Sharpen up your machete, because Jason X is the Greatest Movie EVER!
Click on the movie poster or the title above to download our review of the film,
featuring Thomas Pandich of Skin Crawling Comics.
Review in a Nutshell: It’s Jason. In Space. `Nuff said.
The Greatest Movie EVER! Podcast 
You should probably do an all “in-space” show at some point, Paul, comparing this, LEPRECHAUN 4: IN SPACE and (when it comes out) MACHETE KILLS AGAIN: IN SPACE!
Oddly enough, I remember Jason X more than any of the Friday the 13th movies. Which is why I can try to argue it’s my favorite, I suppose, but only from a position of relative ignorance. Perhaps someday I’ll try to dig up a few of the others just for curiosity’s sake.
On the anime derail: Kill la Kill is rad. I just wish they traded some of their artistic energy for more risk-taking though. Votoms TV is great too, but the unnecessary sequels don’t get my vote.
I didn’t have much of a problem with the original Evangelion, at least not upon rewatch. Rebuild is very good, although I prefer 2.0 to 3.0 so far. A lot still depends on 4.0 and how they can possibly wrap this up.
For me Code Geass was great fun. It’s less mecha and more over-the-top theatrics and one-upmanship, except with robots and capes. I just chill out and go along with it. Oh well…I do tend to agree with Mr. Pandich in that Higurashi is better than Umineko though.
Jason X is certainly a special one all right. How special? It’s the kind of movie where I can actually write the following sentence: I agree more or less entirely with Paul, and Tom is pretty much 100% wrong.
Man. Writing that is HARD. Just doesn’t feel right. But Jason X just doesn’t go far enough on any of the spectra for it to be “what I want” the way that the true Greatest Movie EVER!, Freddy vs Jason was for the most part. I just wanted the entirety of Jason X to be as good as the VR sleeping bag.
To more important matters, namely CARTOONS: I for one am fascinated at how Paul is so reticent to publicize the fact that he’s been writing for both the print and web editions Otaku USA magazine for years (THANKS TO ME), that even Tom was unaware of it. Even though they’re by and large reviews of live-action films in keeping with the general GME! scope.
To say “I’m not a fan of mecha” but then follow it up with “but I did watch and enjoy Armored Trooper VOTOMS…and Getter Robo etc” seems a little suspect. While it’s frequently stated that the best mecha series are more about “characters,” I think a more accurate summation of why people hesitate to be interested in the sub-genre is that from the mid-1990s on, the Sunrise mecha formula (and by extension everybody else’s) became more about “character DESIGNS” than “characters,” with plots that were “throw everything in there to appeal to as many sub-groups as possible.” And selling people primarily on visual designs and broad archetypes is, well, right in line with the “moe” approach in the first place.
(the irritating thing about discussing this with THE MECHA ANIME FAN PEOPLE is they’ll read the above and just instantly parse out the “more about” and “primarily” quantifiers to reduce it to absolutes)
Mr. Surat: The concept of selling something primarily on “visual designs and broad archetypes” can be just as easily applied to a lot of earlier mecha productions, including a lot of Go Nagai’s body of work, as opposed to somehow being a new and unusual phenomenon allegedly restricted to the mid-1990s and beyond. I’m not parsing out the quantifiers, by the way, but I think the whole argument shouldn’t be so significantly limited in scope.
I’m not an anime historian, but a lot more could be said here about the curious presence of various kinds of communicating vessels, between mecha and “moe” as well as between mecha and pretty boys or pretty girls, dating back to times long past. For instance, would Macross have exploded in popularity without its cute girls and idols? Probably not. Or how about Gunbuster and a lot of the productions made during the OVA boom? There’s more to this story than just Sunrise starting a trend. In fact, that sort of formula only occasionally works for them.
In other words, people might initially come for the character DESIGNS yet still stay for the characters. And vice versa, whenever it’s unsuccessful, or any of the other possible variations of the scenario.
The David Cronenberg acting canon is precious and small — this was okay, but nothing yet’s quite on the level of Last Night (in terms of size of role). I assume Nightbreed is better, and the idea of Clive Barker and David Cronenberg doing anything together is just cool
If they ever release NIGHTBREED on DVD, you’ll get to see one of Cronenberg’s biggest and best acting roles – as a soft-voiced shrink who’s also a serial killer. It’s a really great movie overall – even cut (as it was in theaters), I think it’s a near classic.
I stand corrected, Jung-Ho – it was released in a cut version on DVD (still available from Amazon – for $33!), and is coming out this Fall from Shout! Factory in the Director’s Cut on Blu-Ray. I can’t wait to get it….
Yeah I’m just gonna wait for the new cut. Paul mentioned on the podcast that it seems like a movie with a whole lot missing. So I’m excited. I do think Cronenberg is a pretty solid actor, but nobody ever asks him about it in interviews
There has to be only one other person in all of animedom who recognizes the original Celtic pronunciation of Geass. I just rolled my dice and thought it was just a made up word for some Japanese cartoon.