Film Festival News - Vexille and Speed Racer
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Phyl Good
By Phyl Good
Published on 04/3/2008
Anime film Vexille is still making a splash at North American film festivals, the latest being AFI Dallas this week. And Speed Racer, the live-action film based on the classic 1960s animated series, will close the Tribeca Film Festival next month.
Film Festival News - Vexille and Speed Racer
On Friday, April 4, the AFI Dallas International Film Festival will screen the anime film, Vexille, the latest animated offering from director and screenplay writer Fumihiko Sori. Previously featured at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) last September, and more recently at the Anime Matsuri convention in Houston, Texas, the film is part of AFI's "Maverick" series, considered to be one of the festival's "edgier" categories.
The film follows an American Special Forces team that infiltrates a self-isolated Japan, to uncover the devastation that has been unleashed on the country by a megacorporation engaged in forbidden research into biotechnology and robotics. Director Sori himself will introduce the film, and after the screening, which will be in Japanese with subtitles, will engage with the audience in a Q&A session.
This festival screening is nicely timed to precede North American distributor FUNimation's release of the DVD, set for May 20.
Meanwhile, later this month, at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York City, the closing film on May 4 will be Speed Racer, the Wachowski Brothers' live-action take on the original 1960s car-racing anime.
This movie, whose world theatre premier is to be April 26 in Los Angeles, is also being hyped with contests on American TV channels MTV, VH-1, TV Land, and Comedy Central. The ten contest winners will be flown to Los Angeles to attend the premier, where they will each race a remote-controlled car based on one of the movie cars. The winner of that contest wins a US $100,000 custom-built car based on Speed Racer's Mach 5.
In another case of good timing, Crunchyroll.com last week announced a digital video partnership with Speed Racer Enterprises, which began to provide fans with select episodes of the original Speed Racer series, promising more episodes to come. This can't help but dovetail happily with the advent of the live-action film based on that series.
To see an anime film and an anime-based film circulating among festivals such as TIFF, AFI Dallas, and Tribeca shows that interest in this art form is still high in North America, which should make long-time anime fans on this continent very happy.
The film follows an American Special Forces team that infiltrates a self-isolated Japan, to uncover the devastation that has been unleashed on the country by a megacorporation engaged in forbidden research into biotechnology and robotics. Director Sori himself will introduce the film, and after the screening, which will be in Japanese with subtitles, will engage with the audience in a Q&A session.
This festival screening is nicely timed to precede North American distributor FUNimation's release of the DVD, set for May 20.
Meanwhile, later this month, at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York City, the closing film on May 4 will be Speed Racer, the Wachowski Brothers' live-action take on the original 1960s car-racing anime.
This movie, whose world theatre premier is to be April 26 in Los Angeles, is also being hyped with contests on American TV channels MTV, VH-1, TV Land, and Comedy Central. The ten contest winners will be flown to Los Angeles to attend the premier, where they will each race a remote-controlled car based on one of the movie cars. The winner of that contest wins a US $100,000 custom-built car based on Speed Racer's Mach 5.
In another case of good timing, Crunchyroll.com last week announced a digital video partnership with Speed Racer Enterprises, which began to provide fans with select episodes of the original Speed Racer series, promising more episodes to come. This can't help but dovetail happily with the advent of the live-action film based on that series.
To see an anime film and an anime-based film circulating among festivals such as TIFF, AFI Dallas, and Tribeca shows that interest in this art form is still high in North America, which should make long-time anime fans on this continent very happy.