But I had a great one the other night. In it, I finally,
FINALLY got hired at a local newspaper. I think it was the Morning Journal of
Lorain, for whom I freelanced for 18 years before they downsized me (and just
about everyone else) out a few years ago. But here, I was back on the team.
When I showed up at the place you would never dream it was a financially struggling
Ohio daily. The news offices were like a chain of airplane hangars or big-box
stores, just vast spaces. Moreover, there was some kind of epic corporate musical-party
celebration going on.
Because it’s my dream, I guess, movies were the theme. There
were some kind of full-costumed interactive singers, dancers, props, vehicles
and performers all over the place, attired like cast members from GHOSTBUSTERS
or GONE WITH THE WIND or gladiator or cowboy pictures, and many more I
doubtless forget. It was an incredible, lavish display, but for some reason I
was strongly cautioned to stay in my appointed work-area suite, not wander from
annex to annex while the revues were all going on constantly.
During the fun I tried to get a conversation going with
my new editor, who was an ever-smiling nice-mannered southern-type lady. I
wanted to know basic things, like my new Morning Journal work hours and
deadlines, duties, and whether I was part time/full time/freelance. Her
dismissive responses started to get a little bit sharper and steelier, as
though these were rude questions not worth answering. I got a sense that if I
asked any more I would be out of a job again, so I just tried to watch the
show. I still somehow managed to be buffeted by all the action and choreography
into a meeting-room, where a big production number inspired by ALIEN (!) was
having technical delays. That’s about when I woke up.
Let’s leave the Freudian interpretation of my pathetic subconscious
aside for a moment and get to the point, finally: where in Rust-Belt Ohio can
you really find something with the Hollywood glamour and glitz akin to what I
have just described? The only thing I can imagine that comes remotely close is
the local premiere of CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE WINTER SOLDIER, the latest Marvel
Comics superhero movie to shoot in Cleveland.
Remember when the filming closed down roads all over
Cuyahoga County last year? I think some people are still stuck in traffic.
Probably just skeletons in their automobiles now, but never mind them, it’s movie
time! The debut screening of CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE WINTER SOLDIER: BASED ON THE NOVEL PUSH BY SAPPHIRE or whatever the hell it's called, is going to be at the Valley View multiplex, with
local dignitaries and what passes for celebs on the red carpet, is the hottest
film ticket in town.
Meaning, of course, that those tickets are quite scarce
and expensive. After the elites snap them up, it’s a cinch most of the
Cleveland Movie Blog readers will be too poor to be able to go, even assuming
you can get a night off from one of your dead-end-minimum-wage jobs. And even
if you do get in, chances are that Cleveland’s few super-rich types in the
CAPTAIN AMERICA audience will just take the opportunity to chloroform you
during the screening, fly you to their private jungle island, arm you with
minimal survival tools, and hunt you down as human prey in the rainforest, for
their sadistic and depraved pleasure. I just have a feeling that could happen.
So how to get a superhero infusion anyway, when you can’t attend the biggest Cleveland movie-and-superhero
event of this or any year? I can help, with a suggestion of a marathon
double-bill of some of the smartest superhero team-up stuff since The League of
Extraordinary Gentlemen (the books, not the movie). This little information
provided courtesy of my low-paying side job watching the latest English dubs of
Japanese animation.
Seems there is a Japanese “manga” (comic-book, to us
barbarians) creator named Masakazu Katsura who ought to be a nerd icon; he’s
put a lot of deep thought into the costumed-avenger genre in his work, and it
just so happens that quality cartoon adaptations of two of his series have just
come out simultaneously.
Know that DVD/Blu-Rays of these two series amount to
around 8 to 10 hours of mind-breaking superhero viewing. But I promise, you
won’t regret making the acquaintance of ZETMAN and TIGER & BUNNY – THE
MOVIE: THE BEGINNING.
Really, as a post-modern saga of dysfunctional
super-beings, ZETMAN made me think of WATCHMEN, and that is high praise.
Masakazu submits for your approval the saga of childhood pals-turned-semi-foes
Kouga Amagi and Jin Kanzaki. As a wealthy boy, superhero-obsessed Kouga teamed
up with homeless waif Jin to fight Tokyo bullies and lawbreakers. But Jin did
most of the heavy-lifting work, literally, being an experimental sort of
homunculus. Though Jin is human in appearance he was secretly bred in a
corporate lab alongside monstrous "Players" - homicidal,
shape-shifting mutants used in cruel, gladiatorial duels, related to military
R&D.
As young adults, Kouga has been built up by the media,
mecha-suit technology and his wealthy, ambitious family as a sort of Iron
Man-type celebrity, who may someday be able to parley his popularity into
public office. Meanwhile, Jin – also known as `Zet' - has suffered the loss of
the old homeless guy who was actually the scientist who made him. Jin makes a
deal with his sinister successor-creators to hunt down and kill misbehaving
fellow Players, who are hiding incognito in society, some as normal people,
others as vicious predators.
Both superheroes are awesomely flawed. Kouga suffers from
simplistic black-and-white morality and ego, while Jin's poorly understood Zet
powers are inconsistent, and there are hints that he’s programmed to go bad as
he evolves into the ultimate lethal master mutant he was designed to be.
Writing and plotting are as razor-sharp as a morphed
Player’s claws. If you’re a fantasy fan but have never sat through a modern,
non My-Little-Pony anime show, you’ll be pretty much spoiled here. This one
goes to the edge with twisted morality and unexpected shocks, such as when
rapists have to be rescued, and a ballroomful of winsome Tokyo schoolgirls get
gorily slaughtered one at a time.
Compared to ZETMAN, Masakazu Katsura’s TIGER & BUNNY
is obviously larkish, action-comedy stuff, but it still brings intellect to the
post-modern superhero satire we’d all thought had been tapped out (you there,
who thinks it’s time for a Howard the Duck reboot, please make like a Malaysian
airliner and disappear). Strung together out of TV episodes (but looking like a
million bucks, er, yen, all the same), it's the feature-length origin-movie of
a popular television anime set in high-tech all-purpose metropolis Stern Bild
(a place which looks like Cleveland would, if the Avenue at Tower City somehow grew and covered all of Cuyahoga County).
Here is where a "Hero TV" reality show focuses
on costumed crimefighters, who have become all the rage since a vague cosmic
event endowed assorted individuals with varied powers a few years back. Now the
resulting superheroes' televised adventures are treated like sporting events,
with an omnipresent camera team, announcer/commentators, and point-scores and
popularity polls contriving WWF-style drama and competition between the good
guys - who wear real-life corporate logos on their outfits.
There’s Blue Rose, a sexy girl who can freeze things;
there’s Sky High, whose talent is flying (though in a neat minor detail he
confesses shamefully that he can only really float like a balloon; he needs a
jetpack to actually go anywhere); there’s Fire Emblem, a swishy and funky gay
variation on the Human Torch. That’s right - a literally flaming homosexual. Seriously,
you think CAPTAIN AMERICA
has anything cleverer than that?
As TIGER & BUNNY begins, Barnaby Brooks, Jr., is a
young blond hunk with short-duration super-strength, new to Hero TV’s scorecard
and groomed to be a fan favorite. He thus becomes the rival of veteran
do-gooder (and widowed single father) Wild Tiger. Sponsors demand the fading
Tiger team with the rising Barnaby (whom Tiger nicknames `Bunny' in scorn),
with the humiliating detail that the aging Tiger has been demoted. To sidekick.
The team tackles a few tricky cases edited in from the
early TV episodes, like a plague of living statues and a slippery
teleporting supervillain, while Barnaby learns the ropes of being a superhero,
and his relationship with Wild Tiger becomes more complex. There isn’t a firm
resolution at the end – it’s obviously an ongoing thing. The preview of the
later season of the show seem to indicate (and this is common in anime, even
the sillier ones) that things will get much darker, as Barnaby investigates the
conspiracy over his parents' unsolved murder.
Still, I had lots of fun with TIGER & BUNNY, even as
I thought nothing could possibly top ZETMAN. And both originated with one guy, Masakazu
Katsura, whom I sincerely hope will leave Japan
before the nuke-plant radioactivity gets to him; I don’t believe it really endows
superpowers, sorry.
I’ve saved the best for last. The bonus disc in TIGER
& BUNNY: THE MOVIE, at least in the Blu-ray edition I watched, is a
spectacle all in itself, the
2012 premiere showing of TIGER & BUNNY: THE MOVIE in Japan
in 2012.
It’s no mere red-carpet parades of speeches, but rather a
feature-length live variety show (that was simulcast throughout the Far East at the time),
with the Japanese voice actors PLUS anime characters in full cosplay -costume mode (Sky High
flies!). The voice thesps do comedy skits, interview each other, sing and
dance, and yield the enormous stage to guest Japanese rock bands and solo
artists. Holy expletive deleted, Batman! It looks like the biggest fun any
movie or superhero fan could have, outside of my dream about the Morning
Journal the other day.
Sorry, Cinemark Valley View has a loooong way to go to
beat that. And comfort yourself as you watch this double-bill and feel that you’ve
had a marvelous time after all, without wasting the gas money. You and I both.
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