Hello folks, and welcome on back to Wrong Every Time. Summer’s in full swing at this point, but predictably, I’m spending the better part of my free time indoors and preoccupied with a replay of Fire Emblem: Three Houses. I’m not really a musou fan, but the release of Three Hopes reminded me of just how much I loved Three Houses, and I certainly can’t say no to this mass infusion of new fanart. Unfortunately, in spite of my very best efforts, I’m currently just replaying the Black Eagles route. Look, it’s just really hard to betray Edel once you’ve already made that commitment, and also it’s pretty hard to recruit Bernie if she’s not already on your team. But fortunately for you all, my misadventures at Garreg Mach have been accompanied by an eclectic selection of screenings, and I’ve got plenty to say about all of them. Let’s run down the latest features in one more Week in Review!
Tag Archives: Film
Spring 2022 – Week 11 in Review
Hey folks, and welcome to Wrong Every Time. How’s everyone doing today? I’m currently attempting to will myself into writing up another article after this one, because goddamnit, that Current Projects list is not going to watch itself. But dubious productivity aside, I’m actually feeling pretty great at the moment, and looking forward to a jog later this afternoon. It’s becoming something of an annual tradition for me to start up one of those “couch to 5k” running plans in early spring, get pretty darn fit by the end of summer, and then squander my gains when it gets too damn cold out. I really should invest in a gym membership or something this winter, but as of now, I’m currently in the peak improvement segment of my fitness arc, which syncs up perfectly to the brief period of tolerable New England weather. Also I just received an extremely nice note from a long-time reader, which is, you know, day made right there. I know it can be intimidating to send messages to creators you like, but there is nothing more rewarding than hearing you made a positive impact in someone’s life. And don’t limit that courage to internet folks – we’re not on this ball for very long, and I’d say the best thing we can do with that time is to let people know they are loved.
Alright, I’m getting all mushy here and you folks don’t need any of that. I’ve sifted through my review sack and emerged with an interesting medley of features, with topics ranging from the apex of genetic engineering to the lawless drama of the old west. Let’s run down some movies!
Spring 2022 – Week 10 in Review
Hello everyone, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. You all doing okay this week? I’m personally feeling fan-fucking-tastic, having knocked out a couple of anxiety-provoking appointments late last week, and also just reveling in all the great shows we’ve been munching through recently. Anne of Green Gables and Sherlock Hound are simply wondrous slices of pre-Ghbili goodness, Star Driver embodies all that thorny thematic density that first enthralled me in anime, and even the ongoing Spy x Family is proving to be more charming and hilarious than I expected. You subscribers are treating me very well at the moment, and I only hope I can return the favor by suggesting some awesome films for you all. Without further ado, let’s burn down a fresh Week in Review!
Spring 2022 – Week 9 in Review
Hello everyone, and welcome on back to Wrong Every Time. You all doing okay? I’m frankly feeling a bit lethargic at the moment, but fortunately, my current tasks are largely mechanical ones. Just gotta write this here opening paragraph, find some screencaps for the week’s features, and plug it all into the CMS – perfect lazy afternoon work, after which I’ll be clearing my head with a nice jog. My own micro-moods aside, we’ve got quite an interesting collection of films this week, ranging from another Hitchcock classic to the original Top Gun. I can’t imagine I’ll be adding anything to the Top Gun discourse that hasn’t been rehashed a thousand times already, but I’d be a terrible reviewer if I let my intellectual redundancy stop me from opening my big fat mouth. Let’s start off with a tragic misfire from one of my favorite directors, as we burn through a fresh Week in Review!
Spring 2022 – Week 8 in Review
Hello folks, and welcome back to my small slice of the internet. Summer arrived in force this week, heralding ninety degree afternoons and a whole lot of general dampness. I’m not complaining, though; I’ll take oppressive heat over oppressive cold any day, and will be enjoying my newly walkable city until the next eight-month winter arrives. Boston is actually quite nice in the summer; we’ve got a wide array of public parks, Cambridge is essentially an urban college town, and we’re positively lousy with colonial architecture and monuments. I am in fact convincing myself to go for a walk as I type, so let’s wrap up this aimless preamble, and get to the real meat of the article. A new week has passed, some excellent films have been screened, and I’m eager to share my findings with you. Let’s get to it!
Spring 2022 – Week 7 in Review
Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. This week I’ve been munching through a whole lot of comfort food, chewing my way through a variety of horror attractions, and also starting a new book simply because I wanted to read it. Everyone online seemed to love Gideon the Ninth, and so far I’m having a great time with it too, while also just savoring the feeling of reading for pleasure again. I know I’m the least appropriate person to impart this lesson, but you really do have to keep some of yourself for yourself, and not turn absolutely everything into content or profit. Of course, with me being me, I expect I’ll still be roused to ramble about Gideon once I’ve actually finished it – but for now, let’s just run through some fresh new films. Onward!
Spring 2022 – Week 6 in Review
Hey folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. It seems like spring has finally arrived in my neighborhood, so I hope you’re all enjoying the blissfully temperate weather as much as I am. I’ve also been feeling pretty upbeat about my article progress; I finished an essay I’d been poking at for weeks, knocked out a couple ambitious notes projects, and have got a sizable Why It Works column arriving next Monday. My bounty board is looking more manageable than it has in some time, and in the meantime, I’m still sneaking in as many films as I can to power-level my cinema stats. I started off this whole review business with full points in literature and not much else, so I’ve been doing my best to rush the cinema study endgame, and feeling just a tad more attuned to the breadth and history of film with each new article. Seeing connections and influences emerge in real time is an immensely satisfying process, and I’m doing my best to feed all that study back into my critical work. But for now, let’s just poke at some interesting films, as we run down one more Week in Review!
Hakujaden
Hello everyone, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today we’ll be exploring the oldest work of anime I’ve ever covered on the blog, and in fact, the first full-length film Toei Douga ever produced. Known as Hakujaden, “The White Serpent,” or “Panda and the Magic Serpent,” it’s an adaptation of a classic work of Chinese folklore, and is essentially the anime equivalent to Disney’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarves.
In this film, we will be witnessing the process of a new art form coming into being, as the scattered shorts of prior years gave way to a new era of anime production, led in large part by the luminaries of Toei Douga. Eventually the studio’s film productions would jumpstart the careers of modern legends like Takahata and Miyazaki, but for Hakujaden, the key animation would be composed by just two animators: Akira Daikubara handling the humans, and Yasuji Mori taking care of the animals. Hakujaden is a staggeringly significant work by any metric, and I’m frankly well outside my depth in attempting to “critique” it in anything but the most wildly ahistorical of styles, but I hope at the very least we can simply sit and appreciate it together. Let’s explore the birth of Toei Douga’s film catalog!
Spring 2022 – Week 5 in Review
Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. I’ve currently got a post-Covid spring in my step, as well as a quiet sense of embarrassment about how much work I got done while I was trapped in quarantine. It turns out when you’re not allowed to socialize or even really leave your room, it’s not hard to keep working from the moment you wake up to the moment you lie back down. As a result, my article buffer has never looked healthier, I’ve finished my latest ambitious weekend project, and I even made some progress on cleaning my room. Well, a little progress. Look, if you’d seen it before, you’d appreciate it looks better now.
Dubious lifestyle habits aside, I’ve also got a fine stack of film reviews for you all, freshly plucked from my massive bag of takes. Let’s see what we’ve got in the latest Week in Review!
Spring 2022 – Week 4 in Review
Well folks, it happened. I’ve taken every possible precaution, I still only leave the house rarely and fully masked, but I still caught goddamn Covid. As a result, I’ve spent the last four days feeling utterly wretched, guzzling ginger ale and Dayquil, and living pretty much exclusively out of my bedroom/home office. It’s painful, it’s isolating, and it comes with the fun bonus feature of desperately hoping I didn’t infect any of my friends or family before symptoms emerged. The plague has come home at last, and has only intensified my internal fury at all those who believe we have no social responsibility towards our fellow human beings.
Fortunately, while I’ve been feeling far too under the weather to actually engage with any new movies, I’ve still got a healthy film review buffer to deplete before doing anything so drastic as skipping a weekly post. So let’s reach into my bag of film delicacies, and see what I was watching before I was struck down by the hand of god.