Posts with the “event” tag

Week of Anime 2010: Redline

Thanks to a peppering of festival showings and a word-of-mouth groundswell, Redline already has a great start to it. Although being in production for five years might cast doubt on that. Premiering fourteen months prior in Locarno, Switzerland and travelling around the festival circuit before getting its UK premiere earlier in May, the volume of veracity of opinion made this my most anticipated of the Glasgow Scotland Loves Animation events. Saying it didn't disappoint would be doing it an injustice.

Praise can of course be heaped on its visuals – director Takeshi Koike's previous works such as Dead Leaves and the Animatrix's World Record are comparatively poor primers for the stylistic barrage on display here – just as scorn can be heaped on its paper thin plot. But something gels the film together, making the dog faced aliens, the trance-house soundtrack and the outright craziness work. To paraphrase the subsequent question and answer session: they put everything into the movie, chewed up the scenery, then shot it with an orbital laser.

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Week of Anime 2010: At the UK premiere of Trigun Badlands Rumble

Rounding out Saturday's events for the Scotland Loves Animation Glasgow festival was the UK premiere of Trigun: Badlands – the long awaited movie sequel to the TV series which, hard as it is to believe, concluded twelve years ago. With both the movie and series producer, Shigeru Kitayama, and director, Satoshi Nishimura present for the inaugural showing, it was quite the special event.

Kicking off with a short introduction from both via the accomplished translator Bethan Jones, Nishimura commented that he knew the film wouldn't win any awards and that it would be better if we (the audience) had a beer in one hand and a bucket of popcorn in the other, but he hoped we would have fun laughing our heads off and running around with outlaws in the film. Kitayama echoed his sentiments and after a nervous and slightly haphazard juggling act at the solitary microphone, the film started.

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Week of Anime 2010: Summer Wars


Jonathan Clements introducing Summer Wars

Kicking off the Scotland Loves Animation set of events was a showing of Summer Wars at the Glasgow Film Theatre. Organised by with the help from UK organisations such as Manga Entertainment, the Japan Foundation and Creative Scotland, it is the first in a series of films being shown at the GFT and later at the Edinburgh Filmhouse.

Having been earlier in the year to the UK premiere of Evangelion 2.0, it was familiar territory and the trip up from England wasn't as fraught as I had expected. The queue to enter the cinema was sizeable and with no allocated seats, I feared getting a good spot would be impossible. I was pleasantly surprised though to land in an almost central spot and for some seats to be left vacant.

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