REVIEW: The Lion King [1994]

Remember who you are. The sun rises at the screen’s bottom as Lebo M. is heard singing in Zulu. We take a look at the wide-open expanse of an African savannah before slowly honing in on herds of animals moving towards a single spot: Pride Rock. There we find Mufasa (James Earl Jones) and Sarabi (Madge Sinclair) resting with new lion cub Simba (Jonathan Taylor Thomas) as trusted allies Zazu the hornbill (Rowan Atkinson) and Rafiki the baboon (Robert Guillaume) arrive to offer their services for what’s to be a…

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NYAFF11 REVIEW: 手塚治虫のブッダ-赤い砂漠よ!美しく [Osamu Tezuka’s Buddha: The Great Departure] [2011]

“He who has attained his goal” This year’s New York Asian Film Festival was graced with the North American premiere of a film almost three decades in the making. The critically acclaimed and three-time Eisner Award winning manga, Buddha, from Osamu Tezuka, the “Godfather of Anime”, has been given the big screen treatment from animation house Toei Company. Broken down into a planned trilogy from its fourteen volumes of unique and gritty storytelling spanning Siddhartha Gautama’s birth until his transformation into “the Enlightened One”, this first installment—entitled 手塚治虫のブッダ-赤い砂漠よ!美しく [Osamu Tezuka’s…

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