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The Mike Toole Show - Hollywood Blues

Its too bad Hollywood picked the wrong sci-fi cyberpunk police by Masamune Shirow to do a live adaptation when there is a different series that'd fit Hollywood's sensibilities which would be "Appleseed".

Although to be honest, if the dub for Arise still has Richard Epcar and Mary Elizabeth McGlynn, I still might check it out anyways. I was quite fond of the dub cast.

The success of Ghost in the Shell would've translated directly to more money, resources, and opportunities for the gang at I.G., plus a boomlet of similar adaptations for TV and film, which would've meant more rewards for the anime business on the whole.

Unfortunately, what needed to happen, before anything else, was for the movie to be good. Ghost in the Shell was a number of things, but “good” wasn't one of them.

As the story's central character, the Major (I hate how they clumsily dance around her background by using her squad title like it's her name)

a director who wastes way too much time attempting to ape the 1995 animated movie's best scenes instead of building something fresh that simply hearkens back to the original.

There's been a lot of talk about this movie's casting, about how using Johansson to play what had previously been a definitively Asian character was just more lame-ass Hollywood whitewashing.I think there's truth to that and it's unfortunate, but it isn't surprising, and I don't think it made a big difference at the box office.

to the point that the actors repeat this terrible, awkward dialogue, and then both the director and the producers are like, “Yes, this is good, actually,” and a year or so later we have a mediocre movie.

Still, what remains in its wake is this lingering sense that there's a lot riding on every goddamn one of these anime movies, that so much depends on just one of these big-deal adaptations finally being successful, dammit!

If you mention Guyver II: Dark Hero to the right kind of film nerds, they'll start rhapsodizing, not about future screenwriter and Solid Snake voice David Hayter's corny performance as the lead, but about the eye-popping special effects work of Steve Wang, which elevate this movie well beyond its low-budget genre trappings.

When it came out in 1995, Crying Freeman didn't have a prayer of breaking out or making waves anywhere—it had a few known character actors, but no big stars, and it was made well outside of the Hollywood system.

This is a shame, because this movie really gets it right!

Don't let anyone tell you about the third film, a prequel about L. It never happened, alright?! There's no such movie!

Of all of the live-action Hollywood anime projects that they've periodically threatened us with, but have never actually gotten anywhere near principal photography (e.g. Robotech, Voltron, Akira) I think a live-action Star Blazers has the most potential.

My one question is this: why are they still calling the heroine Alita, and not Gally?

Well, we're gonna have to keep waiting for that moment. What do you think needs to happen for one of these adaptations to be a global hit?

Its too bad Hollywood picked the wrong sci-fi cyberpunk police by Masamune Shirow to do a live adaptation when there is a different series that'd fit Hollywood's sensibilities which would be "Appleseed".

Alternatively, Hollywood could dispense with the tradition of taking its sci-fi pieces seriously and give people what they really want: an adaptation of Dominion Tank Police,