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Reviews
Shônen Jakku to Mahô-tsukai (1967)
Nobody ever believed me that this title existed...
I remember seeing this cartoon back when I was eight years old back in '85. For some reason, I remembered it being claymation, but I guess I'm just going senile. Anyways, for years I remembered this rather head-trippy, dark, and slightly sadistic, but rather magical cartoon, but most of my friends thought I was crazy. The most memorable thing was the scary ampitheatre full of monsters chanting "Into the machine! Into the machine!" and turning poor little Squeaker into a bat demon thing.
Anyways, for years, since the advent of the internet, I scoured the web for any trace of this wonderful animated adventure, but sadly came up short. I was starting to think I might of imagined it all... until recently, when I met a friend who saw the same thing and actually remembered the title. So now I googled the title and all the memories came back to me.
It's a pity I can't find an English region-1 DVD or VHS of it. I'd of loved to see it again. ;_;
Ghost Rider (2007)
Good. Not great. But very entertaining.
***Might Have Spoilers*** I, for one, loved the movie, and I'm a comic purist! Cage pulled off Blaze magnificiantly! The inclusion of Phantom Rider (The unofficial original Ghost Rider) was a cool touch! And Peter Fonda as Mephisto was a wonderful nod to the ultimate classic biker movie, Easy Rider! And Fonda pulled off the whole 'source of all evil' thing quite nicely.
All in all, The movie had good balance of character development and action. There's only a couple minor quibbles I have, and those are pretty much unimportant comic book purist geekery.
1) Ghost Rider burning/melting/blowing up everything by just simply riding down the road, not to mention setting everything on fire everywhere he goes... makes for a funny Jackson Hewitt commercial, but it's not practical for a superhero (or antihero in this case) to make more collateral damage than any good.
2) Blackheart almost seemed to mirror Deacon Frost from the Blade movie, except instead of a hip goateed gen-x'er, you got a Marilyn Manson wannabe that was slightly more powerful. Heck, even his big "power up moment" in the final climactic battle was taken directly from Blade, complete with ghosts flying into his body and turning the whites of his eyes red. I was hoping he'd morph into the giant dreadlocked lizard thing like he is in the comics during the final battle.
3) Texas *IS NOT* Arizona. Texas is mainly ugly, flat plains full of rocks, crusty dead grass, and scrub bush. Not sand and cactus.
Anyways, in the end, great movie. I might just see it again! Oh, and Don't expect any goodies at the end of the credits, though. First Marvel movie in some time to break that tradition. And I couldn't find a Stan Lee cameo anywhere in sight.