An Honourable Mention

Even though I'm not in the business of reviewing TV series, I was sufficiently impressed by the Japanese TV anime series Paranoia Agent to give it an honourable mention. I'm not going to say much about it, because then I'd be reviewing it, and like I said, I'm not in the business of reviewing TV series. I will say this, though. I was originally going to see it at the Leeds Film Festival back in November (they were showing all 13 episodes in 4 separate screenings), but as the first episode began, two things became distressingly apparent: (1) they had chosen to screen a version dubbed by American voice actors, rather than showing the subtitled version; and (2) they had somehow managed to screen the 1.78:1 image on what appeared to be a roughly 4:3 screen without any letterboxing (i.e., the picture was stretched vertically to fill the entire 4:3 screen). So ... I walked out, put it on my DVD rental list, and soon had the pleasure of watching it in the comfort of my own home in all its subtitled 1.78:1 glory!