Cracked Shell Redux Dept.

After my last grouse-and-grinch episode about the live-action Akira movie, I come back to you now with what may sound like heresy in my own terms: The live-action Ghost in the Shell project currently on the rails may not, in fact, suck after all.

The reason I have that much more confidence in this opened this weekend: Martin Scorsese's Shutter Island, which is currently making big critical noises (Ebert liked it, although the Times bagged on it hard).

Check the screen credit for Island: Laeta Kalogridis. Same one with a writing credit attached to Ghost. This means at the very least we have some new, recent, concrete idea of what caliber of work we can expect, apart from Alexander and Nightwatch.

I'm still not jumping up and down, but at least I don't feel like I've swallowed cement anymore.