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If you love animated films and television series, and are building up your DVD collection for your home theatre, here are ten must have titles.
10. Cowboy Bebop (The Perfect Sessions)
If you have not seen the adventures of Spike Spiegel, Jet Black, Faye Valentine, Ed, and Ein you are in for a treat. The series follows bounty hunters Spike and Jet as they travel around the Solar System tracking fugitives. Along the way they cross paths with mobsters, old flames, and groups bent on destroying everything in their path.
The Perfect Sessions collection is the boxed set of all six original volumes but does contain interviews with production artists, composer and screenwriters. What makes this a must have DVD set for your collection is in how each of the 25 minute episodes build upon one another. Each character on the Bebop starship is introduced logically and as the sessions unfold you learn more on their back stories making them fully developed characters that you will feel a real attachment to by the end of the series. The sessions range from film noir to western to slap stick comedy. There is definitely something for everyone.
Cowboy Bebop was the most popular television series in Japan in 1998. The ideas and themes presented in Cowboy Bebop are so well received that it has become one of the more popular anime series in the United States.
9. The Castle of Cagliostro
Sprinkle in a good helping of James Bond and Indiana Jones, mix in some romance, and comedy, combine it with a great story and you have Lupin the 3rd: The Castle of Cagliostro. This 1979 film by Hayao Miyazaki catches up with master thief Lupin the 3rd and cohort Jigen as they travel to the small European country of Cagliostro in search of a counterfeiting ring. As luck would have it, Lupin and company not only find the counterfeiters; they also save a princess, and solve a mystery that uncovers the lost fortune of the Cagliostro family.
This is a well thought out story that is non stop action from the very start. Clocking in at just over 100 minutes, there is never a slow moment in the story telling. One thing that may put a potential viewer off is there is not a great deal of exploration on the characters themselves. The reason is this is not the first film starring Lupin. He has appeared in six theatrical films, 10 television films, and two or three dedicated television series from the 60?s and early 70?s. By the time Cagliostro was released in 1979 audience in Japan already knew who Lupin was. The good thing is Castle of Cagliostro is a great stand alone movie.
8. South Park: Bigger Louder and Uncut
What happens when four underage boys get into an R-rated movie and reenact their favorite scene? A foul-mouthed, sexually suggestive, politically incorrect, sing-a-long masterpiece that will have you rolling on the floor laughing yourself silly.
While the language and violence make this a non-children movie, the musical numbers are great parodies of the entire musical genre. In fact South Park: Bigger Louder and Uncut was nominated for an OSCAR for the song ?Blame Canada?.
Is this film for everyone? For children, definitely not. For the highly conservative, the message of blowing up those who offend you should be appealing, but the content may be off-putting. For those who understand humor and get the real message behind the movie, it is a highly enjoyable ride.
7. Futurama (Volumes 1 ? 4)
It is so sad that Fox decided to cancel this show when they discovered they couldn?t get exclusive rights to it. This is one of the best animated television shows of all time. In the short four years it was on, it had more humor in one episode than Season 15 of The Simpsons.
Created by Simpsons creator Matt Groening, Futurama follows Fry, an pizza delivery boy from the 21st century, who accidentally gets cryogenically frozen for 1000 years. Set in the 31st century, Fry falls in love with one-eyed mutant Leela, befriends an alcoholic robot named Bender (my favorite character), and works for his great great great great?nephew Dr. Farnsworth as a delivery boy.
What makes this series great are the pop culture references to everything that has come before. At one moment the shows pokes fun at our concept of what Sci-fi is, and then gets us to laugh at what a bunch of dopes we really are. The complete four volume series is very well thought out. While the continuity in the Simpsons is greatly lacking, Futurama often refers back to past episodes and in the case of the last season relies a great deal on the continuity of the first season to make the entire Futurama universe make sense.
6. Monsters, Inc.
If you are looking for excellent storytellers who know how to use animation to their advantage you only have to look to PIXAR. The creators of Toy Story, Bug?s Life, Finding Nemo, and the recent hit The Incredibles put together an incredibly fantastic story in Monsters Inc.
With each film PIXAR not only unveils a new technology (in this case a great hair engine), but they also manage to tell a story that hits you in that ol? soft spot. In the case of Monsters Inc. we get to see what really is lurking in our closest late at night and discover they are not a scary as they seem.
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