Stop Frame

All right, "perfect" may be an overstatement, but still.... Written & Directed by Alfonso Cuarón , the man who made a perfect Harry Potter movie and the gorgeous A Little Princess and more. Starring Clive Owen , Julianne Moore , Michael Caine , and (special drum roll) Chiwetel Ejiofor (perfect as The Operative , perfect as Okwe , perfect here?). I'm actually excited about a film that's coming soon, namely The Children of Men . (Oh, and The Science of Sleep doesn't look too shabby, either.)

I started with my all-time-favorite, Akira , progressed through #2, Ghost in the Shell , and finished with Steamboy . I'll probably watch Ghost in the Shell: Innocence tonight, and maybe even Perfect Blue . I've seen them all before (and in the case of Akira and GITS , over and over), and they're all great touchstones. If you have any love of animation at all you cannot help but be left slack-jawed after watching Akira . For the most part it is completely done in classic, painted cell animation style. There are moments you can tell where something computer generated helped create a given movement or prepare a framework, but by and large it is a massive labor of love with ink and pen. It is a singular film that puts all other animation to shame. Period. End of debate. It is also an exploration of the human psyche, what we are often willing to do in the pursuit of knowledge and power. As a Time Magazine review once said, there are no "good guys" in Akira , just di...

This is a little late. Sorry. Fire me if you must. I was one of those who contributed to the largest opening weekend in movie history, the $136 million that Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest looted from the wallets of mankind. Think of the starving children that would have fed. Think of the problems of humanity that could have cured. Naw! I’m in a fairly dark period of my life (Who am I? Where am I going? Yadda yadda yadda?) and I got dragged into the daylight to give the film a peek. The end result? I sort of liked it but I’m mostly disappointed. Over at Ain't It Cool News , Moriarty said that Dead Man’s Chest is to Curse of the Black Pearl as Empire Strikes Back is to Star Wars: A New Hope . And that’s fairly accurate, except that Empire Strikes Back is the best of the six Star Wars films and one of the truly great geek sci-fi masterpieces of all time, surpassing – in my mind at least – the film that gave it birth. In that sense, Dead Man’s Chest isn’t even in th...