Godchild by Kaori Yuki, 2001

Posted on 3:13 PM, under


Review here.

Walking through dark Victorian London, under the shadows of soot-stained buildings, you might expect to find a mugger, murderer, or a drunkard trying to remember his way home. But you turned down the wrong alley. The form sprawled in the doorway is not a drunken tramp, but the remains of a twisted experiment. And the figure standing under a hazy stream of moonlight has interest not in your money but your eyes. Godchild, the manga series by Kaori Yuki, is one long jaunt down a back alley. An alley where rose vines crawl across the walls and violin music cloys from the shadows, but a dark alley nonetheless. Creepy and comical, melodramatic and moving, Godchild offers up a back-alley freak show that will entertain more than just the anime crowd.

edit post

One does not read Samedi the Deafness. One wanders through a hall of mirrors and falls through the widening cracks. One stumbles through mental fog only to find a tea party of hares and hatters. Jesse Ball's debut novel, Samedi the Deafness, is a fractal jaunt through fancy and reality, a story that finds its own crookedly beautiful style and drags the reader into its ludicrous world.

edit post

Review here.

While most fairy stories today emphasize mordant, psychological retellings, the animated French film Azur & Asmar: The Princes' Quest, stands out by not attempting to extract the Freudian roots of Rapunzel. A simple tale of two men and their quest to rescue a princess, Azur & Asmar fuses Western and Middle Eastern culture and flows with gorgeous artistic style. Yet, while the film is a searing painting, its disinterest in challenging the fairytale genre results in a tepid story and bland heroes.

edit post

Review here.

Sweden’s newest vampire flick, Let the Right One In (Låt den rätte komma in, also the title of the book it is based on), tears away from the cheap trinkets that have cheapened American vampires for years. Instead of a ridiculous dark romance or a soulless action thriller, the film is the tender, terrifying, and frigidly melancholy story of growing up and finding the dearest things in life, whatever their terrible forms. In a fashion befitting of its wispy vampire, Let the Right One In also crept by, deft as smoke, unnoticed by all but the fortunate few.

edit post


Review here.

Though the mythological reference may fly past some, Ovid’s legend of Dryope is a tale of tragedy, blood-gushing flowers, and tree-hugging. Theatre Suburbia’s newest production, Dryope and Iole, delves into family secrets, filial love, and a few poplar trees. How do these time-crossed stories compare? Dryope and Iole features a talented cast and more pronounceable names, but Ovid’s packs far more originality.

edit post

Review here.
Teenage girls are annoying. At least, the Hollywood species, where every soul-shattering, apocalyptic relationship problem can be solved with a Prada bag and some "girl time." Perhaps that's why everyone loathes the Hollywood teenager. She preens and over-dramatizes, but everything still works out. That this creature is absent from The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2 makes it an above-average film, while good acting and writing make it even better.
*** / ****

edit post

X-Files: I Want to Believe, 2008

Posted on 9:36 PM, under


Review here.

The original X-Files series crept onto the scene in 1993, steadily built up a magnificent cult status, then stumbled out in 2002 in a jumble of convoluted soap-opera mush. X-Files: I Want to Believe follows the same pattern, but the 100-minute running time leaves no time for anything magnificent.

* 1/2 / ****

edit post