Saturday, July 4, 2015

Movie Episode 4: Does Anyone Know What Time It Is?

Oh my goodness, guess what time it is!  It's... Movie Tiiiiime!  Yes, today we go through Pokemon 4ever, or that Celebi movie, and I have a lot to say, some of it even positive!  Tune in to listen!

Other things you should listen to?  This interview and this interview by Pokepress, on Pokemon Symphonic evolutions!  By all accounts, it was a pretty great show.

And I guested on Train Station at 8 this week, you should check them out!  We talk pokemon music, among other great topics!

11 comments:

  1. So, a few things worth mentioning:

    1. Pokemon 4Ever was a limited release in America. This is the old-style limited release where a movie starts out in major markets for the first two weeks, then gradually transitions to smaller markets as time goes on (it was also much later in America, debuting after the "Master Quest" season had started). I was in college in upstate New York at the time, and since getting on a bus to New York City or Boston didn't seem to be worth it, I had to wait two weeks for it to come to Albany. Not a lot of people in the theater (marketing was sparse, as you might imagine), even though I did try to get the word out to the Pokemon community (and got very familiar with Fandango.com and 2000 Census metro area list). I understand why it happened, but the digital cinema limited release for movie 14-A worked much better (though ironically, had I still been there it never came to Albany, presumably this was because Cindeigm didn't have an agreement with the theater chain there) because they could send out a bunch of hard drives to play the movie off of, even if it was only for one showing per day (this was still cost-effective since the drives could be re-used, unlike film prints).
    2. I'm curious what medium you used to watch the English version of the movie. The Blu-Ray version released a few years ago is a bit fuzzy, though it does still look better than the DVD.
    3. At some point in development, Celebi was not part of movie 4 (it was originally going to be in the GS Ball, which is part of why that disappeared from the show unceremoniously). That may explain the disparate plots-maybe in the original version there was no Sammy and Vicious was just going after Suicune.
    4. I kinda wonder if the forest setting limited how jarring they could make the time travel. If the time travel had been to, say, 1980's San Francisco (hey, another fourth movie in a series where a green thing travels through time!), there might have been more opportunities for Sammy to feel out-of place. Not sure if that would have made the movie better.
    5. I take it you think movie 13 is the better Celebi movie (I actually saw that in a theater at the Mall of America during the Black & White tour, which was neat).

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    1. I used the DVD I bought when the movie was first released. I haven't noticed the quality was especially bad, but then, my tv is kind of small... I did notice that like a lot of animated movies from that time, on a high def screen I get a sense of layering between the characters and backgrounds, but I'd be interested to see a bluray copy someday and compare. I don't know if there's any difference from my copy to that four-pack that got release a while back though...
      Seeing M13 during the tour must have been so cool! I do think movie thirteen has a better use of Celebi, incorporating it's time travel skills into the villain's story as well as having the protagonists interact with it, and I think overall, the themes and plotlines in that movie mesh a bit better. It's not much higher though, if I were to rank my favorite pokemon movies... poor celebi, such a cool pokemon, but all your movies have problems... :(

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  2. Actually, I rather like the 13th movie-it's my favorite since the dub switchover (beats out a couple of the 4Kids ones for me).

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    1. Yeah? I'll have to give it a listen in English, then! :) Even if it's not high on my overall rankings, it does have one of my absolute favorite lines in it, when Satoshi says to Takeshi, "We always believe in you"

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  3. Anne, another mistake made in this movie intro is that, while the Gengar and Nidorino fight is being broadcasted on TV, Ash is shown with his hat in the "proper way". However, in the first episode of the anime, his hat was actually backwards, while the fight occurred.

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  4. It is instereting to see that, in this movie, Metapod evolves into Butterfree, in a different way than it did in the "Challenge of the Samurai" episode.

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  5. Although the english dub didn't feature Gary's voice actor (Billy Beach) as Sam, the brazilian portuguese one did.

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    1. Serious! That's awesome! I don't speak any portuguese, but I think I need to check that out!

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    3. You can check that out, by these links:

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JSydFJOUaH0

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3yQJX6vcZIM

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