GRM

When I next revisit Oshii's work as a whole (perhaps to write a follow-up to Stray Dog of Anime), I'm really going to need to pay more attention to GRM. It's a CG project that was originally going to follow Ghost in the Shell, but it never came to be, although much of its look and feel was turned into what became Avalon.

There's some information on this project floating around the web (in particular, check out the old official website through Archive.org), and more has been written in Japanese in some of the books on Oshii I have on my bookshelf.

Anyway, this post was prompted by some interesting GRM footage I stumbled across on YouTube:

Coverage in Goethe magazine

The Japanese magazine Goethe has been running some interesting coverage of Oshii as in preparation for his upcoming film Sky Crawlers. The first part of the coverage is up online as a PDF here. The second volume of coverage is in the November issue of the magazine, which I just ordered from Amazon Japan. (Along with a preorder for the Kerberos x Tachiguishi collection and the upcoming December issue of Comic Ryu, which is supposed to come with a special Shin Onna Tachiguishi Retsuden navigate DVD.)

Tachiguishi in Cineaste

In the Fall 2007 edition of Cineaste, Rahul Hamid's coverage of the Jeonju Film Festival has a couple of paragraphs focusing on Tachiguishi Retsuden, and includes a promo pic of Moongaze Ginji.

Project Mermaid video

How did I miss this before? Oshii's "Project Mermaid" posted on YouTube:

After all that, it's not quite as interesting as I thought it would be.

Oshii at TIFF

It's almost October (in 20 minutes from where I'm sitting). This will be the month that the Oshii-supervised live-action sequel to "Tachiguishi Retsuden" will hit the screens. It'll be playing at the Tokyo International Film Festival later in October on the 21st and 23rd. I'd love to be there, but Tokyo's not in my near future.

Also, I just noticed that the first Patlabor film will be screening at TIFF as part of their "Tokyo in Focus: How Tokyo has been depicted in post WWII cinema" series of films. (See the complete list here.)

Oshii-like Thinking, parts 2 and 3

See? I told you I wouldn't be able to keep up the daily updates. However, I didn't think it would happen so quickly. I do have an excuse, though, since I've been very sick. Now that I'm feeling better, here are the next two installments of "Oshii-like Thinking":

2. Religion (shuukyou) - "Yes, that's a nuanced topic. Actually, I am basically a religious person. By this I mean that somewhere there is something that is greater than human beings. However, I hate all of these so-called 'religious societies' or 'religious organizations.' That's my personal feeling."

3. Sex - "I love it. The reason is that it's necessary. Wars and sex are the only things people have been unable to stop."

Oshii quote in Wired

In the latest issue of Wired (October 2007) there is an article on 25 years of Blade Runner. Among featured quotes by Neil Gaiman, J. Craig Venter and Ray Kurzweil is one from Oshii on page 184:

Twenty-five years ago, I was becoming dissatisfied with Japanese animation's focus on characters and stories at the expense of environments. Suddenly, the world I vaguely imagined appeared in front of me. I felt overwhelmed--but at the same time I realized that what I was attempting was not wrong at all.

The two-page spread of "The Blade Runner Nexus" beginning on the same page doesn't mention Ghost in the Shell (or Innocence, which, of Oshii's films, seems to me to draw the most from BR). Nods are given to Akira and Battle Angel, though.