Just the Ticket

Article by Sean Wilkinson, a.k.a. the Animeister My original Solo Leveling Spotlight marked the six hundredth post I ever published on Blogger, and it's kind of a fitting coincidence that I'm now starting the final week of Anime August (a month that I began by celebrating my fiftieth Anime Spotlight and my eight hundredth Blogger post with a massive look at My Hero Academia ) with a second season update on Solo Leveling . As a reminder,  Solo Leveling  began its English-language life as a web novel on  Webnovel  (duh) titled  Only I Level Up , which proved popular enough to receive a web comic adaptation of the same title on the same platform (written by  Chugong  and illustrated by the late  Dubu ), and I managed to read all of it (with the exception of the side stories and the Ragnarok  sequel series that were published after the main story concluded) before Webnovel's subscription and  gacha -based customization mechanics started...

Content Calendar Announcement, Week of August 24, 2025 by Sean Wilkinson, a.k.a. The Ticketmaster. It's been awhile since I've had anything personal to talk about, and this is going to sound like a pathetic ego flex (because it kind of is), but earlier this week, I was chosen as Employee Of the Month at my store. I've been doing a lot of random tasks around the store in addition to working in the deli (where my attitude is mostly improved compared to previous stints in the department), throwing grocery and frozen freight (the latter of which also involves separating out the meat and deli freight and dropping it off in those departments), and this week, counting inventory. So, I suppose I've earned the honor (even if it is by random draw) with all that I've contributed, even though I know my attitude isn't always the best and I butt heads with my manager on days that end in "-day" and start with letters. It's kind of unbelievable. Like, I'm p...

Article by Sean Wilkinson, a.k.a. The Ticketmaster. Nearly forty issues of Just the Ticket and one year ago, I reviewed Last Man Standing , wherein I gave a first hour (or so I thought, until I realized that I didn't remember anything past the thirty-minute mark) first impression of the movie that it and Sergio Leone 's A Fistful Of Dollars were adapted from. And seeing as how I have some unfinished business with Yojimbo , I knew immediately that it should be the Friday feature for Samurai Week in the month of Anime August , even before I replaced my regular New Comic Book Day and Throwback Thursday content with a Snow White mockbuster and Seven Samurai , respectively. The timing was practically fated to be; chosen by the tossing of a stick or the spin of a bottle. I will attempt to edit the following reprint of Just the Ticket #154: Last Man Standing (List Lookback) FROM August 30, 2024  to separate my opinions of Yojimbo from the lesser context of its later adaptation b...

Article by Sean Wilkinson, a.k.a. One Ticketmaster. Welcome backward, Ticketholders, to Samurai Week in the month of Anime August ...and to the longest movie I've ever reviewed! It's been adapted multiple times throughout film and television, including two Magnificent Seven s in 1960 and 2016 , Star Wars: Return Of the Jedi , Burn Notice: The Fall Of Sam Axe , yesterday's Snow White & The 7 Samurai , and the "Lotus and the Steel" episode of X-Men: The Animated Series . And its late director was honored in "One Week" by the Barenaked Ladies . Unlike Kurosawa , I review mad films. But if I made films, they'd have a samurai. Today's mad film I'm reviewing just happens to have seven of them. Akira Kurosawa's 1954 epic, Seven Samurai , clocks in at three and a half hours (including an intermission), and tells the classic story of a rice-farming village in 1586 (in the wake of the Honnō-ji Incident and the Battle Of Yamazaki that mark...

Article by Sean Wilkinson, a.k.a. The Mockbuster. The new Samurai Week continues, Ticketholders! You were probably expecting the Grimm Fairy Tales 2012 Giant-Size Edition today, but I didn't feel like Samurai Week had enough samurai in it, so I changed things up after writing my Elusive Samurai review and decided that something fairy tale-inspired should still be featured in the Wednesday slot. This year's live-action remake of Snow White got a ton of negative publicity and critical attention from the anti-woke grifter crowd and legitimate critical voices alike. The former group trashed Rachel Zegler for not being white enough and a girlboss, taking a side in the perpetual Israel/Palestine conflict, and publicly hating on her own film and denouncing the Disney Princess stereotype, trashed the movie itself pre-production for inclusive/representative casting, and trashed Gal Gadot for also taking a(n opposing) side in the aforementioned conflict, among other socially ques...

Article by Sean Wilkinson, a.k.a. The Elusive Animeister. Welcome to Samurai Week in the month of Anime August , Ticketholders! I was at a loss for words when I began writing this (insert easily-made "elusive" joke here), but then I woke up Saturday morning to the shocking, infuriating realization that a bug on Reddit removed the ability to post on user Profiles. So all of my Profile-only posts have been deleted or hidden as a result (that's four years of content evaporated overnight). With the exception of a few communities, Reddit is a paradox of intellectual sodomy founded on selfish idealism, regulatory hypocrisy, and toxic positivity. And if my losses weren't the result of a bug, I'd be tempted to cut ties with the platform as severely as possible. For now, though, I'd like to surrender my emotional investment in frustrating things that are beyond my control, and move onto something more positive, so let's start off this review with a reprint of my...

Content Calendar Announcement, Week of August 17, 2025 by Sean Wilkinson, a.k.a. The Ticketmaster. The second week of  Anime August  didn't go as well as the first, Ticketholders; probably because nothing can hope to match an eight-season, four movie, two Death Battle retrospective on My Hero Academia or a first-time review of Akira . But as I write this, the impact of my Godzilla Minus One review remains to be seen. Something else that remains to be seen (because you haven't scrolled to it yet) is that this week will give me a bit more breathing room with one less day of content, even as I endeavor to squeeze in as many Anime Spotlight issues and Japanese or anime-inspired film reviews as possible. So we're trading Guild-zilla Week (I'm kicking myself for not coming up with that sooner) for Samurai Week ! Also, good news on the  Dexter: Resurrection  front . I've watched the first two episodes, and with the exception of a few dialogue continuity errors, I'...

Article by Sean Wilkinson, a.k.a. The Ticketmaster. Last month, I watched a cheap, culturally insensitive movie about white women in Africa incurring the wrath of an aquatic lizard monster with a backwards machete , and began to seriously reconsider my life choices. So just when I was starting to think movies couldn't get any dumber, I traded in my rusty Panga for a nice, thicc Gojira , Specifically (again, see the thumbnail and title if you haven't figured it out yet), I'm talking about  Gojira -1.0 , or Godzilla Minus One . And yes, I know that the character trailers for the Hulk vs Godzilla Death Battle are out by now. This review's timing is just a coincidence. I was familiar with the numbered subtitle convention from anime such as the Jujutsu Kaisen 0 prequel movie, video games like Street Fighter Alpha ( Street Fighter Zero in Japan), and manga such as Jaco: the Galactic Patrolman (which counted up/down to Dragon Ball Minus in its later chapters), but I ...