Going to see this movie was alot like sitting down in a lecture hall and
as the professor starts talking, you start to realize that the teacher has either
mistaken this class for one of his more advanced classes, or he is insane.
Although the movie was subtitled in English, it took less than twenty to
leave the audience in a dust cloud of old proverbs and philosophical speculations.
If you plan to watch this movie and have it make sense, I strongly either taking a
philosophy class first (coincidentally, I just finished a course last month), or I
suggest reading the sources in which 80% of the dialogue comes from:
The Analects of Confucius
(The old admin dude from Sector 9 will say alot of crap from him.)
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/de ... s&n=507846
Satan, Cantor, and Infinity
by Raymond Smullyan
(Focus on story of Milton and tricking Satan in this book. Comes up arbitrarily in movie converstations.)
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/de ... s&n=507846
Discourse on Method and Related Writings
(Chapters on First Meditations on the mind will do.)
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/de ... s&n=507846
The quick n' easy formula for GITS 2 is this: Take timeline and plot from blade-runner,
replace dialogue with clips of Philosophy students in a debate club and hire an art-team to seal the deal with stunning visuality.
Seriously the dialogue went like this:
Detective #1: So we're just going to visit them; no shooting, right?
Detective #2: "He who make Mac & cheese with no milk end up dry like his dinner" - Old Japanese Proverb
Detective #1: Ah, so he who sleep with itchy butt, wake up with stinky pinky. (Confucius)
Detective #2: What is the sound of one hand clapping? (Zen)
Detective #1: Alright. Let's do this.
::shoots up a bar::
Detective #1: Hey I said no shooting!
Detective #2: The Yellowtail sparrow that collects in the fall is full in the winter.
Detective #1: ::grunt of understanding:: At his peace, like an elephant in his Jungle.
I'm serious. This is the entire movie. You don't even know.
What kinda made it sad like most Western-made-movies-that-involve-Asian-crimes
is that the characters have to venture into the lawless and slum-like depths of a
futuristic dystopian Chinatown in order to battle the bad dudes. I would've expected a
better anecdote to the problem they faced than playing the Chinatown card. LOL
Chinatown in Japan.
I remember way back when I used to watch GITS just to see that cyborg chick dive naked
off that building and every time it blew my mind as to why her nudity was a necessity.
I think that's what kept me watching the rest of it. GITS 2 has 50% less action, 3 times
the thinking and 10% of the boobs. Like most Anime fans, I came for the boobs. And
like most of the guys in that theatre, I felt a little cheated.
Ghost in the Shell. Ha! More like Fortune in the Cookie!
I swear next time I have Chinese food I'm going to find
a screencap of that film stuck in my cookie and I'll leave
the restaurant a little wiser.
Pwolf
