There's a ton of reviews I've been meaning to get to, including the entertaining Iron Man 3, the tedious and cynical Pain and Gain, and the Die Hard knockoff, Olympus Has Fallen; along with a new installment of The Netflix Files. The reason for my absence (besides school and midterms) has to do with the tragic passing of my friend and fangirl Eileen Turri. Eileen was the woman who introduced me to the wonders of Monty Python and the brilliance of British sketch comedy, in addition to being a dear and close friend, and a terrific writer (read what she did with the crazy series that she ran with, The Bentley Chronicles). She was a Star Wars and Harry Potter die-hard and I enjoyed talking movies with her. The big summer movie she was excited about seeing was Star Trek Into Darkness, the sequel to the 2009 reboot of the Trek franchise. Sadly, she won't get that opportunity to watch it. This weekend, I'll be watching J.J. Abram's sequel for the both of us.
I think it's fair to assume that a lot of us were very skeptical upon hearing that Masmure Shinrow's cyberpunk manga Ghost in the Shell was being updated for mainstream audiences, in the form of a live-action film. We've seen how this business has handled manga/Anime properties in the past, and the track record, outside of the Wachowskis' Speed Racer , has been dismal, to say the least. When it was revealed that Scarlett Johansson was chosen to play Major Motoko Kusanagi, the Internet went ablaze, the cries that studio suits were whitewashing a beloved Anime character, as well as petitions making the rounds to remove the actress from the role in favor of an Asian actress to carry the role. When the first trailer dropped in mid-November of last year, I think most of us were blown away with just how, on a surface level, it looked like the live-action version might do the original source material justice. Then, the actual film was released. It's hard to talk about...
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