Times are tough for Yato (voice by Jason Liebrecht), the minor god of calamity who’s at the center of the broadcast series Noragami Aragoto (2015), the sequel to Noragami (2014). He’s still knocking around Tokyo in an old warm-up suit and busted boots, offering to grant wishes for ¥5 coins. Yato may be broke, but […]

As it’s the 2nd talking koala movie, the 2nd juke box musical and the 11th talking animal movie of year, Illumination Entertainment’s Sing! suffers from a certain lack of originality. Buster Moon (Matthew McConaughey), an upbeat, if less than honest koala, runs a crumbling theater that he’d love to restore to its former glory. But […]

Harmony is the second of three films based on the fiction of Satoshi Ito (who wrote under the nom de plume Project Itoh). But the novel “Harmony” feels like an improbable candidate for animation. The book is an internal monologue by Tuan Kirie (Jamie Marchi, who carries the film as its de facto narrator), the […]

The first feature based on a novel by Project Itoh (the nom de plume of Satoshi Ito), The Empire of Corpses (2015) is a striking, if often baroque, zombie adventure. The plot seems far more complicated than it needs to be, but the cyberpunk designs, which bolster the film’s curious premise, are stunning. The Empire […]

On Monday, October 17th, I attended the ASIFA-Hollywood screening of Ron Diamond’s annual 18th Animation Show of Shows, at the DreamWorks Animation Campanile Theater at the studio in Glendale. The Show of Shows is different this year in that fewer films than usual are actual winners of an award at a previous international film festival. […]

For those unfamiliar with Star Wars Rebels – the Complete Season 2 was released recently on blu-ray – this review begins with a friendly warning: watch Season One first. Season Two literally begins with a bang, and it’s helpful to know who’s shooting at each other, and why. The rebellion against the evil Empire is […]