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Cyborg 009 Unedited and Uncut Anime DVD Review 2 Disc Widescreen Edition (2001)
- March 10, 2010 -
Cyborg 009 is an anime released in 2001 based on a manga serialized in several different Japanese magazines. The story is about nine regular humans who had been kidnapped and turned into cyborgs to be weapons for the evil Black Ghost organization. They each have different abilities and work together to try and bring down the Black Ghost organization so they can try to lead normal lives again.
The animation makes this series look even older than it is. I know it's anime, but this is REALLY cartoony. Some of the other cyborgs remind me of that hamburger fellow from Popeye. The features are really exaggerated on the guys to look silly and the girls have ultra emphasized eyelashes. Young kids might like this, but teenagers and adults would quickly lose interest because there is no emotional story or dramatic action to draw you in that would be even close to on par with Naruto, Fullmetal Alchemist, or Neon Genesis Evangelion. The coolest thing about this series is the music. The opening and closing themes are both really catchy and have a bit of a dance J-Pop vibe. The music is way more up-to-date than the series itself.
A little about the story and characters. We begin with 009 waking up and discovering he is a Cyborg and trying to learn his new abilities as he escapes the Black Ghost compound. He is guided by the telepathic voice of 001 which turns out to be a baby when he meets up with the rest of the group 001 through 008. They convince him the bad guys are bad (which is easy since they are being attacked) and to join them. 009 has one of the coolest powers in the group, he has an accelerator button that can slow down time around him so he can move much faster.
002 has a pointy nose and an occasionally abrasive personality and can fly. 003 is the woman and all she does is take care of the baby and have psychic predictions and needs to be saved a lot. 004 is depressed and apparently has weapons in his fingers? 005 is apparently supposed to be Native American but he looks like Mr. T and is the biggest and strongest. 006 is a Chinese chef who can blow fire. 007 can push a button and disguise himself as anything or anyone. And 008 looks like a bad black-face stereotype but with a dark gray face and can swim underwater without holding his breath. You'd think as robots they could all do that...
According to Wiki, these characters all have very detailed backgrounds, motivations, and complex journeys to go on since this manga series apparently originated in the 1960s which would explain a lot about the old-fashioned and out-dated appearance of the characters. Even though they were animated in 2001, they appear to be drawn out of a much older style less impressive than modern anime.
The plot and dialogue is very simple. Clear cut good guys and bad guys and a old professor helping them. After the big conflict of escaping, they end of facing a series of new cyborgs one at a time. Cyborg 0010 has crazy electricity and all the other Cyborgs have to work together to win. And when they beat him....next is 0011 and 0012 and 0013. This can very quickly become tedious. They try to introduce a little more emotion (0012 is only trying to beat them so he can return to his family, 009 has a past history with 0013) but it's just so undeveloped. I don't know if the series gets magically better from here on out, but I'm not motivated to watch more, that's for sure! Why does each new cyborg have to have the double 0's? Why not 011? No clue.
If you want to learn more about the background of the characters in the original manga, here's the wiki article I found with more detail: Wiki article on Cyborg 009
DVD Extras:
These two discs consist of the first eight episodes of the series that are unedited and uncut. Unedited and uncut? What would they have cut out, pray tell? Other than the bad guys talking about needing to "kill" the cyborgs, there isn't much notable violence, no blood, guts, gore, swearing, sexual situations, anything. So I guess it's a fancy way of saying they didn't have to trim it down for commercials? The extras only consist of weblinks and theatrical trailers.
Last night, I saw Shen Yun, "an unforgettable experience of Chinese Dance and Music." Shen Yun Website
I know what you're thinking....what? After seeing movie after movie, we wanted a change of pace so Dan got us these tickets for Valentine's Day. We like to watch Japanese anime and we are very interested in Asian cultures in general so this sounded very interesting and fun. And wow, was it colorful!
Shen Yun has three touring companies and specializes in traditional Chinese dance which combines ballet and many acrobatic moves, ethnic and folk dances, and story-based dances.
The evening was laid out into a series of formal Chinese dances and songs interlaced with a pair of hosts that speak in English and Mandarin for a truly bilingual experience. One of the big components of the show was a giant projector screen in the back that would show heavenly beings descending down on clouds and as soon as they were out of shot, the actual dancers would rise in position on stage! And then in other portions of the show, people would dance offstage and then their digital representation was floating on the screen! Now THAT feels like 3D to me.
The costumes are amazingly beautiful. The colors were bright, there was lots of sparkly ornamentation and embroidery and so many flowy costumes that looked fantastic when the dancers spun around.
If you've seen "House of Flying Daggers", you might get an idea in your minds on what this was like from Zhang Ziyi's opening dance. The sleeve dancing had to be my favorite part of the evening, there were three or four dances in all and it was just so pretty when they flew around! I'm including a video at the bottom because I can't describe it properly.
Another favorite dance of mine was the Silver dance where these girls all had crazy silver headpieces with giant silver necklaces filled with clanging coins that they had to time just right to get a beat going with the orchestra.
The story based dances were fun. One was about a guy who got drunk and decided to dance fight a tiger. Another was about a forbidden romance where a girl was trapped into a mountain and had to be rescued by her grown son with a golden axe to break into the mountain.
There were also a few more modern stories about current day climate in China. When we were taking our seats, I noticed a huge portion of the audience was Chinese as well and through the course of the evening we were informed that this show...can't be shown in China.
At first I couldn't figure out why. What could be so harmless about ladies dancing with handkerchiefs or crazy long sleeves? Or these guys dancing with paper lanterns and playing drums? Then it clicked after a "present day" scene was laid out where a woman practicing her religion was suddenly ballet-beaten (with cymbal claps to empathize) until she moved no more and eventually rose up and floated away on the back screen on a cloud. There was an undercurrent in the show from that point on that focused on this belief system that emphasizes morality, making your way to the other shore in the afterlife, and "Dafa" was even quoted in the songs.
I got home and hit up wiki for more info: Falun Gong It turns out this religion/system of beliefs began in 1992 and focuses on being a good person and has derived from Buddhism and Taoism. The last dance of the evening was a story-dance about the Monkey King and followers bringing Buddhism to China and finished with monks dancing around with orange books with the golden emblems on them.
According to this show, Dafa is banned in China and its followers are persecuted in the way demonstrated in the show. I thoroughly believe people should be allowed freedom of religion. I was just surprised at how much propaganda was delivered to us through dance. In the second act, another Dafa follower was "attacked" and the attackers went so far as to use a prop taser on him! I turned to Dan and asked, "Did someone REALLY just get tased in this pretty ballet???" It sure makes Zoolander's break-dance fighting look tamer.
All in all, this was a beautiful show, the dancers were superb, and the colors and music all equaled a good time. It's not super serious all the time either, many dances are just light-hearted, cute, happy and make you wonder how they can keep up the smiling this whole time and control their breathing so they don't look utterly exhausted.
At my place, we had a party with theme dishes after the best pictures...I learned there are TOO MANY! I have so much food left over, does anyone like soft tacos?? Please come eat these!
Opening with a Neil Patrick Harris musical dance number and some celebrity roasting by the hosts, Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin who both shared time with Meryl Streep in "It's Complicated." By now you've seen a run down of the winners, but while many awards were very well deserved, others seemed lacking. In the last few years, Oscars viewership has dropped over and over again, hence the change-up this year with the Best Pictures to make people more interested again. If a few more big mainstream blockbusters make it on nominee list along with the artsy pieces, average people would watch again.
Wow, did they screw up that idea! While "Avatar" took visual categories easily, it lost Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Film Editing to "The Hurt Locker". I watched "The Hurt Locker" and while I'd agree that it is cinematically great and had a deep story with danger on the warfront (and an unfortunate cameo by Kate from LOST), it just didn't hold my attention the way I hoped it would after all the hype. I think my husband said it well when he said, "Twenty years from now, what movie will people remember?" and that would definitely be "Avatar".
The artsy war movie won out over the smurf village which will change the way movies are made for years. This is like "Annie Hall" beating "Star Wars" all over again. We did ballots at our party to predict the winners and I forgot the cardinal rule: The Academy loves war movies and period films about all else so "The Hurt Locker" beat "Avatar" and "The Young Victoria" stole the costuming Oscar away from "The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus" (while that movie lacked a full performance by Heath Ledger, you'll have to admit how visually amazing it is when you see it). Sandy Powell, the woman who accepted the costuming award was actually kind of....rude in her speech since she told everyone that the others should have won but she was all too happy to take the award. AWKWARD.
Probably the most interesting point of the night was when a producer pulled a Kanye and hijacked the mike from the director for "Music by Prudence", the documentary short winner. Here's the link to the story behind that
A big upset for some was the win by Sandra Bullock for Best Actress for her performance in "The Blind Side." Did I think that movie was good enough for Best Picture or anything? No, but I thought it was a great movie still. I think the Academy must have looked at the group this year and since Meryl Streep's award cabinet has to be overflowing by now (16 nominations?? 16?!?!??!), it probably was Sandra Bullock's only likely opportunity. I think she is a great comedic actress (except in the horror that was "All About Steve") and it was nice to see someone else get it. She had one of the best speeches of the night too and was gracious enough to take the time to compliment the other nominees, something that hadn't been done all night and is VERY classy.
The Dude got an Oscar! I swear he and Woody Harrellson should have been sitting together so they could get high together, but seriously Jeff Bridges has had an amazing career and I was very happy to see him win. I haven't gotten to see "Crazy Heart" yet but I've heard so much wonderful feedback about it.
I really enjoyed Waltz's Oscar win for "Inglourious Basterds" and had been cheering for that movie to win Original screenplay but alas, not meant to be. Is anyone else intimidated by Mo'Nique? She's a little scary sometimes! I thought her win was good though.
I was so happy "Up" won for animated feature, I mean it kind of had to because it had a Best Picture nomination but so many people were cheering for "The Fantastic Mr. Fox" instead which was clever, but nowhere near as fun and emotionally impacting as "Up" which makes me cry...a lot.
Speaking of "Up" though, I was sad that "Up in the Air" didn't win adapted screenplay. I knew the actors wouldn't win in spite of their nominations being well-deserved because of the competition of others in their catagories, but I had hoped that the script would get a win. I haven't seen "Precious" yet, but I bet it's still a well-deserved win there.
"The Cove" was a good win for documentary about mistreatment of dolphins. The Foreign Language film win was a BIG upset. I thought it was going to be "The White Ribbon" for sure, it even had a cinematography nod! But if it didn't win I figured "Un Prophet" would be the one so "The Secret In Their Eyes" came out of left field.
What did everyone think of George Clooney? Some people seemed to think he was being a big grumpy-pants, but I was pretty sure it was an inside joke since he knew how often he would be on camera.
Unfortunately for Clooney, I think a lot of people have trouble appreciating his on-screen talents as they often associate his character's personalities with that of his own personality. I guess that's what you get for being somewhat typecast as the suave, know-it-all, business type.. I thought his performance was great in Up In The Air. I have yet to see Crazy Heart.
I honestly didn't feel Avatar deserved best picture. If you strip away the effects there isn't much depth to it's story (I know you can argue that about almost anything). It definitely instilled flickers of emotion at points, but none of it lasted. I left the theater extremely pleased with what I saw, but instead of dwelling on it's message I thought about how hot the female alien was.. Now, I'm sure a lot of that has to do with me being somewhat of a pervert.. but did no one else feel like Avatar was a redesigned Dances With Wolves?
I am bias in favor of The Hurt Locker. As an active duty Marine who has been to Iraq, it struck home with me.. not necessarily because of shared experiences, because it FINALLY portrayed nearly perfectly the stresses and rigors of the war in Iraq. For a movie that packs so much action I really thought the complexity of the characters was more moving than the entire film of Avatar. None of the characters are necessarily "likable", and I left the theater undecided on how I felt about them. I truly felt like K.B. successfully made a film about OIF without taking a political stance.
Gary Unmarried - The Complete First Season TV on DVD Review 20 Episodes on 3 Discs Widescreen Edition (2010)
"Gary Unmarried" is a sitcom about a single dad paint contractor, Gary Brooks (Jay Mohr) who has a very workable relationship with his ex-wife, Allison (Paula Marshall) as they take care of the kids and fight. Paula is engaged to their marriage counselor Dr. Krandall played by Ed Begley Jr. and Gary is trying to date again after fifteen years of marriage and has managed to find another single-mom hottie Vanessa (Jaime King). Their son, Tom (Ryan Malgarini) is just getting interested in girls and their daughter, Louise (Kathryn Newton) is trying to save the world and has a crush on Al Gore.
I haven't watched comedy sitcoms since Home Improvement, Family Matters, and Seinfeld when I was younger so the first thing that struck me watching this first season of this show was the canned laughter. It takes a lot to get used to again, it just feels so phony. After a few episodes it started to feel familiar again, but the jokes are mostly just average. It's a bunch of situational comedy. Introduce conflict, have silly resolutions along the way, problem over. A list of typical situations: son dating, Gary dating the kids' teachers, Allison & her fiance getting cold feet, their daughter being TOO talented, meeting a new girlfriends' friends, whose house to have Thanksgiving at, the ex-wife and the new girlfriend getting along too well, etc.
Jay Mohr was great in Jerry Maguire, but just average here. He holds his own as star of the series, but the series itself isn't very memorable. His character, Gary is a lazy irresponsible dad who acts like a big kid. It's almost like Tim Allen's character from Home Improvement but without the tool snafus and he isn't married. The divorced couple still has fights just as if they were married, they just seem to live at different houses. They are perfectly happy being divorced because they don't like each other very much dating-wise. Gary and Allison get divorced but Allison still takes care of him and so does his new girlfriend, Vanessa so he doesn't have to learn anything or be responsible. I guess this is what shows are built on!
The kids are just ok, very predictable. Louise's self righteousness gets old VERY fast and she was re-cast right after the pilot episode, first a little brunette, then a blond with curls reminiscent of Goldilocks, pretty obvious. Tom tries to use relationship slang whenever possible when talking about girls and it's weird, but I bet parents would think it's funny and endearing.
It has been frequented by a number of good guest stars like Jane Curtin, Martin Mull, and Matthew Lillard. Jaime King seems almost like a bait-and-switch because she is in the series quite a bit in the beginning and then vanishes. Poof!
I'm not a parent or divorced so this show is just ok by me and I wouldn't watch it unless it were the only thing on. However, that being said, I bet lots of single/divorced parents would find it very funny and refreshing to have a take on divorce that doesn't involve the two people screaming at each other constantly and the wife being an evil dragon lady. Apparently this series has been a success so far because it was picked up for another season.
DVD Extras:
First, there is a series of silly bloopers. Then a feature where you can spend a day with Jay Mohr on the set of the show. Then there is a feature called "Planet Begley" about Ed Begley Jr. making the set more eco-friendly. Lastly a feature called "The Chemistry of Comedy" consists of an all-access tour of the show with the cast and crew.
I review movies in my spare time for the Rotten Tomatoes show on Current TV and I also share them with my Indymojo mofos here. I am a moderator of the Indymojo Movie Lovers group so watch for me and danno029 handing out passes at screenings. danno029 & I have an online retail business that specializes in Fan-tastic apparel, action figures, and collectibles at hauntedflower.com so visit us!
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Cyborg 009 is an anime released in 2001 based on a manga serialized in several different Japanese magazines. The story is about nine regular humans who had been kidnapped and turned into cyborgs to be weapons for the evil Black Ghost organization. They each have different abilities and work together to try and bring down the Black Ghost organization so they can try to lead normal lives again.
Last night, I saw Shen Yun, "an unforgettable experience of Chinese Dance and Music." 
The evening was laid out into a series of formal Chinese dances and songs interlaced with a pair of hosts that speak in English and Mandarin for a truly bilingual experience. One of the big components of the show was a giant projector screen in the back that would show heavenly beings descending down on clouds and as soon as they were out of shot, the actual dancers would rise in position on stage! And then in other portions of the show, people would dance offstage and then their digital representation was floating on the screen! Now THAT feels like 3D to me.
At my place, we had a party with theme dishes after the best pictures...I learned there are TOO MANY! I have so much food left over, does anyone like soft tacos?? Please come eat these!
It has been frequented by a number of good guest stars like Jane Curtin, Martin Mull, and Matthew Lillard. Jaime King seems almost like a bait-and-switch because she is in the series quite a bit in the beginning and then vanishes. Poof!
haunted.flower
