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Showing posts from December, 2022

Castlevania Anime - Season 4: Leaving A Legacy

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Castlevania is an American animated television series based on the video game series of the same name. The fourth season is primarily an original work that borrows characters and elements from the 1989 entry Dracula's Curse and the 2005 game Curse of Darkness. The series was originally planned as a direct-to-video movie back in 2007, but entered development hell until around 2015, when it was picked up by the streaming service Netflix. Over the years the script had morphed from a movie to a trilogy and a proposed live-action production. Netflix allowed the writers to keep the original 2007 script and the team worked closely with Konami, who helped to identify continuity issues. The show drew visual inspiration from Ayami Kojima's artwork, particularly Symphony of the Night, and used a production staff consisting of members with experience in the Japanese animation industry. Opening Song: Main Theme (by Trevor Morris) Credits Song: Let Me Kiss You (by Trevor Morr

Clue (1985): These Folks Are Just Having A Good Time

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  Clue is a 1985 American live action movie based on the board game of the same name. The interior sets for Clue were filmed at the Paramount lot and decorated with authentic 18th and 19th-century furnishings rented from private collectors, including the estate of Theodore Roosevelt. The only interior scene not filmed at the Paramount lot, the ballroom, as well as the driveway exteriors, were filmed on location at a mansion in South Pasadena, California; a site that was destroyed in a 2005 fire. Writer/director Jonathan Lynn had also admitted to being overly cautious while filming and not fully trusting the stunt coordinator because of John David Landis involvement in the film. At the time, John Landis was still embroiled in legal action over the deaths of one adult and two children while filming the Twilight Zone movie. Three endings were filmed for the movie and a different one was shown at each theater - advertised as Clue A, Clue B, or Clue C. The DVD release plays al

Halo 4: Forward Unto Dawn - Bootcamp

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Halo 4: Forward Unto Dawn is a 2012 live action web series made to promote the video game Halo 4. Five 15-minute long episodes set 31 years before the events of Halo 4 were released weekly and later as a whole collection. The series was filmed in Vancouver over 25 days on a budget just under $10 million and utilized computer generated imagery in 500 of its scenes - about a fourth of what most feature films would use. According to 343 Industries business manager, Matt McClosky, a live action format was chosen in the hope of drawing in a new crowd by avoiding the "video game look" . Spoiler Warning: I am going to give a synopsis and my opinions at the very end. 

Halo: The Fall of Reach - How To Make A Child Soldier

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Halo: The Fall of Reach – The Animated Series is a 2015 animated movie that adapts the first half of the novel of the same name by Eric Nylund. The movie serves as an origins story for John-117, Blue Team, and the SPARTAN-II program, and was included in digital deluxe, limited, and collector's editions of Halo 5: Guardians, which includes many of the same characters. Spoiler Warning: I am going to give a synopsis and my opinions at the very end.    

Halo Legends: The Stuff of Legend

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Halo Legends is a collection of 7 short animated films released in 2010. Six of the stories are officially part of the Halo canon, while the seventh is intended to be a parody of the Halo universe. 343 Industries financed the project, which was animated by six Japanese anime production houses (in order of episode): Studio 4°C, Production I.G, Bee Train, Toei Animation, Bones, and Casio Entertainment. Frank O'Connor, 343's creative director, said that the idea to tell smaller stories in a different format than video games and novels, and in different art styles, had existed for some time. However, most of the Japanese animation studios they approached were apprehensive about creating their own stories, including those familiar with the series. O'Connor gave the studios story ideas, access to the Halo story bible and art assets, and Microsoft made sure the story details aligned with the lore. Spoiler Warning: I am going to give a synopsis of each episode and my opini