A rather ambitious film that's an ode to translation and poetry first and foremost. I loved the way language was put onto the screen (cool and inventive ways of showing text is always appreciated) and the images that accompanied the haikus were invariably beautiful. I remain less convinced by the documentary aspect of this, which is admittedly secondary. Andrew Fitzsimons seems like an admirable scholar and translator and I appreciated the way he talked about his personal experience with the…

Wonderfully animated, with a state of the art soundtrack that’s sparsely used and all the more powerful for it. Cannot really clear the incredibly high bar the manga set, for classic adaptation reasons (lack of time, need to focus on the action and reactions more than on the characters’ individuals journeys, etc. - for example, Kaneda is one of my favourite lovable losers but the film is so packed that it doesn't do his character arc justice, and the same…

I usually do not write reviews based on my experiences at the cinema but something quite singular happened here: the screening I attended was dubbed in French, which caught me unawares (my fault, I should have checked). Now, there is a lot to be said about the benefits and drawbacks of dubbing compared to subtitling, but I reckon that considering the very particular nature of Blue, which is a deeply personal 1h15-long poem about life and death projected on an…

"Je me suis arrêté de peindre et je me suis mis à raconter des histoires.
C'était, je le sais aussi aujourd'hui, pour en finir encore avec une autre sorte de trace, celle de ces hommes et de ces femmes dont je descends, que j'aime et qui font partie de ceux qui d'ordinaire n'en laissent pas. Aussi, leurs traces si légères, je voulais les leur rendre, les marquer pour qu'elles ne s'effacent pas, ou bien plus tard, le plus tard possible."…