tom moody
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Nobody does "delirious urban spectacle" better than Japanese animators, and Cowboy Bebop, which you might be lucky enough to catch on the big screen for a few more days, is sheer techno-poetry. Visual highlights include people watching a scratchy John Wayne western in cars parked in a multilevel cinema-stadium; a shootout in a high-speed monorail, intriguingly designed with tracks switching between the tops and bottoms of the train cars; a Macy's-style Halloween Parade with huge floating jack'o'lanterns casting ominous shadows on the crowds below; a descent into the atmosphere of a partially terraformed Mars where the sky is jammed with dancing, shimmering product logos; a walk through a multicultural Martian city where kids breakdance a block away from Moroccan market stalls--there is more sumptuous drawing on view here than you'll see in a month of gallery shows. Also, the chemistry of the bounty hunter protagonists is decidedly un-blockbuster; they work at cross purposes and frequently wander off on their own for no reason (the Onion describes their camaraderie as "uncommunicative, uncooperative cooperation.") Oh, and the Welsh Corgi "data dog" is cute as hell.