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The most interesting selection this week is in very limited release: Restless is a story about a man who crashes funerals with his best friend (the ghost of a WWII Kamikazi pilot) who meets and falls in love with a dying girl while doing so. Like all the best stories, this is about how people change and grow while proceeding through life, even when their life is a bit stranger than average. The question at the core of this one is Who do you live for, I look forward to seeing if they can pull it off well enough to make the film live up to the promise of the trailer. If it does, it may just become another cult classic on a par with Harold and Maude.

Top of the movie list this week is Thor, another world class entry in Marvel’s steady build to The Avengers. A related release is Marvel Knights: Thor & Loki, Blood Brothers, which is a motion comic, that bastard child of comic books and animation. Personally, I like motion comics, particularly the ones with quality artwork, which this seems to have. Also of note this week, Star Wars: The Complete Saga finally has it’s Blue Ray release. The only reason it didn’t get top billing this week is that everyone who is interested already owns all these movies, so this becomes a way to sell you again something you already own. Now if they had a trade-up deal, where you got half or more of the money you originally paid for them off the cost for the new set when you turned them in, this release would have definitely gotten top billing. Finally, a few Asian films getting US releases this week. First, True legend tells the story of a retired Qing dynasty general who is attacked and left for dead, with his son kidnapped. The true story of what he went through to train up and get his son back was the source of the “King of Beggars” legend. Then a classic film that helped pave the way for independent women in martial arts movies, 1968’s Golden Swallow tells a tale of a woman falsely accused of crimes committed by another.

Carrie Fisher: Wishful Drinking isn’t a movie but rather a documentary, but I think it will be well worth checking out, if only for her commentary on being Princess Leia.

The top TV spot this week is a bit hard to judge. For me it is a tossup between Sanctuary: The Complete Third Season and Supernatural: The Complete Sixth Season. I have enough arguments for and against each series being the stronger contender that they pretty much even out. And it is entirely possible that Camelot: The Complete First Season might beat them both out; I don’t know because I missed scheduling that series on my DVR and haven’t seen any of it yet. Luckily it is available on Starz Video on Demand, so I will watch a few episodes before making any decisions as to how good it is. Also new this week is about the only reality show I watch, coming out with Mythbusters: Collection 7. If I had the right kind of engineering background, this show would be my dream job. Finally there is The Big Bang Theory: The Complete Fourth Season, which I mention for completeness. I want to like that show, I love the premise; if only it didn’t have the laugh track I might be able to watch it without cringing.

For western animation, Monsters vs. Aliens: Mutant Pumpkins from Outer Space is still more wackiness from Dreamworks, and has the original cast including Reese Witherspoon, Seth Rogen, Hugh Laurie, Will Arnett, and Kiefer Sutherland. If you liked the original feature length movie you will no doubt want to add this short to your collection. I know it will certainly be following me home the day it comes out. In fact, I will be looking for the bundled set, where they combine it with Scared Shrekless, another great short available for the first time this week.

in Anime, MM Complete Collection is a twisted tale about some very troubled people, and I am not sure having them all in the same support group is the best option for them (including the god; he is also a bit twisty). Then there is Kekkaishi Set 2 continues the story of the teenage boy training to kill monsters with his childhood sweetheart. This release brings us to the half way point in this particular story arc, since each box set contains 13 episodes and the full series has 52.

Netflix has added a few tasty titles recently to their streaming service, of which the silliest has to be Mystery Science Theater 3000: Gamera, in which the team makes fun of all 5 of the original Gamera franchise movies (I think they missed the most recent one). The most interesting alternate history title is Night Raid 1931, which has a team of psychics in Japanese occupied Shanghai trying to keep control before the next major war breaks out. On the flip side, it looks like Netflix did lose its Starz deal, cutting off its best source of current movies.

The sad part is, most folks don’t know who he was. Michael S. Hart invented electronic books (now called eBooks) in 1971, when he typed the text of the free printed copy of the U.S. Declaration of Independence he had been handed into a plain ASCII text file and sent it over the net to his friends. In 1971 almost no-one knew there was a net, still decades away from evolving into the web, but even back then Mike realized it was a powerful tool for education and literacy, and he kept typing in and disseminating royalty free literature. He later went on to found the Gutenberg Project and became an advocate for both literacy and for the preservation of public domain rights and resources, all for the greater good of the human race. In case it wasn’t obvious by my statements, this is one of my heroes, and one of the giants who helped build today’s modern world of the future. He will be missed.