It is the only rock & roll subgenre that has largely been instrumental. Yet,
ironically, its most popular artists are considered phonies by the real fans, because
of their vocal harmonies. They would be the Beach Boys. Surf musicians might
have played for beach bums, but virtuoso guitar work was always part of
package. The original Surf music pioneers look back on Surf culture’s early
1960s heyday in director-cinematographer Thomas Duncan’s documentary, Sound
of the Surf, which releases today on VOD and DVD.
Its
closest cousins were garage rock and punk rock, but the founding Surf music
musicians had two major influences. Not surprisingly, 1950s instrumental rock guitarists
like Duane Eddy and Link Wray were significant musical role models. However, most
of the Surf music veterans have more to say about jazz artists, especially big
band drummer Gene Krupa.
In fact, jazz musician Tom Morey, who also invented the Morey bogie board, expressly
compares jazz and surfing, because both require improvisation. Alas, nobody
discusses Bud Shank by name, but his soundtracks for Bruce Brown’s surfing
documentaries are duly acknowledged. Regardless, jazz collectively gets its
full due.
Dick
Dale claims the title as the original Surf music guitarist for himself and
pretty much everyone Duncan interviewed agrees with him. Indeed, Dale had some
of the biggest Surf hits, including his reverb heavy arrangement of “Misirlou,”
which became popular again thanks to Pulp Fiction. Eddie Bertrand,
co-founder of the Belairs and Eddie & the Showmen represents a
not-so-distant second.
Yet,
one of the more prominent voices turns out to be Kathy Marshall, who gets her
overdue credit for her contributions to the Surf music scene. Technically, she
never recorded commercially, but she performed regularly with Eddie & the
Showmen and the Blazers, even though she was still a teenager. Plus, viewers
also hear from Kathy Kohner-Zuckerman, a.k.a. the real “Gidget,” whose father
wrote the novel the film and TV series were based on, building on her accounts
of her new surfer friends.
In this film, the two heroic protagonists of Masamune Shirow’s Appleseed franchise
sort of get the DC treatment. They are the same characters fans know and love,
but they now have a new narrative continuity—familiar, but slightly different.
It is also sort of a prequel, but Briareos is already a cyborg—and partly on
the fritz. Unfortunately, the world is also still mostly destroyed, especially
the post-apocalyptic New York City, or perhaps it is just post-Mamdani. Regardless,
hope is in short supply, until Briareos and his comrade-life partner Deunan decide
to go out and find some in Shinji Aramaki’s anime feature, Appleseed Alpha,
which starts streaming today on Tubi.
WWIII bombed
out Times Square, yet the jumbotron remains, broadcasting old, pointless propaganda.
Some people still call the City home, including the cyborg gangster, Two Horns (because
of his Viking-like headpiece). Unfortunately, Deunan owes Two Horns money, so she
and Briareos must complete dangerous assignments, like that of the opening prologue,
to pay off the debt.
Rather
ominously, the two former soldiers suspect Two Horns has been setting them up
for failure. Yet, they have little choice, because Two Horns’s maintenance guy is
pretty much the only game in the post-apocalyptic town. Without power, Briareos
cannot do much, so they accept the next crummy gig: neutralizing and scavenging
a pack of rogue soldier-bots outside of town.
This
would be easier work if Briareos were in better shape. Regardless, things get
interesting when a group of mech-mercs drive into the drone zone with their
abductees, Olson, an enhanced but not full cybernetic former soldier, and Iris,
the young girl he was protecting. It turns out they are from the rumored sanctuary
of Olympus, which will mean a lot more to longstanding franchise fans. They are
also on a mission that Briareos and Deunan will join and ultimately embrace. Meanwhile,
the shadowy cabal trying to capture Iris follows their trail back to Two Horns,
bringing him into the fray as an unstable wild card.
Essentially,
Alpha arranges things differently on the timeline, but it closely hews
to the heart and spirit of the previous anime films. Briareos and Deunan are a
compelling beauty-and-the-beast couple, who have terrific battlefield chemistry
together. That last part is important, because Aramaki unleashes wall-to-wall
action. This kind of light-mecha combat really plays to his animation
strengths.
The computer-generated
motion-capture (but not full rotoscope) animation looks better here than it did
in Aramaki’s later film, Starship Trooper: Traitor of Mars. Perhaps the
distinctive, practically robotic look of Briareos (who reportedly influenced
the design of Blomkamp’s Chappie—you can see it in the ears) and Two
Horns helped focus the efforts at humanization on Deunan, Olson, and Iris.