Hong Kong VCD/Blood:The Last Vampire

[Don Brown]

Whoops, looks like Lang beat me to the punch on the PAL/NTSC thing.  Sorry 
for the repetition.
Just saw the 'full CG animation' "Blood: The Last Vampire" in Osaka.  Seems 
like a lot of money had been thrown at it, considering the computer 
graphics and extensive sound work.  The latter was the most impressive 
aspect of the film, booming out of the speakers with some ferocity.  The 
CG, well, noticeably it was restricted to vehicles - bombers, trains etc., 
and wasn't really necessary.  It only served to punctuate the fact that the 
traditional animation was strictly average.  They should have dropped the 
CG budget and invested the cash in a decent voice director - the dialogue 
was mostly in English (the story largely revolves around Yokota Air Force 
base, circa 1960's), and was very slow and forced, comparative to an NHK 
English language course.  There was a reasonable action movie aesthetic at 
work, but at the expense of any kind of character or story development.  
Clocking in at just under 60 minutes, the plot was concerned with little 
more than the slice-and-dice antics of an Angelina Jolie-lookalike (with an 
even more fatal dose of collagen in her lips.  It looks like more work was 
put into the Playstation game.
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