Movies
Funimation Condensed “Attack on Titan’s” First Season into a Feature Film!
While the live-action adaptation are two of the worst films I’ve ever seen, the original “Attack on Titan” animated series is one of the best ever. The only thing that could make them even better is if they were edited down into feature film form…
Speaking of, to prepare fans for the long awaited arrival of “Attack on Titan” Season 2, Funimation has acquired and will be releasing the “Attack on Titan” Season 1 recap movies (Part 1: “Guren no Yumiya” and Part 2: “Jiyuu no Tsubasa”) this March!
These two full length movies (120-minute run-time each) will cover the first and second half of “Attack on Titan” Season 1 respectively and will each screen for one night only. Part 1 will screen on March 27, 2017. Part 2 will screen on March 28 or 29, 2017 depending on theater location. Part 2 features a special Season 2 teaser following the film’s credits.
This limited release will be shown in 19 select Reading and Alamo Drafthouse theater locations across the U.S. Dates for each movie are dependent on theater location. Visit funimationfilms.com/attackontitan for more information.
My brother turned me on to “Attack On Titan” back in 2014. I had been quite a long time since I enjoyed some “new” Japanimation, and the eclectic mix of Ninja Scroll, Godzilla and Spider-Man was so exciting that my weekend was ruined by binge watching the adaptation of the Japanese manga series written and illustrated by Hajime Isayama.
Here’s a breakdown on the series, via IMDB:
2000 years from now, humans are nearly exterminated by titans. Titans are typically several stories tall, seem to have no intelligence, devour human beings and, worst of all, seem to do it for the pleasure rather than as a food source. A small percentage of humanity survived by walling themselves in a city protected by extremely high walls, even taller than the biggest of titans. Flash forward to the present and the city has not seen a titan in over 100 years. Teenage boy Eren and his foster sister Mikasa witness something horrific as the city walls are destroyed by a colossal titan that appears out of thin air. As the smaller titans flood the city, the two kids watch in horror as their mother is eaten alive. Eren vows that he will murder every single titan and take revenge for all of mankind.
There’s an insane amount of action, and even a pretty solid amount of gore. But what truly makes this such a special series is the storytelling. Instead of each episode being its own arc, it’s a continuous story that continues to build each and every episode – and they still manage to drop a massive cliffhanger as the end of each chapter. My personal favorite aspect of the show is that they aren’t afraid to bail on the main characters for an episode in order to spend 20 minutes developing a new character, which helps build tension throughout.
“Attack on Titan” is streaming in various places, which means you too can binge watch as giant humanoid creatures snack on the townspeople as if they were delicious candy.
It’s been eight years since Ari Aster came onto the scene and helped usher in a new wave of horror with Hereditary, one of the rare horror movies from the past ten years that still seems to come up in conversation every single week. And it’s back in the conversation this week, with Ari Aster revealing at an event that he’s already written a prequel to Hereditary!
Ari Aster was on hand at the American Cinematheque for Bleak Week: Cinema of Despair last week, a Los Angeles festival that screened all of Aster’s movies to date. The website Gold Derby reports that Aster revealed the Hereditary prequel script during a Q&A at the event, and you can watch the full Q&A conversation below for confirmation on the website’s report.
“I wrote a prequel to this,” Aster told the crowd, referring to Hereditary. “It never feels like the right time to do it. It’s a prequel, not a sequel so I don’t know where this goes.”
Would a potential Hereditary prequel dig deeper into the mythology of demon king Paimon? Unfortunately, Aster provides no further details on his prequel approach at this time.
Aster said of Hereditary during the same Q&A, “I was just trying to make a really good horror movie.” I think most horror fans would agree that he more than accomplished that goal, and the past eight years have proven that Hereditary is an enduring classic of its generation.
We celebrated the fifth anniversary of Hereditary here on BD back in 2023.
Ron Breton wrote, “Hereditary offers a similar emotional resonance to this new generation of horror – my generation of horror– as movie-goers in the seventies when they first saw Exorcist. Much like Aster’s film, we see the incomprehensible evil wear the face of a young girl; the victim of a raw deal she had no say in, as it tears a family to its core. Sure, both films offer so many terrifying visuals that can make the hair stand up on anyone’s neck – but it also depicts intense relationships and emotions that are tangible. Real. Familiar.”
“In that familiarity lies the uncanny, ready to rear its ugly head and force us to confront thoughts and horrors laying dormant and clawing at our psyche,” Breton continued his 5th anniversary celebration of Hereditary. “And it doesn’t matter if it’s been five or fifty years. These horrors are always there, as we become pawns in its horrible, hopeless machine.”
Toni Collette, Gabriel Byrne, Alex Wolff, Ann Dowd, and Milly Shapiro star in Hereditary. In the film, “A grieving family is haunted by tragic and disturbing occurrences.”
That’s putting it mildly, eh?!
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