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Monday, September 13, 2021

1995 film Ghost in the Shell (攻殻機動隊) in Pittsburgh as part of IMAX 2D re-release, from September 16.


The 1995 Japanese film Ghost in the Shell (攻殻機動隊) will play in Pittsburgh from September 16 as part of an IMAX 2D re-release. A 2014 Telegraph review provides a summary:
Oshii’s film, which was adapted from a manga series by Masamune Shirow, saw everything coming. In its near-future world, countries are like corporations under siege, whose protective walls are slowly being washed away by an ocean of communal data. Hackers are treated like terrorists, while programmers’ movements are restricted as part of a global arms embargo.

Helping to keep the uneasy peace is Section 9, a team of government agents who include Motoko Kusanagi: a cyborg who can plug herself into the data-sea via four jack ports in the nape of her neck.
. . .
We follow Kusanagi on her hunt for The Puppet Master, a hacker who can access the ‘ghosts’, or souls, of ordinary citizens and carry out cyber-crimes by proxy. Now entirely synthetic, her original human body replaced and improved on piece by piece, Kusanagi is unsure whether her ghost still lingers in her man-made form[.]
The film is in Japanese with English subtitles. It plays locally at the AMC Loews Waterfront through (at least) September 23, and tickets are available online.