About Franklin Raines
I let the diversity of the subjects that I review represent myself.
If you have been watching Anime long enough, you will come to a point where you can clearly say with conviction your opinion on marathoning a series. Marathoners believe that if you watch something all at once, you keep everything fresh in your mind, making emersion a prime directive. Non-marathoners on the other hand believe that one should take the time to divide a show up over a stretch of time, longevity being the name of the game. But every so often you will come across a film series like Garden of Sinners (humor me a little here people) or a tight-knit OVA series like Giant Robo (something that I want to see covered on this very site) and ask yourself if making the viewing experience into a marathon is the only way to victory. Well Biskmater and I thought that if we were ever going to effectively cover the 2010 anime film series Broken Blade, we would have to marathon it together. What follows is an experiment involving two guys, one TV, and a ton of couch sitting. Some God have mercy on our charred souls.
Broken Blade is based on a still running manga by Yunosoke Yoshinaga, consisting of six forty-five minute film parts. Every episode was directed by Tetsuo Amino, director of all things Macross 7 from the nineties and Starship Troopers OVAs from the late eighties (the idea alone that Amino was stuck directing the dreaded Starship Troopers anime is far funnier than any slapstick Macross 7’s comedy could pull off astounds me). Amino was also involved in many of the Super Deformed Gundam properties, meaning that he is tangentially qualified to direct a mecha series.
Full Review
Leave a comment | tags: Broken Blade, 2010, Yunosoke Yoshinaga, Tetsuo Amino, Fantasy, Film Series, Marathon shows, Mecha | posted in Anime, Special
So we will be taking a month long Hiatus through the rest of May considering that Finals have been placed on our plates. We have a ton of new material coming your way though starting in June, so you will not be lonely for long.
Leave a comment | posted in Uncategorized
It has come to my attention that I have been writing film reviews for this site for over a year. During that time I have demonstrated a certain tone towards what I think I can write effectively. My history is filled with cult-gems, foreign films, and things that might go under “genre’ films. My Frankenstein’s Monster of a tongue provides an equally different and generally rounded appreciation for film which has continuously accounted for the flippancy that plasters this site. Yet I am always looking for something new, which might mean looking into film that occupies a completely different county then that of my wheelhouse. So tonight I decided to review a film with a cavalcade of awards around its neck and the word “biopic” often used in describing its content. It is an adaption of a famed American writer’s biography; truly so odd compared to my usual selection that it humorously turns 2005’s Capote into the odd-fellow at the cocktail party.
Capote was directed by Bennette Miller, director of the documentary The Cruise and of the recent film “about sports but about sports in an abstract way/setting instead of actually about playing the sport itself” Moneyball. Dan Flutterman adapted the screenplay from author Gerald Clarke’s original biogeography on writer Truman Capote entitled Capote.
Full Review
1 comment | tags: 2005, Bennette Miller, Biopic, Capote, Catherine Keener, Clifton Collins Jr., Dan Flutterman, Drama, Gerald Clarke, Mark Pellegrino, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Truman Capote | posted in Film
Comic creators have taken to the financial backing site Kickstarter in such a creative collaboration peak that I thank my lucky stars I live in the twenty-first century where such a thing is possible. Each creator has their own need to try this method of investment when it comes to the expensive printing process. Jason Thompson needed funding to rerelease his out-of-print H.P. Lovecraft comic The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath And Other Stories, while Carlton Hargro and Alex Woolfson both wanted to see their titles The African American Superhero Anthology and Artifice respectively demonstrate comic leads that they considered unrepresented in the comic medium. Then there is the Kickstarter comic project whose economic funding rises almost as high as the internet famous “Detroit Needs A Statue of Robocop!”, otherwise known as the ten year side project Carbon Grey.
Carbon Grey is a collaboration work constructed of what you could call a squadron (I warned myself that reviewing a comic about war did not mean that military related jokes were any funnier) of writers and artists. To start, the group is led by original spearhead writer and artist Hoang Nguyen. Nguyen’s original illustration for the character Mathilde sparked story ideas that led to him assembling the Carbon Grey production team. From the top, Mike Kennedy writer of Ghost and various Star Wars comics for Dark Horse, writer Paul Gardener, writer Khari Evans who was the artist for the Marvel title Daughters of the Dragon, and finally Kinsoh Loh who has collaborated on famed Chinese comic (manhua) creator Ma Wing-shing‘s long running series Fung Wan (The Storm Riders). Now that the long introductions are over, can these cooks collaborate together to make something fantastic, or prove the old saying that too many cooks spoil the meal?
Full Review
Leave a comment | tags: 2011, Carbon Grey, Gisselle, Hoang Nguyen, Khari Evans, KickStarter, Kinsoh Loh, Mathilde, Mike Kennedy, Military Fetishism, Paul Gardener | posted in Comics
Certain horror films live and die by the recognizability of their creatures and visuals, basing the elements in a distinct reality. Peter Jackson’s fantastic Dead Alive is known for the lively and innovated depiction of truly posing the human body by way of infection and a little bit of mysticism. Stuart Gordon’s Reanimator is known for basing its grey-skinned reanimations in science and logic, like maybe this could just be possible. Wes Craven’s Nightmare On Elm Street is known for bringing nightmares to life and making a distinct separation from what is real and what is a dream. But what about a horror film where its phantasmal creatures and visuals are never set in stone, if they exist or not, and if the “real” world the characters live in is just as undefined. Thus leading us to 1990’s Jacob’s Ladder, where I needed to fight to figure out what is real.
Jacob’s Ladder was directed by Adrian Lyne, whose subject for films is typically about the disparage and division between married couples, seen through film’s history with things like Fatal Attraction, Indecent Proposal, and Unfaithful. Basic fair “Romance Drama’s” is something that I usually stay far away from to protect my sanity. It is almost a blessing that he decided to mix the bottle of Drama with then substitute Horror in Jacob’s Ladder because it almost seems like a fluke. A fluke created by writer Bruce Joel Rubin, known for making the ghost story popular again in the often parodied but will never watch again film Ghost. Bruce Joel Rubin certainly plays heavily on what makes this film different.
Full Review
1 comment | tags: 1990, Adrian Lyne, Bruce Joel Rubin, Danny Aiello, Drama, Elizabeth Peña, Film, Horror, Jacob's Ladder, Tim Robbins | posted in Film
I have a conceptually unique subject to review tonight; a short-story collection of Shojo manga. Now, I am not talking about a collection of manga pilots called one shots, but real honest to goodness short stories. In the past, I used to think that this way of writing was uncommon in modern Shojo manga, and from what I could find, outside of the nominally Josei on the surface works of Moto Hagio’s A Drunken Dream and Other Stories and Yoshinga Fumi’s All My Darling Daughters, I cannot think of any other manga that fit the bill. When it comes to short stories I consider them to be the norm in horror manga like Kazuo Umezu’s Scary Books, which now that I think about it was also written with a young girl audience in mind. I guess I will just have to add 2005’s Himeyuka & Rozione’s Story to this small list.
Himeyuka & Rozione’s Story contains four short stories written and drawn by Sumomo Yumeka. Sumomo Yumeka has a relatively heavy release footprint here in America, with companies like Digital Manga Publishing releasing her titles like the Day I Become A Butterfly and Same Cell Organism. What I found interesting was that she works under the name Mizu Sahara to draw Seinen manga, like the manga adaptions for two of cloud obsessed anime director Makoto Shinkai’s films, The Voices of a Distant Star and The Place Promised in Our Early Days.
Full Review
Leave a comment | tags: 2005, Himeyuka & Rozione's Story, Makoto Shinkai, Shojo, Short Stories, Sumomo Yumeka, Yen Press | posted in Manga
Anime has an interesting mixed history with the horror genre. Usually action based series that just happens to involve horror tropes like vampires in the case of Hellsing or werewolves in the case of Princess Resurrection, fit under this umbrella genre by happenstance. Even Japan’s live-action film and its distinctive horror style focus on tense atmospheres and unsettling moments rarely permeate horror anime, outside of say Hell Girl. What is generally the norm when it comes to horror anime is that it is like a snake coiled together with themes of the psychosocial, plain and simple psychological horror. Stand outs like Boogiepop Phantom and Requiem from the Darkness encompass the mental anguish tied to horror while working a mystery angle. The 2004 OVA, Le Portrait De Petite Cossette, fits my skewed definition for what constitutes psychological horror in my book.
Le Portrait De Petite Cossette is for one headed by anime director, Akiyuki Shinbo who I can without a doubt say has recent titles that readers will recognize. Outside of a ton of nineties OVAs that sit in the “I could swear that I have heard of this before but I forgot where exactly”, he directed Arakawa Under The Bridge, Sayonara Zetsubou-Sensei, and everything under the Bakamonogatari sun. What surprised me the most is just how popular many of these titles are, and to top it off, he directed the heavily talked about anti-magical girl juggernaut Puella Magi Madoka Magica, whose artistic flourishes seem to be taking their first breath in tonight’s review. Interesting thing to note and thus stick in your head uncomfortably, the character designs where done by Hirofumi Suzuki, who with The Sky Crawlers character designer Tetsuyo Nishio represent every single T.V., film, and OVA related to Naruto (Shippuden); small world indeed.
Full Review
Leave a comment | tags: 2004, Akiyuki Shinbo, Hirofumi Suzuki, Le Portrait De Petite Cossette, OVA, Psychological Horror, Puella Magi Madoka Magica, Yuki Kajiura | posted in Anime
Crossed: Psychopath is all together a different beast than the original. Written by David Lapham and drawn by Raulo Caceres, familiar names in the Avatar Press catalog. The story starts several years after the happening world is infested with crossed Marauding bands terrorizing the land and few humans remain living in perpetual motion. The climate is different, no big government gesture or act of spiritual power has thought the need to intervene, for the crossed are here to stay. Our cast of four non infected humans is introduced watching the crossed mutilate various vultures and a decomposing cow along a mountainous terrain. Tired of this total disregard for any human decency, they stumble upon a trapped man passed out in a deep ravine. They learn that the man is named Harold Lorre. He was chased by the crossed into the ravine and broke his leg. He was stuck there for days. His broken leg would limit the groups’ mobility; however, one of the group’s members Amanda pleads for the group’s humanity and Harold helps by selling himself as an excellent tracker and crossed behavior expert. The group decides to take Harold, not knowing that their constant threat of the crossed pales in comparison to what Harold personally has in store for them.
David Lapham flash-steps away from the survival angle of the first series to instead use the crossed as a device to allocate natural human emotions of violence and lust. In an attempt to not reveal too much, the lead Harold is by far more of an atrocity than anything that the cross have in store. He is a crossed-environment-beaten man who has only fermented with age, as he reminisces about his lost “love” Lori. David Lapham demonstrates straight-laced on the outside and unstable on the inside Harold as an apex of sexual frustration with quick erotic bursts of dominance and confidence in his own mind. His perch sitting judgments on the others comes quick and flips just as fast. Harold does what I feel many non-psychotic people do and by that I mean create hatred for others based solely on a few actions. Lapham created a demonstrative individual who slowly tears down his fellow-man like an anger embedded puppeteer. Harold’s dedication to premeditation makes him far more deplorable of a subject than anything the gore frolicking crossed could ever imagine. This shows what humans are capable of, parallel banded tribes who have already fallen off sanity’s edge.
Full Review
Leave a comment | tags: Avatar Press, Cover Variants, Crossed: Psychopath, David Lapham, Raulo Ceceres, Special | posted in Comics, Special
During the time between Star Wars’ initial release in 1977 through the early eighties, there have been countless movies whose creation seemed to only try to cash in on the Star Wars’ success. Every one of these films would borrow/steal elements from Star Wars in ever increasing chunks. We have countless examples: like Disney’s attempt at live action science fiction in The Black Hole (which is genuinely awesome); Japan’s production Uchū kara no Messēji (Message From Space, which I have heard remakes certain scenes mimicking Star Wars (which should be awesome because of costume design and Sonny Chiba); and then there is Turkey’s Dünyayı Kurtaran Adam, who unabashedly used footage from Star Wars itself (which I doubt is anywhere near awesome). Star Wars changed the face of not only Science Fiction, but film itself; 1979 saw the release of a film that fits into the Message From Space category, that film, known as Star Crash is my focus tonight.
Originally a U.S. and Italian co-production, Star Crash was directed by Luigi Cozzi. Luigi Cozzi’s other works include Alien on a budget, Contamination, the Nosferatu the Vampyre sequel to Vampire in Venice, and Hercules (keeping up with the trend of Italy being home for all Sword and Sandal style fantasy films to be made). He has also written various films including Sinbad and the Seven Seas and Star Crash itself.
Full Review
Leave a comment | tags: 1979, Armando Valcauda, Caroline Munroe, Christopher Plummer, David Hasselhoff, John Berry, Luigi Cozzi, Mayjoe Gortner, Star Crash, Star Wars like work | posted in Film
Story time is upon us here tonight at CTBF and the story in question is one that started it all and the genre that constitutes one-fourth of this site. Yeah, I feel like introducing you (sea of darting eyes) to how I started delving into western comics and the mastery that I continue to convince you that I have on the subject. Years of reading in general had left me with shelves of manga and certain collections of Calvin and Hobbes and Simpsons’ comics. It was not until I was seventeen or so, when I decided to return to the land that brought me The Crow and Watchman, and with the love of extremes (be it both sides of the spectrum as my past reviews with attest to) that goes with youth. Being at an age where I still needed to show my driver’s license when I bought an M rated game at GameStop, but still able to in the end, I was hard set for a western equivalent to the large amounts of Seinen manga I had consumed by that point. I stumbled upon Avatar Press’ successful series Crossed. Those gore laden covers got my attention, and as they say “the rest was history”. I have come a long way since then, but I thought it fitting to compare and contrast the original to one of its followers, Crossed: Psychopath, (considering that Avatar Press’s advertised C-Day and launch of Crossed: Badlands is just around the corner.)
To start off, I think a run-down of exactly what constitutes a “Crossed” for the sacks of those of you reading that I am technically trying to convince to look into this series further (I have to keep the familiar and not-so-familiar balanced right?). As stated through dialog in the first volume, to go “crossed” means that a person, no matter the age, has basically flipped off the switch in their mind that controls restraint and judgment. That human urge to rape, pillage, and mutilate replaces all other human desire, leaving a kill prone form who communicates through vulgarity and taunts. The “crossed” state spreads through infecting a human with any (and do I mean “any”) bodily fluid. It paints a gorgeous picture where everything is placed on an even playing field where you fear a six-year old child in the same way that you fear a seven-foot broad shouldered freak of nature. Introduce this element to a town or nine and you have yourself a blood bath that will literally fill swimming pools.
Full Review
Leave a comment | tags: Avatar Press, C-Day, Comics, Crossed, Crossed: Badlands, Crossed: Psychopath, Early Comic Fandom, Garth Ennis, Jacen Burrows, Special | posted in Comics, Special
