Nothing good this week in new movie releases, as I am certainly not going to recommend Final Destination 5 to anyone. But if you missed any of the new releases of the past few weeks, this would be a great time to catch up. Still in theaters we have last weeks Rise of the Planet of the Apes, and Cowboys and Aliens from the week before, both of which I can recommend. Also Captain America: the First Avenger from the week before that was a strong entry for the franchise which I completely enjoyed. Unfortunately Another Earth opened to very limited release that same week, and has now evaporated from most of the few theaters it did occupy.
Choice off the week for movies has to be Paul, the wonderful Pegg and Frost romp across the American southwest in the liberation of aliens assault. It isn’t the only silly fun option, though, as the film Your Highness also becomes available on Tuesday. The film Super may also be a comedy, but not silly; more in the black comedy range, with some serious issues lurking just beneath the surface. I’m thinking all three of these need to follow me home this week.
In TV, the Tom Baker era Dr. Who: The Sun Makers is the only offering of note this time around. Companions Leela (Louise Jameson) and K9 round out the primary cast, with Leela’s eternal question of why can we not kill them? being prominent.
In western animation, Mars Needs Moms is the Disney feature film with an all star voice cast and some quality animation work.
In Anime, Soul Eater: Parts 3 & 4 is being released in a combined box set under the title Soul Eater: The Weapon Collection at a considerable savings over buying the two seasons separately. Parts 1 and 2 were released a bit ago in a combined edition as well, under the title The Meister Collection, which means by shopping around you can pick up the entire 4 season series for about $50.
Thanks to Japanator, I was turned on to this wonderful AMV featuring the visual input from Full Metal Panic: fumoffu. The series is funny as hell, with a military minded giant mecha driving high school age combat veteran without a clue about how to act in non-combat situations assigned to guard a high school girl. If nothing else, his threat evaluation skills need retraining and his responses could be a little less lethal. After watching the AMV, I am ready to break out the series and watch the entire thing again, starting with season 1, episode 1.
It had to happen sooner or later… the Beastie Boys do the singing, Spike Jonze put the video together, the Abominable Snowman tags along as muscle, and the Zombies do the dying. The production is just cheesy enough to be camp, and looks like it was fun to build.
There have been a lot of games converted into movies, most of them have been science fiction, and a lot of them have been bad. Somehow I never visualized the classic board game (later adapted for the computer) Battleships being turned into a movie, nor would I have expected it to be sci-fi. And yet, it appears both of those things are true, at least as far as their first trailer for the film is concerned (some, like Topless Robot, disagree with this conclusion).
Not really a lot to be said about this one; it is the kind of thing that happens when you combine a singing program, some animation software, a good imagination, and some serious skill sets. This was put together by Vocaloid artist Oster Project using music from her her fourth album, Cinnamon Philosophy. Thanks to Crunchyroll for the heads up on this one.