Tempest - Episode 16 - The Wandering Apparition Jan 31st 2013, 20:00 
The mage of Exodus has finally made his flashy debut destroying a tree in front of millions. During the performance, Hakaze mind is elsewhere as information of a spy infiltrating the Kusaribe village and reporting of a ghost sends her heading home.
 |   Kotoura-San - Episode 4 - Changing World Jan 31st 2013, 18:30 
Manabe has gone back to how he was before Kotoura, and Yuriko knows it's all an act. The ESP Research Society prepares for their first club trip to bring back Kotoura by any means necessary.
 |  Ai-Mai-Mi - Episode 5 Jan 31st 2013, 15:30 
A time tunnel has appeared and there is only room in the pot for one.
 |  Gintama Season 6 - Episode 260 - Pinky Swear Jan 31st 2013, 11:00 
It seems every faction has turned against the former shogun Sadasada. With the help of a friend Gin is given a second chance to defeat Oboro, but will his body hold out? Can he keep his promise to Tsu-ki?
 |  Ghastly Prince Enma Burning Up - Episode 8 - Flame 8: Hey Now! Kids, Are You Alright? Jan 31st 2013, 01:00 
The school is covered in snow and the Yokai Patrol is attacked by a group of demons, but Enma is too cosy under his kotatsu to do anything about it. They attempt to remove the Blaze Circlet from Enma's head, but Enpi arrives, telling everyone that if it's removed, Enma's full power will be unleashed and destroy the world. As Enma becomes traumatised by memories of his parents, the demons try cornering Yukiko, Harumi and Enpi, but end up getting themselves killed. After the battle, Enma recalls his promise with his parents was to be a good boy so he could get a load of chogokin toys which never came.
 |  Ghastly Prince Enma Burning Up - Episode 3 - Flame 3: Is Bigger Better? Jan 31st 2013, 01:00 
After learning that Ms. Chiko had been infected poisonous smoke from a demon known as Dokuro, designed to make her ripe enough to eat in three days, Enma engages her in battle but is forced to retreat before he can remove the poison. With the third day approaching, the Yokai patrol decide to have Yukiko take Ms. Chiko's place. After Yukiko and Harumi carefully obtain Ms. Chiko's underwear to wear in order to complete her disguise, Dokoro appears and is quickly finished by Enma.
 |  Ghastly Prince Enma Burning Up - Episode 4 - Flame 4: She's Your Daydream Believer Jan 31st 2013, 01:00 
Harumi falls unconscious after finding a strange cat. Yukiko brings them both into the lair, but she ends up being put to sleep too. Chappeuji concludes that this is a work of a Yokai named Nekomu, who puts humans to sleeps and messes with their dreams. Enma attempts to use some rather dubious means to wake Yukiko up, but he and the others end up falling asleep too, ending up in a dream world where everyone is forced to boogie. They soon learn that a huge demon is gathering together the unconscious humans and turning them into yokai. Nekomu attempts to stop them from waking up, but Enma takes advantage of the fact he's in a dream to make himself into a mech which slices off Nekomu's tail, allowing everyone to wake up. Enma then proceeds to kill the demons which reverts everyone else to normal. Afterwards, they spot one of the culprits behind the plot, the mysterious witch, Enpi.
 |  Ghastly Prince Enma Burning Up - Episode 1 - Flame 1: It's the 70s! It's Enma! Demons Unite! Jan 31st 2013, 01:00 
As a girl named Harumi ends up sneaking into their school with her friends, she soon finds the faces of her friends have mysteriously vanished. When Harumi nearly drowns in a pool while trying to escape, she is rescued by a kappa named Kappaeru, who takes her to an underground base where she meets also meets the ice princess Yukiko and the fiery mage, Enma, who together form the Yōkai patrol, a group sent from hell to stop demons that appear on the surface. Determining the culprit is a face-eating demon, Harumi offers to lure out the demon so that Enma and co can attack it. Although Harumi finds the beast, due to Enma's laziness her face is also stolen by the time they arrive. Enma ensues in battle with the demon and, despite showing no disregard to the innocent faces while smashing it with his fiery hammer, manages to kill the demon and return all the faces to their rightful bodies.
 |  Ghastly Prince Enma Burning Up - Episode 5 - Flame 5: Ladies-Only Big Beehive Extravaganza! Jan 31st 2013, 01:00 
Whilst trying to find the Yokai Patrol concerning a case of bees causing people to become brainless, Harumi spots Enpi talking with the beehive demon behind it. Although Enma manages to outdo the demon, he and Kappaeru get distracted keeping a bee out of Yukiko's yukata and get stung, reverting their brains to infant-like states. As Yukiko and Harumi's attempts at taking over the main hero role fail, the demon challenges them to a series of events, promising to restore everyone's brains if they win more than half of them. However, during one of the events, the demon ends up ticking off Enpi and gets beaten up, allowing Yukiko the chance to reverse the nature of Enma's flame stick and kill the demon. They later return everyone's brains, only to get them mixed up.
 |  Ghastly Prince Enma Burning Up - Episode 2 - Flame 2: Clowns to the Left of Me! Demons to the Right! Jan 31st 2013, 01:00 
While Harumi and her class are on a school trip to an amusement park, they are attacked by a Squid Demon named Walter Geso. Despite taking Yukiko hostage as well, Enma manages to free all the hostages and defeat the demon, albeit destroying the park in the process. Afterward, Yukiko and the others explain to Harumi how they were summoned by the Great King Enma, Enma's uncle, to travel to the human realm to stop escaping demons. Their first case involves fighting demons named Snakejar and Shock Willow. After the flashback, Harumi reveals that he teacher, Ms. Chiko, had been acting weird recently, and upon investigating her, they find a strange mark on her leg.
 |  Ghastly Prince Enma Burning Up - Episode 7 - Flame 7: Relax! Crawl to It! Jan 31st 2013, 01:00 
The world is struck with a phenomenon that causes people to constantly fall over in a comedic way, forcing them to crawl in order to get anywhere. As Enpi denies having any part of this, her pratfall leads to awkward situation for her and the Yokai Patrol whilst at a zoo. Just then, the yokai behind the mess, Sutendouji, revealing that Enma and Enpi are siblings and that he plans to steal Enpi away, attempting to take the Blaze Circlet on Enma's head as a wedding ring. He reveals that the circlet used to be worn by Enpi, but suddenly ended up on Enma's head, which led to Enpi becoming a streaker. Enma fights off Sutendouji and beats him, only killing him by accident. Afterwards, Enma contacts the Great King Enma to ask about the circlet.
 |  Ghastly Prince Enma Burning Up - Episode 12 - The Final Flame: Until We Meet Again Jan 31st 2013, 01:00 
The world is about to be purged and Team Enma is locked in a struggle with Team Heaven. They are defeated, and the seal on Enma's Blaze Circlet is broken; he is unleashed, and quickly defeats the members of Team Heaven. Princess Yukiko attempts to calm him down with a kiss, which results in a release of positive erotic energy that inspires everyone to copulate, demons, angels, and humans alike. Afterwards, with the world saved from a purge, Enma and his friends say their goodbyes to Harumi before leaving. Also wangchung.
 |  Ghastly Prince Enma Burning Up - Episode 6 - Flame 6: Let the Weird Times Roll Jan 31st 2013, 01:00 
As a new student named Goro Goro enters Harumi's class, various people, including Harumi and Kappaeru, find themselves inflated into a blimp-like form with an insatiable appetite, with anything they touch also becoming fat. As the Yokai patrol lure out Goro Goro, whose real identity is a Yokai named Fukurashiko, they are ambushed by Enpi and turned fat as well. They end up bouncing all over the world, eventaully ending up on the moon, where Enma, Yukiko and Enpi, who was also made fat, simultaneously kill Fukurashiko, returning everyone to normal.
 | | IFFR 2013: The Complex – Review Jan 31st 2013, 00:04 
Hideo Nakata is somewhat of a legend, at the very least within the horror genre. He started working on (horror) films in the 90s and in 1998 brought us Ringu, later remade in Hollywood as The Ring. Everyone has at least heard of these films, their sequels, and the accompanying label 'J-horror'. J-horror as a subgenre truly blossomed in the following years, including other contributions from Nakata such as Dark Water. In the last few years, however, the surge in J-horror has seemingly died down back to the pre-Nakata baseline, with Nakata himself trying his hand at varying genres overseas. However, in 2013, with his new film The Complex he has supposedly returned back to his roots, to perhaps breathe some life back into the J-horror genre. 'The Complex' refers to an apartment complex where Asuka moves into with her parents and younger brother, a cheerful and happy family. When Asuka tries to greet their new neighbors they refuse to answer. In the following nights she keeps hearing strange noises coming from the house next door. On top of that an alarm keeps going off at 5:30am every morning, leading Asuka to head over and complain. Still nobody answers but the door is open and Asuka goes in finding the place seemingly deserted. She reaches the room that shares a wall with her bedroom and finds the dead body of an old man. There are scratches on the wall and his body is still stuck in scratching-position, making for a horrifying sight. The body is taken away but it isn't long until the nightly scratching returns… 
We are now only about half an hour in but I actually cannot say much more about the plot itself because there are some major twists and turns that are better left unspoiled. As a psychic in the film says "Ghosts don't haunt places, they haunt people's minds", indicating the fact that what first seems like a physical horror film actually has a lot of psychological themes included as well. Some other major characters in the rest of the film are Sasahara and Minoru. Sasahara is a guy with the cleaning crew cleaning out the dead old man's apartment. His girlfriend has been in a coma after a car accident that occurred while he was driving and he has been feeling guilty ever since. Minoru is a little boy, around the same age as Asuka's little brother. She occasionally runs into him playing by himself in front of the apartment building and befriends him, he says he lives with his grandfather who isn't actually his grandfather somewhere in the vicinity. Although the average horror fanatic might think he's seen through the entire plot already at this point, he would be sadly mistaken. As I said, there are a lot of twists and turns, and although not all of them are amazingly original in retrospect, it does help keep the film interesting as you go along. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xscN8R8YXVs So is this another J-horror masterpiece by Nakata? My first answer would sadly be 'no'. While it is surely an enjoyable film from start to finish, it is not without its flaws, both plot-wise and technically. The occasional minor plot hole and/or inconsistency does occur, and the acting isn't always up to par (although some of that might have been intentional). In any case it is also somewhat of a difficult film to place, because despite being a J-horror by definition, it often felt like just another Hollywood horror of which we've perhaps seen too many in the past decade. This makes sense since Nakata has spent a whole lot of his time in Hollywood, but luckily his roots are still visible as well. Unlike Hollywood horror, this film isn't packed with volume-up-to-max jump-scares, but instead is for the most part brooding and atmospheric. The sound design and music by Kenji Kawai play a large part in this and in my opinion this is one of the film's strong suits. Cinematographically it is definitely more Hollywood, aside from some weird lighting happening near the end which suddenly made it feel more campy than it should have. But I actually should not get too caught up in the Hollywood-Japan comparison, since, like Nakata, the film is both. Just as it is both a physical and psychological horror film. The Complex is a hybrid horror film. Unfortunately not completely the best of both worlds, but one might say close enough. Japan nowadays lacks decent straight-forward horror films and this is just that, decent.
 | | Pina – Review Jan 31st 2013, 00:02 
Criterion never ceases to amaze me by the types of content they put out into the market. To put this review in context, I went to see this film with no previous interest in contemporary dance. I have always put it into that category of ‘things I just don’t understand’. I understand it’s a way of communication, but it’s one that has never communicated to me. So my thoughts on this film probably won’t have any interest to you if you are already a dance fan or a dancer or a fan of Pina Bausch in particular. But if, like me, you have heard that this is a visual feast of a film, or just that it is a Wim Wenders documentary, and are wondering whether to go see it for those reasons, this might help you decide. Pina makes me wish I knew more about dance, though I suspect not all dance and dancers are so accessible or emotionally charged, by choice. At moments I was moved nearly to tears, I wanted to answer the question Pina reportedly put often to her dancers, “what do you long for,” with the answer “beauty—and this could serve for now.” I saw this tonight at Vancouver International Film Festival in 3D on the strength of its description and Wenders being the director and I’m very glad I did. One of the hallmarks of strong cinema, for me, is an altered perception of the world when I leave the film, which sometimes lasts for a considerable time: the vision of the film awakening me to what is around me. I found tonight not only a visual but a kinaesthetic carryover as I walked to the car, drove my friend to the subway, and then drove home through streets light in traffic. Though normally I don’t care for cars or driving, in the wake of the dance spirit invoked in this film, I revelled in freedom of movement—in movement itself—at first hand in my own body and at a remove, in the things around me. This is good stuff. 
Because there is no storyline in the film. Not very much of replicas either to explain in clear words why or if the different pieces are linked together, and definitely nothing to tell about Pina Bausch’s private life. But that is also what makes this film so clean and consistent; dance says it all. And they are all performed by a group of highly skillful professionals of different ages, nationalities and languages, whom sometimes, through open monologues, give us an insight on Pina’s character. Not only do they reach out to touch by movements, but also through empathy and facial expressions of compassion, making them very credible actors/actresses. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CNuQVS7q7-A This is probably Wenders’ best in years, although I admit I’ve skipped everything he’s made since the terrible The End of Violence back in 1997. This is great, whatever the case. It’s a very unconventional documentary about choreographer Pina Bausch. Well, not really. It’s about her work. There’s almost no biographical information throughout the film. All we really learn is that she was a choreographer, and that she’s dead. I don’t even think the film mentions her surname until the credits. This is all about her work, which Wenders stages with former members of her troupe. It’s all about the dancing, and if you love dancing, well, this film is a real treat. The dancing is quite unconventional itself. Wenders own impeccable artistic integrity has produced one of the best films about dance, and one of the best documentaries ever made.
 | |
Aucun commentaire:
Enregistrer un commentaire