Friday, January 23, 2009
Fanboy Alert!
Cowboy Bebop is my favorite anime series. (Here.) The series is set in a near future Solar System where Earth has been devastated by a terrible accident and humans live throughout the Solar System. The series follows the adventures of several down on their luck bounty hunters who travel the system in their spaceship taking work where they can get it. The show is like film noir and scifi all held together by a great musical score.
Plans are afoot to do a live-action movie based on the series. Keanu Reeves is slated to play the lead bounty hunter, Spike. (Here.) Reeves has found his niche as actor in scifi, fantasy, and horror movies. I have to admit, if I were an actor, I'd want his career. I didn't see who else is in the cast, but I'd have Ron Perlman play Jet Black and Charlize Theron (with her Aeon Flux dark hair) play Faye Valentine. The androgynous kid, Edward, I'm not sure.
There's only one other anime that I'd like to see made into a live action movie: Vampire Hunter D. Its blend of horror and magic in a post-apocalyptic Earth is compelling. It's reminiscent of the best of Jack Vance's fantasy novels in his Dying Earth series. That series of books would be fun to watch as anime.
Two books from Vance's oeuvre that would make good movies include The Dragon Masters and Emphyrio. Of the two, The Dragon Masters is probably the most fun with its story of humans on a distant hardscrabble planet fighting a war against alien invaders. The twist is that humans have genetically modified captive aliens into monstrous warrior-slaves, while the alien invaders use genetically modified humans as slave soldiers. Emphyrio is probably the more thoughtful work. It takes place on a world in which mass manufacturing is outlawed and all production is handmade, which leads, surprisingly, to an oppressive society. The irony is that the artist hero of the story rebels by making duplications.
In other big fanboy news, toys are now becoming available for J. J. Abrams' new Star Trek movie. (Here.) Cool, they are.
-tdr
Plans are afoot to do a live-action movie based on the series. Keanu Reeves is slated to play the lead bounty hunter, Spike. (Here.) Reeves has found his niche as actor in scifi, fantasy, and horror movies. I have to admit, if I were an actor, I'd want his career. I didn't see who else is in the cast, but I'd have Ron Perlman play Jet Black and Charlize Theron (with her Aeon Flux dark hair) play Faye Valentine. The androgynous kid, Edward, I'm not sure.
There's only one other anime that I'd like to see made into a live action movie: Vampire Hunter D. Its blend of horror and magic in a post-apocalyptic Earth is compelling. It's reminiscent of the best of Jack Vance's fantasy novels in his Dying Earth series. That series of books would be fun to watch as anime.
Two books from Vance's oeuvre that would make good movies include The Dragon Masters and Emphyrio. Of the two, The Dragon Masters is probably the most fun with its story of humans on a distant hardscrabble planet fighting a war against alien invaders. The twist is that humans have genetically modified captive aliens into monstrous warrior-slaves, while the alien invaders use genetically modified humans as slave soldiers. Emphyrio is probably the more thoughtful work. It takes place on a world in which mass manufacturing is outlawed and all production is handmade, which leads, surprisingly, to an oppressive society. The irony is that the artist hero of the story rebels by making duplications.
In other big fanboy news, toys are now becoming available for J. J. Abrams' new Star Trek movie. (Here.) Cool, they are.
-tdr
Labels: Movies, Science Fiction
