From December 10th to the 17th is the Bahamas International Film Festival, and I can’t think of a better place to have one in the winter. A lot of the pieces (69 of them) are shorts, in the 5 to 30 minute range, and one of them looks really interesting: The Macabre World Of Lavender Williams. The cast includes Lily Jackson, Rex Linn, Christopher LLoyd, and John Lithgow in this 26 minute fantasy film. Another one to consider is At World’s End, a Danish film from this year about someone who believes he is 130 years old, an action-comedy.
Disney’s animated feature The Princess and The Frog goes from limited to wide release on the 11th, making it available to people outside of New York and LA.
I haven’t found anything else new worth seeing, but that’s OK; next week Avatar is finally on the big screen!
For live action, J. K. Rowling’s next brilliant book has been turned into the next brilliant movie of the series, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. That film is the pivot point for this weeks releases, it seems to me.
In Anime this week, a show with a truck full of pigs, flying saucers, and crazy dream sequences comes along, and what are you going to do except cheer it on? School Rumble – Complete Series includes season 1, season 2, and the OVA, and nowhere in it does anything rumble.
Another new Anime this Tuesday is Naruto Shippuden volume 4 with still more tales on Ninja prowess. While I am a big fan of the nine-tailed fox, I will be waiting for the seasonal box set on this one, so I can see all the episodes at once (plus it’s more cost effective).
Moribito volume 8 also becomes available; the Public Broadcasting homepage of it can be found on the NHK.
Also out this week, Monster – Box Set 1 takes you into the What-If world that asks which decision would you make, when faced with a true human monster?
Starting tomorrow, Sunday December 6th, BBC7 will be running Infinity Welcomes Careful Drivers, the book by Grant Naylor (who is actually Rob Grant & Doug Naylor) that tells the story about how Dave Lister ended up as part of the crew of the Red Dwarf. If that wasn’t enough, the story is read by Arnold Rimmer himself – Chris Barrie. The segments are 30 minutes long, so it will take six of them to read the whole book. There are three more Red Dwarf books and I for one am sincerely hoping they decide to present them all.
There are only 3 David Tennant Doctor Who specials left, and BBC America will be playing The Water of Mars on Saturday December 19th. Yes, it is the Beginning of the End; and Children in Need had a taste to share…
Did you happen to catch the Syfy Channel miniseries Tinman, the wonderfully twisted version of the Wizard of Oz? The team that brought you that creation return on Sunday, the 6th, with Alice, with their wonderfully twisted version of Through The Looking Glass. This time it brings some serious star power to the party, with a cast that includes the likes of Kathy Bates, Tim Curry, Matt Frewer, Colm Meaney, and Harry Dean Stanton to name but a few. Oh, and my favorite bit: Andrew-Lee Potts got to be the Hatter.
There is a new Buck Rogers series coming out in 2010, and judging by this rather retro teaser it might just be a fun show. I heard about this from Big Dumb Object who got it from Ain’t It Cool who had it from Sci-Fi Wire. The new Buck Rogers series is from the same folks who brought us Star Trek: Phase II, formerly known as Star Trek: New Voyages. If you would like some more details about the new project check out the interview on TrekMovie.