Some of the best movies going are graphic novels (comic books if you prefer) turned into film, and another great one is coming down the pike. Red was a 66 page graphic novel written by Warren Ellis and Cully Hamner that will be hitting the big screen around October 15th. It has an amazing cast playing the retired CIA bored people out looking for a little excitement. Check out the trailer and mark your calendars.
Luc Besson strikes again! I still haven’t gotten to see his Les aventures extraordinaires d’Adèle Blanc-Sec, although the fact that clicking on the British flag on its home page gives you English subtitles on the trailer and web site encourages me that it might get released here soon. But in the meantime he will be releasing the third film in his Arthur series, Arthur 3: La Guerre des Deux Mondes, in October. These are a mix of 3D animation and live action children’s stories that started with Arthur and the Invisibles. Nothing groundbreaking here, but an interesting offering that demonstrates just how versatile Besson really is.
Have you been following the action on Robocup 2010? Robocup is taking place in Singapore this year, with a hoard of soccer playing robots from all over the world competing against each other. The organizations goal is to be able to field a team of humanoid robots that can beat their human opponents in the World Cup by the year 2050. It seems that some American Robots from Carnegie Mellon University have been programed with a new algorithm for predictive ball physics that may give them an edge. In the video, the bot with the blue center dot is the one running the algorithm.
There isn’t a new genre release this week, but Knight and Day looks like it could be silly fun. As near as I can tell from the trailers it is the same film as Killers with different actors; maybe I should see the first half of one, then switch to the other theater screening room to see the second half of the other. That way I will see a unique move, mentally adding the Face Off surgery scene to push it into the science fiction realm. It is always possible there may be something suspect with my logic, but I don’t really care.
For live action movies this week, the winner is TiMER, an original independent film about using your surgically implanted chipset to find your true love. Staring Emma Caulfield, this tasty little gem won a ton of Film Festival awards, but somehow when it went into general release it seemed to be pretty thin on the ground. If you are one of the many people who never got to see it in the theaters, now is your chance. This one has a lot in common with another recent independent work, Cold Souls. I don’t just refer to the fact that they both brought home a boatload of awards, or that they both only got to play on a limited number of screens when the theatrical release finally happened. But they both share a fine old science fiction story form: set in the present day, in the world we know with just one scientific device or procedure unknown to us. Then you get to explore all the implications and consequences of that one change, and how they impact on the hearts, minds, and conditions of the people in that story. This is the core of science fiction stripped down to the only question it ever asks: “What If?”.
On the TV front, the Sci-Fi Channel second miniseries stab at Riverworld is released on disc. This was a very well done production introducing us to the classic Philip Jose Farmer masterwork universe, a planet where everyone who ever lived all woke up at the same time and promptly went back to doing what each had always done. Personally, I also liked the first Riverworld miniseries, but the new one is a bit faster paced with a few more twists to the basic premise to help drive dramatic tension as the story evolves. Yes, evolves, because just like the first miniseries this is meant to test and see if there would be support for a full TV series. And since they didn’t schedule the new one against the Superbowl (what the hell were they thinking on the first ones scheduling?), this time there is a much better chance they got their target numbers and could proceed.
Only a few new Anime series this week. The only truly new offering is La Corda D’oro Primo: Passo: 1, the first half of the series. This does have a fairy (not that kind, the tiny mystical creature sort) as a recurring character, handing out magical enchanted musical instruments that play themselves, so it qualifies as genre. The story itself revolves around classical music with a romantic component; if you are not sure if this is for you, you can watch it on Crunchyroll before laying out your hard earned money.
Of the other Anime releases this week, most are single volumes or series re-releases. The only other one that is somewhat new is Heroic Age: The Complete Series, in that a complete series box set has not previously been released. The have, however, previously released Season 1 and Season 2 box sets, so I’m not sure just how new I consider it.
I don’t like rap music as a general rule except for Nerdcore, but I think these examples qualify.