Weasel Report » Movies

Media Week – Ghost in the Shell: S.A.C. Solid State Society

Weasel — Sun, 14 Sep 2008 21:02:57 +0000

Ghost in the Shell: S.A.C. Solid State Society

Director: Kenji Kamiyama
Producer: Production I.G
Release Date: July 3, 2007

Solid State Society takes place two years after the second season of their television series, so if you aren’t looking to read something that may spoil parts of the show for you, then consider this your SPOILER ALERT.

In this movie, Major Motoko Kusanagi has left Public Security Section 9 to do some investigations on her own. But that’s not the only change to happen. Togusa, who finally decided to get cyberized, now uses a standard issue gun, and is the leader of the Section 9 squad. Batou upgraded his vehicle from the classic to a brand new sports car, still in his famous yellow. Section 9 has also gained a handful of new recruits, but they really don’t come into play much in the entire movie.

Major Motoko Kusanagi in Solid State Society.

Throughout the movie, both the Major and Section 9 attempt to hunt down a character called the “Puppeteer”, or seems to be able to make people commit suicide to be able to stop them from doing terrible things. Much of it has to do with children being kidnapped from their real parents, and sent to live with a “Noble Rot Senior Citizen”, a group of seniors who live off of a special health care monitoring network. The movie continues as they attempt to find these kidnapped children and unravel the mystery of the Puppeteer.

Unlike the other two older movies, the animation style of this movie is exactly the same as the television series, making it a familiar sight to those who have watched them all the way through. The music is, once again, created by the famous Yoko Kanno, and is just as good as the TV show was. Yoko Kanno has done the music for many Japanese animations, and is extremely reknown around the world for it.

Chief Aramaki and two cyber screens.

Just like the series, it is definitely recommended that you have some brainpower, because this movie will lose you if you don’t pay enough attention to it. The tangents that they can go on can be confusing at first run-through, so you may need to watch it a second time to make sure that you understand it all. And of course, it is highly recommended that you watch the Ghost in the Shell series, both seasons one and two, before you watch the movie, because they do follow along with the storyline that was set up already. Overall though, I thought this movie was a great continuation of the series, and while I’d rather see another season made, they did a good job of keeping with the GitS universe in this movie.

Weasel’s Score: 92%

Weasel’s Weblog Presents Media Week

Weasel — Sat, 13 Sep 2008 01:40:00 +0000

Welcome to Media Week, here on Weasel’s Weblog! All week this week, enjoy seven days full of reviews of everything media. This includes music, movies, and video games! So keep a watchful eye out all week, and be sure to tell the world what YOU think in the comments! At the end of the week, I’ll post up the best comments, so include a website that you own or want to promote so that I can feature you. Check back tomorrow, Saturday, for the kickoff Blog that will start out this week, and let me tell you, this game is definitely worth the read!

Death Note, Live-Action

Weasel — Thu, 22 May 2008 04:20:22 +0000

I just got home today from basically being out all day. Tonight I got to see the Death Note Live-Action Movie in theaters today, which was only in theaters yesterday and today. First I had to work, in which we came out with WiiFit. We even had a line waiting before we opened. But anyways, I’m getting off-track. Read over at Weasel Gaming for that information.

So the Death Note movie is based off of the anime and the manga, naturally, except with the director’s creativity in it of course. For those of you with NO idea what Death Note is, here is the abridged version.

Death Note is about a teenage boy who finds a notebook, called the Death Note. By writing someone’s name in this notebook, and visualizing their face, that person will die within 40 seconds. That’s the simple version of it of course.

The movie was dubbed, which means it was the Japanese original movie, just with English voice-overs. While those were, iffy, for lack of a better term, overall the movie was still quite good. Unfortunately, it ends abruptly since there is a second movie that they made for it.

The actors they found to play each role were quite good, amazing in fact, for live-action of course. While I have to argue that some of them don’t represent how the anime shows them, finding people who are exact replicas of that is near to impossible.

Final Grade: A-