Muramasa: The Demon Blade

The push for photo realism in games has really drawn attention away from games with great sprite art. Muramasa: The Demon Blade is a title that got completely lost in the American market, in part because of it’s being a sprite-based side-scrolling action game and in part due to its being released on the Wii. In fact, I remember being interested in the title before it was released here and then totally forgot about it until a friend brought it to my attention again. I’m glad he did because the game really hit me on an aesthetic level and brought me into the world of magical ancient Japan.

Building Cult Status

I'm not giving anything away about next year's top pick...

The idea of a cult classic film or television series has been bothering me lately. If one really thinks about it, it’s more of a marketing term than anything else. According to Wikipedia, a cult film is one that ” that has acquired a highly devoted but specific group of fans.” By that definition alone, almost any film (or piece of art) can technically acquire cult status so long as two people really like it. The article goes on to say that not everything goes on to acquire cult status for a multitude of reasons. To this I have to ask Why? Why are lesser known films that a handful of people like not automatically cult classics? The answer is recognition.

“Let me put down my frappuccino and talk about genre”

Let Me In director reveals what he kept and what he cut from the vampire classic.

The above link is to an io9 interview with the director of Let Me In, the American remake of Let the Right One In. The article is fine and makes me look even more forward to the film. I enjoyed the original, and there was little chance I would not see it. It is a vampire romance with kids in a depressing setting. What can go wrong?

Trailer Trash – Cold Souls

With the summer movie season fizzling into a dull pile of grey BLAH the studios are prepping their post summer films early. We already showed you the incredibly creepy trailer for Martin Scorsese’s Shutter Island with Leo DiCaprio, now we have a look at a fil called Cold Souls. The film stars the ever brilliant actor Paul Giamatti as actor Paul Giamatti. No, that’s not a fucking mistake, though I don’t know how the films setup came to that. The story centers on a man who decides to put his soul into cold storage in order to relieve himself of the burden it carries. When he realizes how empty he is without it(ha ha) he decides to get it back, only there is a mix up in the soul fridge and he finds that his has been absconded with off to Russia, where the hapless thieves thought they were getting the soul of Al Pacino. The film is the third from writer/director Sophie Barthes and also stars Emily Watson (yum) and David Strathairn. You can see the hi-res trailer here. Thanks to AintItCool.Com for heads up.