There is a great little shop in Dixon Street, Chinatown that sells just about any anime movie/series you can think of (as well as a huge selection of HK flicks) I’m not sure if these are pirated versions but who cares? – the quality is good, the prices are affordable.
Rong Bao Tung
50 Dixon St, Haymarket 2000
Tel (02) 9281 2355
The shop is cluttered and everything is labelled in Chinese (also subtitled/dubbed in Chinese), but with a little patience I found what I was looking for: The Happiness of the Katakuris! ($18 VCD) We saw this at the Syd Film Festival last year – best described as a horror musical comedy (a la Sound of Music) with cheesy songs and some great claymation sequences. (read psychotronic’s review)
We also picked up DVDs of Gatchaman, the Kinnikuman series (A wacky ‘wrestling’ series which was ML‘s competition on FOX in the US at the same time slot), and a copy of FLCL for Jonathan.
The story in FLCL (otherwise known as Furi Kuri) is hard to follow especially when trying to take in the visuals and read subtitles at the same time; the animation is just mayhem with extremes. A fast mishmash of manga styles, great title music. (here’s a review)
Watched Spumco’s Ranger Smith and Boo Boo Runs Wild today with the guys here. Boo Boo Runs Wild is genuinely funny! Ranger Smith - a bit laboured by comparison. We read in Animation Blast magazine that it took John K. and crew THREE YEARS to produce these two eps … ??
Lorraine came to visit and we were discussing what it takes to set up and run an animation business. It was great talking about the local industry, people we know, and our future plans – I think one thing Eddie and I are both clear on is that we never want to become a big company like Yoram Gross or Energee. We never want to leave the drawing board and move into purely administration areas. We would rather stay a small team and have fun producing shows that we can remain passionate about. I think we all agreed on what Bill Plympton has to say about surviving in the animation biz:
I believe the two most important qualities to become a success in making short or even long films is to make them funny and produce them cheaply. Most of my films cost about $1,000.00 per minute, so it’s fairly easy to recoup my costs.
It’s very important to me to remain independent. There’s something exhilarating about getting up each morning, going to my drawing board and having the total freedom to draw whatever crazy, bizarre and offensive image that comes to my brain – there’s no producer, director, lawyer or agent looking over my shoulder telling me to change the art because it might offend someone or hurt sales.
Sure, I’m not a wealthy cartoonist but I’m willing to sacrifice money for freedom of expression any time. So, that’s why it’s so important that I promote my merchandise. It’s a wonderful way to disseminate my bizarre ideas through different media and more importantly, it helps finance my future productions.
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