Andrew Osmond 40
Alita: Battle Angel
By Andrew Osmond. Midway through Alita: Battle Angel, the cyborg heroine realises she’s provoked the mother of all bar brawls – with a crowd of horribly beweaponed cyborgs – and now must kick an ironmonger’s worth of metal ass. She cautions her human boyfriend Hugo (Keean Johnson) to stand back, way back. This line of […]
Destiny: The Tale of Kamakura
By Andrew Osmond. The family fantasy Destiny: The Tale of Kamakura is at the populist end of this year’s Japan Foundation Film Programme, which tours UK and Ireland through February and March. Released in Japan over the Christmas season in 2017, Destiny is a little like Harry Potter, and a little like Ghibli. It’s also […]
Black Mirror to Anime
By Andrew Osmond. One of the surprise media talking-points over this Christmas was the new episode of the acclaimed anthology series Black Mirror. Called “Bandersnatch,” it was released on Netflix on 28th December, written by series creator Charlie Brooker. It’s a story about multi-choice, branching narratives. The twist is that it’s a multi-choice, branching story […]
Books: Sound! Euphonium
By Andrew Osmond. Concert bands were a special place. The ratio of girls to boys was usually around nine to one, but strictly speaking, it was often even more lopsided than that. So it was not uncommon for girls to end up idolizing someone of their own gender. The objects of such infatuated gazes – […]
Books: Miyazakiworld
By Andrew Osmond. In the recent book Interpreting Anime, Christopher Bolton quoted a barbed comment by director Isao Takahata about his Ghibli colleague. “With Miyazaki, you have to totally believe in the world of the film,” Takahata said. “He is demanding that the audience enter the world he has created completely. The audience is being […]