Sci-Fi HoF...Hall of Fame

I'm sure that was much more entertaining



*waiting for people to start hating me*

I did not drop out of that one. In fact I even re-watched some films I found horrible there to try to extract their supposed "greatness".

I dropped out of the fourth one due to time constraints imposed by my job.

While some people have prejudice against films I don't so I find it a pleasure to watch stuff other people liked even if it's not my usual type of movie, in fact, it's culturally enriching.

I have nominated Gunbuster besides the fact that it's a masterpiece because it's also a representative of the genre of mecha anime, a genre most people here don't know anything about (besides watching that movie Pacific Rim which is a hollywood take on the genre, how about watching the ORIGINAL stuff that inspired Pacific Rim?). Also, most people here haven't watched an OVA before, OVA is a very large field of anime, containing thousands of direct to video movies, Gunbuster is a classic of the field and it's a good introduction to both Hideaki Anno's work (being his first work and also among his most accessible ones) and to science fiction anime, which is where most good science fiction media is (because the cost of production of animation is low so there are thousands of science fiction anime, hence dozens of masterpieces, Hollywood sci fi output is a bit lacking by comparison).

Gunbuster is a linear story based on character development, very conventional type of stuff, it's differential is it's quality and it's ludicrous mecha action scenes.

Guap hey, I seen that you watched Brazil, and it was interesting what you wrote. It's been a long time since I seen it. Feel free to copy/paste what you wrote on Movie You're Watching Tonight and paste it here.

We need to keep the interest up here. I hate to see this Hof be slow.

Forgot to say, I'm not going to make individual threads for all of the nominations, so this is where after you see a movie you tell us your thoughts one it. Even if it's only a sentence or two.

I haven't seen any yet but I got them all coming thanks to the library.

I'm sorry to say that BlueLion has dropped out.

So we will NOT be watching his nomination, A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001)

Gunbuster (1988)



I first watched Gunbuster about a year ago, it was among the 100 Asian films I watched for the "Asian film challenge" and it was the best of that large set of films, good enough to make into my super selective top 50 films list. Re-watched it today and it was better than first time, a genuine masterpiece of animation.



It's classic Hideaki Anno storytelling style, similar in feel to the first episodes of Evangelion (before he wen't crazy with experimentation in the second half of the series). It's also the grand statement of love for nerd anime, in the sense of containing all the elements that characterize nerd's anime such as cute girls, plentiful science fiction elements, over the top mecha action inspired on these 70's kid's anime series (which also inspired Del Toro in Pacific Rim), however it mixes these "kiddie" elements with serious drama and a lot of nudity. The violence is not explicit however, considering most action occurs in space there is not much room for blood and corpses (ships explode and that's it).



Hideaki Anno is a really talented artist and he is capable of producing a very powerful atmosphere in all his work. It's a very characteristic feel which I find divine. His characters are also very memorable though he carried over archetypes from one of his works to the others, for instance, Jung Freud (yep, that's a character's name) serves as the basis for Asuka Langley's character in EVA.



Another interesting element of the series is the utilization of relativistic time dilation as a plot element. In this case the main character watches her high-school friend age from 17 to 42 while she aged less than one year. It's a metaphor for the social stigma animation fans in Japan suffered (at the time this was made it was specially strong because it was the beginning of the adult anime era) of watching their relatives and friends age while they felt as eternal teenagers due to their love for the art form o animation and it's association with being juvenile.

While being technically science fiction it is mostly character driven and not driven by the science fiction concepts. That's the usual difference between Japanese science fiction and western and one of the reasons why most good science fiction produced in the world in the last decades consists of anime (the other is the low cost of producing animation compared to special effects movies). I almost cried at the end overwhelmed with emotion. It's one of the reasons why I watch more animation than live action these days is to experience the emotions I experience while watching Gunbuster.

It's entertainment value is comparable to Star Wars.

That's a shame because I was looking forward to re-watching A.I., but based on what I read in the "Rate the Last Movie You Watched" thread, he did the right thing. He was very clear about the fact that he refused to watch someone else's movie. If that's the case, then he shouldn't have joined this HoF in the first place.

Brazil (1985)

As a nice break from watching animation I re-watched this weird British science fiction movie from the 1980's. Since i was watching some really bad animation the last few days (such as those Bioware based movies).



Classic from the 1980's of dystopian science fiction movies. As a Brazilian I dislike the fact that the movie uses the country's name without actually having anything to do with it (it's set in a dystopian Britain, similar to Orwell's 1984).



The film is essentially an extrapolation of trends existing in society at the time (especially in the 1980's with the existence of totalitarian regimes in Europe itself) to the far future, such as the increasing bureaucratization of society. Society here is extremely bureaucratic and in fact it looks like Brazil because Brazil today is a country which experienced a fascist dictatorship in the 1930's and 1940's and instead of repelling that dictatorship through war it morphed into a dysfunctional democracy but with the fascist regulations still in place. As a result this movie, despite not being inspired by Brazil, is in fact very close to the reality of Brazil today.



However, like most western science fiction, the movie's characters only serve as a vessel for the film's dystopian science fiction elements which are extremely interesting but the characters are not. I found the main character to be just ok, the rest of the cast was just a bore though and I didn't care at all for what happened to the characters in the movie, in fact, I watched it from a more objective point of view rather than caring about the characters.



It's impressive from a conceptual point of view, in it's world building and it's visual qualities. I can see why some regard it as a masterpiece, it's indeed an impressive film in many ways.

So I didn't have any strong emotional connection with it and despite being impressive from a stylistic point of view it didn't make me care much for the plot so I rate is as

.

And I don't see the point of not watching one of someone else's favorites, you actually get to know a little about that person doing that. Besides missing a chance of discovering a new favorite or acquiring some more cultural knowledge/background (if it's a type of movie you never watch, movies are an extremely easy way to learn about the world's cultures, given it's way less time consuming than reading novels or experiencing other types of artforms made in other cultures (such as Japanese dating simulators)).

I have a question about not having individual threads for each movie.

In the previous HoF, we were allowed to post spoilers without spoiler tags in the individual threads because the assumption was that anyone reading those threads would have already watched the movie.

However, that may not be the case in this thread, so should we use spoiler tags when we post spoilers in this thread?

This, and the fact that movies are a deeply and fundamentally collaborative effort. In a novel, the writer depicts the reality they want to depict. In a movie, everyone involved is depicting their own personal reality in varying degrees, so we end up with a more democratic vision of culture than we would get in a more singular and author focused art

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Mubi

I don't see the point either. I know very little about anime, (other than what I've overheard at conventions, but I never paid much attention to it because it wasn't a genre that I normally watch), but I'm looking forward to watching Gunbuster because you're such a fan of it that I want to find out what it's all about. There's no guarantee that I'll love it as much as you love it, but at least I'm willing to watch it with an open mind and give it a try.

Who knows, I may even find a new favorite movie somewhere in the movies nominated in this HoF.

I found out an absolute favorite in All Quiet in the Western Front (1930) in the 6st Hall of Fame and I enjoyed every movie nominated a lot, except the Kiarostami film.

Anime is not a genre but 2/3 of all animation produced in the world and represents the full spectrum of Japanese popular culture which is mainly based on manga. Like American movies reflect the full spectrum of American popular culture.

I work at comic conventions, and I've seen first hand how popular anime is to science fiction fans. Most of the dealers who sell anime DVDs are busy all weekend long, and they sell a LOT of DVDs.

There seems to be a different style to the images in anime than there is in American animated movies. I never paid a lot of attention to anime before I joined this site, but I watch a lot of American animated movies, so I'm hoping to like anime just as much.

Snowpiercer (2013)



Heavy handed piece of social criticism. It represents the world as a train, the lower classes live in the back of the train, the upper classes in the first wagons and the king lives in the engine room itself. It's so heavy handed and lacking in character development (the main villain looks like a comic book or cartoon villain ) that if not for my love of action science fiction movies I would have disliked it, but since I like movies with action scenes and explosions I found it ultimately entertaining. It reminded me a little of Elysium, another heavy handed sci fi action movie. The best of the genre "heavy handed social criticism sci fi action" is of course District 9.



The movie was really boring at the beginning but got more interesting up to the end, in fact I think I rated it too harshly before, my rating is .

As someone who knows both American movies and American pop culture, there's a very significant portion of American pop culture that you'll never find in movies

The Face of Another (1966)



All around excellent movie. Like Japanese science fiction the focus is more on the characters than in Western science fiction. The film is gripping and reminded me of Woman in the Dunes, though it's obvious since it's the same director.

Also a reflection of Japan during it's period of intense economic transformation during the 1960's when it was morphing into an economic superpower.

Indeed, you will never find something like this in an American movie:



Even though it's part of american popular culture. I never saw an American movie with had actual metal in it's soundtrack (unless you count documentaries).

Agree with your marking of Snowpiercer Guap. I was disappointed in the film, specially as I've loved a couple of Bong Joon ho's other films - Memories of Murder and Barking Dogs Never Bite.

Hasn't Slayer been on film soundtracks before? Pretty sure I had this discussion with my son who likes that sort of music.

Yes, that is usually a given on the board. Do use them.

Now, if you up and change your minds about the threads, just let me know, and I will separate these reviews into their own threads.

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