Even The New York Times gets wired with Ghost

host in the Shell was the first anime movie ever to be jointly financed by a Japanese studio and a Western partner. Chicago-based Manga Entertainment, which has branches both in the United States and England, has apparently wasted no effort in its U.S. promotions of Ghost, reportedly the most expensive anime film ever produced.

Whereas most anime in the United States goes directly to video, Ghost in the Shell played in movie theaters in 70 cities nationwide between February and mid-July. According to Manga Theatrical Director Greg Forston, more venues are on the way, from New York to Santa Cruz, California. The massive theatrical release, combined with the film's visual quality and complexity, sparked a wide range of mainstream critical review, even more unprecedented for an anime release.

Ghost received two thumbs up from Siskel and Ebert. Cinescape, Film Comment, Spin and Wired praised it, and mainstream newspapers including The Boston Globe, The Washington Post and The New York Times took the opportunity to run huge stories on the state of the genre in general. Billboard and Video Business both published multiple articles on the film's marketing tactics, and Terminator director James Cameron turned in a handwritten review marking the film as "a stunning work of speculative fiction, the first truly adult animation film to reach a level of literary and visual excellence."

Not all the hype was positive. Entertainment Weekly rated Ghost as a B-, referring to its "obtuse philosophical dialogue" and "whither-humanity blather," claiming the film has "the spirit of a dreary art-house movie." The San Francisco Examiner, similarly, cited its "frustrating ... and not entirely dramatic" plot.

But positive or negative, the attention Ghost received was utterly remarkable for an animated film outside the Disney monopoly.

ack to On Screen.