Weekend Reads (Jul 22): “Akira,” Best Action Films, Tom Cruise, Bruce Lee, Jason Aldean, The Cure
Recommended weekend reading material for July 22, 2023.
Every week, I compile a list of interesting and thought-provoking articles to offer you some enjoyable weekend reading material.
Katsuhiro Otomo’s Akira, which he adapted from his own manga, turned 35 this week. Hoai-Tran Bui considers the anime’s ongoing legacy and why it still stands as a monumental achievement after all these years.
Akira’s plot is overcomplicated. It’s packed with oppressive governments, capitalistic rot, a struggling rebellion, and far-reaching conspiracies surrounding a failed psychic weapon, all of which is so complex that it’s easy to find yourself lost. But beneath all the weird psychic stuff and disgusting body horror is a striking, timeless story. Like many of Japan’s greatest sci-fi masterpieces, Akira is a movie made in the shadow of nuclear fallout about how humanity can struggle to survive in a technology-ravaged world of our own making.
But the most impressive part about Akira is just how confident it is in depicting a world on the brink. The bright lights of Neo-Tokyo pulsate, and the city brims with such life it feels like it could emerge from the screen. Disillusioned youth stalk their way through the grimy glow of neon lights. A sinister government conspiracy is shown through beeping yellow screens and shadowy faces. And that’s not even getting to the film’s heart-pounding bike sequences and disturbing shocks of body horror, all barreling toward a weird, metaphysical finale.
I love Akira. Yes, the film’s missing a lot from the manga (if only because Otomo hadn’t finished the manga before starting on the film) and its storyline can be dense and obtuse. But it’s a vibrant work all its own, a masterpiece of animation in terms of detail and technique, and it possesses an energy that few films — animation or live-action — can match.
This Corridor Crew video explores some of the various animation techniques used in Akira.
If you were an anime fan in the ’00s, then this one’s for you: the rise and fall of Newtype USA.
The 2000s were a chaotic decade for the US’s burgeoning anime industry. While there were plenty of stratospheric highs (the debut and massive success of Adult Swim, the expansion of the manga market, and a licensing gold rush) there were also more than a few abyssal lows (the end of Toonami, grappling with the increased ease/prominence of piracy, and the closure of multiple anime licensors). It was a decade marked by uncertainty, where risk was a pervasive way of life, and reward was fleeting and rare. More than any decade yet in the US anime industry’s relatively short life, it truly felt like anything could happen. And for anyone from the humble fan to the seasoned industry professional who wanted to keep their fingers on the pulse of all this mayhem, magazines like Newtype USA played a key role.
I loved Newtype USA and still have several issues down in my office. From the glossy artwork and features to the reviews, posters, and free DVDs, Newtype USA was a godsend for would-be otaku such as myself. (I still have a Last Exile poster hanging on my office wall.)
From my own recollections of Newtype USA: “Just looking at these covers feels like returning to a golden age, when anime had broken over into the mainstream but still had a certain niche-ness about it, and great titles like Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex, Last Exile, and Witch Hunter Robin were being released.”
Related: Speaking of anime from the ’00s, I recently finished watching Ergo Proxy, an extremely existential and philosophical cyberpunk anime that was originally released in 2006.
The critics over at Variety have shared their list of the 50 best action movies of all time, and it’s a solid selection. For example, John Woo’s Hard Boiled:
An explosive showcase of oft-imitated techniques — whose influence reverberated around the world (including gratuitous slo-mo and leaping through the air with guns blazing in both hands) — Hard Boiled was the last of the movies Woo made before Hollywood wooed him west to direct the likes of John Travolta and Nicolas Cage (in the outrageously over-the-top but shamelessly enjoyable Face/Off). Here, Chow Yun-fat and Tony Leung’s characters spend the first hour trying to kill one another, until they realize they’re both working for the same side. Considering the movie’s very bloody body count, it’s either perfect or perverse that the finale happens in a hospital.
It’s impossible to talk about modern action cinema without mentioning Tom Cruise. His Mission: Impossible films are easily the best modern action cinema franchise, and they represent an interesting stage in Cruise’s career.
As triumphant as Cruise’s third act has been, there’s no going back to the kind of bankable superstardom he enjoyed for so long. Those days are gone forever, not just for Cruise but for everyone in the intellectual-property entertainment era. The new stars are brands: superheroes, video games, and toys. In Ethan’s second act, and Maverick’s, we see Cruise figuring out how to succeed in the current environment without that advantage. This is no longer just a tactic to offset bad PR. Cruise has become a quixotic standard bearer in an era marked by a lazy overreliance on digitally generated spectacle and synthetic action, as another way of making movies, for creating must-see big-screen spectacles by celebrating human potential and achievement.
Bruce Lee died 50 years ago this week, and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar has shared a lovely tribute to his teacher and friend.
Bruce was 32 when he died, in his physical prime of muscle, sinew, and athleticism. He had a cocky smile that the young can afford because their bodies haven’t yet begun to betray them in a hundred small and big ways. To the world, he remains frozen in youth with all its vitality and possibilities.
If he’d lived, he’d have been 83 today — the same age as Chuck Norris, John Cleese, Al Pacino, Lily Tomlin, Smokey Robinson, and Ringo Starr. He wouldn’t be jumping and flipping and hitting, but he’d probably be making movies in which other martial artists would be jumping and flipping and hitting. He’d still be telling stories. He’d still be a husband, a father, a grandfather.
He’d still be my friend.
Lee and Abdul-Jabbar starred together in 1972’s Game of Death, which was Lee’s final film; he died during its production. Game of Death was completed after Lee’s death using stand-ins and even footage from his funeral. From my review: “Lee’s legendary status is basically without question nowadays. However, it’s difficult to say how much this movie did to contribute to that status.”
The ongoing Hollywood strikes are driven, in part, by concerns that AI will be used to replace writers and actors. As if proving their point, developers recently used AI to generate and animate a South Park episode from scratch.
AI in entertainment is a hot topic right now, with Hollywood writers and actors striking over the potential use of AI in the creation of TV and movies. Those striking creatives won’t be pleased with the announcement of an AI model that can allegedly “write, animate, direct, voice, and edit” an entire TV show. The proof of concept is a fake episode of South Park.
The episode itself has been posted to Twitter by Fable Studios, alongside a white paper on “Generative TV & Showrunner Agents.” The episode itself is 11 minutes long, and briefly showcases the tool (called SHOW-1) used to generate a story using AI. While scripts and visuals are built from a large language model (LLM) and diffusion tools, the user picks characters, locations, and enters a prompt for the AI to work from.
Related: One potential ramification of the writer and actor strikes is that some of 2023’s biggest movies (e.g., Dune 2) may be pushed back to 2024, as the strike prohibits actors from promoting “past or future work made and released by struck companies.”
The Consequence staff has compiled a list of the 50 best industrial albums of all time. The top entries probably won’t be too surprising, but there are some unexpected selections mixed in there, too.
Over the years, industrial has taken on many forms, from dissonant noise to metal-heavy riffs to dance-club bangers, with a common thread being electronic and mechanical elements that tie them into one singular, yet hard-to-define musical category.
The greatest industrial albums represent the wide diversity that the genre has to offer, showcasing a style of music that continues to thrive, even as it predominantly remains under the radar.
A former worship leader reflects on modern worship trends and practices.
Now over a decade removed from my time as a worship leader, I continue to question if this Christianity, when paired with modern music and concert venues, amounts to anything more than emotional and spiritual manipulation. Was the Holy Spirit really at work in those dimly lit sanctuaries or was I just creating an experience? Was God active in our Sunday worship or were we all suspending our God-given, critical reasoning to simply feel something?
Jason Aldean’s latest single, “Try That in a Small Town,” has raised no small amount of controversy due its lyrics and video, which is set in front of a courthouse where, in 1927, a white lynch mob hanged an 18-year-old Black man.
[T]he most dangerous part of the video… is how it conflates the act of protesting with violent crime. Leading a march and getting in a policeman’s face is on the same level as rioting, or carjacking grandma. Want to vociferously unleash an unpopular opinion in a small town? “See how far ya make it down the road,” [Aldean] sings. Where have demonstrators heard that kind of language before? Were there some who never made it home, after hearing that kind of a threat? I don’t have any trouble imagining Jason Aldean hates white protesters as much as he hates Black ones, but… we’re not very long past that exact language being very specifically directed at people of color. Or, let’s be honest, past it at all.
Meanwhile, Justin Curto wonders, does Aldean really care about small towns? “More than a place, the small-town caricatures Aldean paints stand in for the bootstrap-pulling values he seems to think are in decline… But these towns are just props for Aldean, mirrors that reflect what he wants to see in them.”
When The Cure announced their “Shows of a Lost World” tour earlier this year, Robert Smith famously fought with Ticketmaster to keep prices low (and even issue refunds). And in the process, the band had the most successful and profitable tour of their 40+ year career.
After playing its final show earlier this month, the tour grossed $37.5 million and sold 547,000 tickets over 35 shows in the U.S. and Canada, according to figures reported to Billboard Boxscore.
While those figures are personal highs among the band’s global touring career (dating back to The Cure’s first Boxscore reports in 1985; the band has been touring since the late ‘70s), apples-to-apples comparisons against its North American treks spotlight the tour’s success even better. The $37.5 million revenue total is more than double the band’s previous North American high of $18 million in 2016. And the 547,000 tickets surpass 1992’s 402,000.
The article goes on to point that The Cure could’ve made millions more if Smith hadn’t insisted on cheaper ticket prices like the legend that he is. But as Consequence writes, The Cure’s tour is proof that “it’s possible to protect fans, sell affordable tickets, and still make millions.”
My wife and I saw The Cure in Colorado back in June and it was incredible. As I wrote in my review, “It might have taken me more than three decades to finally see my favorite band of all time, but it was well worth the wait.”
Kevin Mitnick, once known as the world’s most wanted hacker, died this week from pancreatic cancer. He was 59 years old.
According to his obituary, Mitnick battled pancreatic cancer for more than a year and was undergoing treatment at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. “[M]uch of his life reads like a fiction story,” his obituary reads, and that’s perhaps the perfect way to describe his tale. The first time Mitnick infiltrated a computer system was way back in 1979, but it wasn’t until 1988 that he was convicted and sentenced to 12 months in prison for copying a company’s software.
Iconic crooner Tony Bennett also died this week, at the age of 96. No cause of death was announced, but Bennett had suffered from Alzheimer’s for years. This Rolling Stone profile chronicles Bennett’s career, including his unlikely resurgence in the ’80s.
In the Eighties, Bennett’s son Danny began overseeing his career. Bennett re-signed with Columbia, releasing the well-received The Art of Excellence in 1986. Under his son’s guidance, Bennett cut back on cheesy Las Vegas gigs in favor of appearances on David Letterman and, later, The Simpsons. The gamble paid off: With Sinatra in increasingly poor health, Bennett, who always had a less pugilistic image than Sinatra, became one of the last links to a previous generation. And his insistence on sticking with songs by George and Ira Gershwin, Irving Berlin, Cole Porter, and other classic pre-rock songwriters made him seen uncompromising rather than dated.
From the Blog
As I write this, Sound of Freedom — which stars Jim Caviezel and was inspired by the work of a former government agent who founded an organization to combat child sex trafficking — has become quite the summer success story. But there’s some reason to believe that the movie is based on falsehoods. But does that really matter?
As I see it, the issue is not whether Sound of Freedom took liberties or not; every movie adaptation takes liberties, even those claiming to be inspired by a true story. (For what it’s worth, Angel Studios, the film’s distributor, published a lengthy blog post explaining how Sound of Freedom deviates from Ballard’s story.) The real issue is whether or not the original story on which the movie is based took liberties with the truth — and if Red Pilled America’s claims are accurate, that appears to be the case here.
The truth is never served by lies, not even lies told to advance a cause that everyone agrees is good. Deception and falsehoods, especially those utilized for any sort of gain (be it money, fame, or power) erode trust and raise suspicions — things that can’t be afforded when it comes to something as important as saving children from trafficking and exploitation.
This post is available to everyone (so feel free to share it). However, paying subscribers also get access to exclusives including playlists, podcasts, and sneak previews. If you’d like to receive those exclusives — and support my writing on Opus — then become a paid subscriber today for just $5/month or $50/year.