cyberpunkreview.com - the vision

Excellent reviews so far, SFAM. Looking forward to plenty more.

Thanks Eleven! I still have a lot of reviews to upload, but I think the cool part when I get done will be the relationships between them.

Looks fantastic! The SFAM green.

Your reviews are always well done, esp with the screenshots. Really sells the films. Great job!

Thanks Amber.

Hopefully we end up doing something like this on Icine as well. That way everyone can do reviews if they want.

Thanks for commenting on my site. The difference between your concept of cyberpunk here and the one on my website is, that I suppose, you regard cyberpunk as a category of literature (a genre of texts perhaps). I define cyberpunk as a definition of lifestyle, a subculture, a social class, a job, or a calling, so to speak.

Hi jerng, welcome!

Actually, while I do definitely see cyberpunk as a genre, I see it pervading fiction, movies (obviously), music, art, fashion, culture, etc. Clearly, the term has different meanings in each of these contexts.

The interesting thing I think is in the 80s, cyberpunk was purely genre based, but now, as you say, has taken on meaning in the meatspace (real world).

I need to understand this better though. I would love to have alternate definitions here. If you have one that gets more at what you’re thinking that you want to write up and post (either here or at your blog for me to link to), I love to see it and integrate it. Additionally, as a selfish interest, I would be interested in whether this would change the type of movies you would see reviewed here?

Great idea, great site.
Thank you author, thank you very much.
But I’m little suprised by Avalon’s high rating. Yeah, I know it’s a good movie. Maybe a very good but - main character - Ash played by Foremniak is awful! I hate this actress
She’s main and most popular actress in polish soap-operas. Imagine - you’re watching CP movie, you’re looking at girl with beautiful gun in her hands and you’re thinking - I know her - yesterday, on the public tv channel, she was crying for many minutes because her dog died or smthg :/

Hi Korolo, and welcome!

Ah, the perspective of someone “in country” is clearly very different. Yeah, Foremniak doesn’t come across as an emotional soap actress, so that must be strange to see. Someone else made a similar comment on Nirvana (an Italian movie), that one of the characters there was a hated actor. As this is the first time I’ve seen Foremniak, I can’t really relate, but I certainly understand.

Interestingly, Oshii doesn’t speak polish, and pretty much treated the actors in Avalon as anime characters. I think this works in that computer nerds aren’t going to be very expressive folk. Mostly they internalize everything, which, incidentally, is exactly how Oshii works the plot. The reason for the high score had to do with the ideas, the pacing, and the extraordinary ending.

Yap, you’re right. I’m not objective in this case. I think that Avalon might be my favourite CP movie, the first CP movie filmed in Poland, with the Polish cast (and equipment ;)) and places I know - but I HATE FOREMNIAK

Wait, the first cyberpunk movie filmed in Poland??? Does this mean there are others? If so, give me titles please!

The first and the only one (as far I know). Sorry…

mm i’m sure one likely transgresses some hidden protocol with this suggestion but o well, what the … my pref would be links out of scope pop as a separate window perhaps only one but better as many as one cares to pop; i hate having to shuffle back through the stack to cyberpunkreview after linking out; i had this fight with web guys here an eon ago lost that one too … clearly, i’m a slow learner

HI K, no, no protocol broken at all. I did consider doing this, and understand many prefer it (and many sites do), but I rejected it as it doesn’t generate proper XML if I to the “target” tags. This negatively affects those using the RSS readers - which a decent number use to browse the site. And from a usability perpective, this confuses those who aren’t familiar with what is happening - many people wonder why their back button has been disabled.

Also, most people who use tabbed browsers like Firefox (myself included) find this to be a non-issue, as you just open each new link up in its own tab. This overrides the new window option. So really, until there’s an easy way to set this as a user preference or some such, which ever option I choose, some people won’t be happy. My apologies for choosing opposite of your preferences. Although its not as graceful, you can always use the “right click” option on the link to create a new window.

aaah, cool, thanx, understand, duuu the ‘right click’ story of my life

mm appears one must post to the forum to suggest a movie or whatever; some easier post may be somewhat better, no?

Hi K - I still have about 30-40 movies on the docket for review - many of which I already have partial reviews written. It just takes time to upload these. The forum provides a nice way to capture that. But if you don’t want to register for that, feel free to ask on the cyberpunk movies by decade page.

yep, thanx, understand; good luck; sounds like u may need help

As I mention above, I’m definitely looking for participation here. Let me know if you have interest in this, especially if you’re pretty up on one of the other cyberpunk media forms.

sfam”at”cyberpunkreview.com

mm, ok, i’ll see what i can do but just be aware - i’m lucky to even pass muster on signing my own name - most of the films cited i’ve never seen nor likely too - i tend to like what i like and nothing else - like, one keeps waiting for the next blade runner, the next neuromancer - both set the bar much too high - and worry about how does one avoid writing spoilers - and i also tend to favour the value of the swarm vote sort of approach - but yeah, those blemishes aside, i’ll try;

The idea of a “user rating” would be terrific (I think this is your swarm vote idea). Unfortunately, I don’t have the wherewithal to do that here - at least not yet. I’m pretty much a hack when it comes to programming - I’m pretty happy with the fact that I got the current functionality here. I plan on making a few more changes (doing the archives via excerpts and stuff), but unless I get some programming help or find a nifty plugin that integrates, I probably won’t be able to work the swarm vote thing for a while. Although, IMDB and amazon already do that far better than I ever could, so I’m not all that concerned.

Again, with the movies, I pretty much have seen the vast vast majority of all cyberpunk ones out, and am marching my way through the reviews. I should be done with pretty much most all cyberpunk movies out in the next two months or so (who knows, maybe this is too optimistic…we’ll see). But I really would love to find a few folks who know one of the other media types this well that would be interested in doing a similar detailing. If not, I’ll probably start working my way through graphic novels after movies.

nooo, the current site is v cool, anything else can come later, if at all, and … i happen to like the black + matrix green, may be why i gravitated here; reminds me of a once far simpler world, if u get my drift

Keep up the fine work you are doing here.
Some of my favourite movies were accidental discoveries. Alas the mainstream looks no further than wham, bam thank you ma’am blockbuster movies. Eventhough some are fun to watch the real gems lay hidden waiting to be discovered (like Avalon!)
This site helps in the search so i say thank you for the effort.

Hi Neuromancer, I greatly appreciate the compliments! This site takes a lot of work, but I’m really hoping this becomes a useful asset for people. I’ve been tallying a list of all the movies I want to include here, and I’m up to 136 so far, so this will definitely take a bit of time!

Hello, kewl website. loads of info about movies.
But you forgot some:

Wicked city (manga)
- a real good cyberpunk manga-movie about a cop that tracks mutants in a futuristic world-setting. It is also a bit against the sex-propaganda of the TV-networks. Just watch, and you’l l know

City of the Lost Children (french movie) - also a futuristic movie with loads of gadgets and a dystopean view of our future

- Tank Police (manga) - Also cyberpunk manga from our Nippon/Neo-Tokyo friends

and some other CyberPunk games-
Tokyo War - a cool Base-Cyberpunk game setting in Neo-Tokyo with cyber-criminals and net-hackers.

Hi Stormtrooper of Death, welcome to cyberpunkreview

Regarding Wicked City, I like this anime a lot, and even have a review of it on my old RT Journal. However, I don’t consider this cyberpunk (based on my definition in the “what is cyberpunk” page). It definitely has a great noir feel though.

City of Lost Children? - I haven’t seen it but it appears to be steampunk more than cyberpunk - I could be wrong though - its on my watch list.

tank Police? Masume Shirow’s stuff? Cool! I don’t have this on my list. Thanks

And yeah, the Tokyo War game sounds cool too.

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