R.I.P.D, the Rest In Peace Department, looks like it’s going to be the funniest action/adventure movie about lawmen in the afterlife ever made. Based on the Dark Horse graphic novel of the same name, I linked to them since I wasn’t able to find its stand alone home page quite yet. This should be hitting the big screen on June 28th.
Crunchyroll has started playing the spring anime season shows, and it is off to a great start; you can see the lineup here. I thought I should mention a few of the ones that look promising to me in case you might want to check them out.
Attack On Titan is a tale of humanity trapped within a walled city by giants who seek to eat them. The Scouting Legion are the only ones brave enough to explore beyond the walls, and mostly they just die… a lot. Eren may be the one to pull humanity through the walls into the future.
HENNEKO – The Hentai Prince and the Stony Cat is about two people who went to beg a favor from a god, only to have their wish granted by having a part of their mind removed. Now they each act in ways they never expected, and are trying to find their ways back to being themselves, complete with the lost bits.
DEVIL SURVIVOR 2 is fairly Gantz-like; thirteen people die, and are given the choice to live, enlisted into the front line with the war with demonic forces attacking their family and friends. Only the summoning spells are built into cell phone apps, and a secret government agency has a completely different set of such apps. It looks to be quite the winner so far.
Gargantia on the Verdurous Planet brings a taste of Earth with a serious twist, and may be the most interesting series of all. Our protagonist starts out in combat protecting the survivors of humanity from alien attackers while looking for a new planet to live on. He then gets spat out the side of a collapsing wormhole to a random segment of space/time, where things get really strange. This is me urging you to watch the first episode, beginning to end, and see if you don’t like it too. I suspect this one may end up being my favorite series of the new season, it has everything from the paratemporal to the transdimensional, and with a double helping of attitude just for spice!
There are more I haven’t checked out yet, I will post again if I find any more good ones.
I know the movie I will be attending this week: Tai Chi Hero, part two of the story of Yang Luchan, who founded the most popular Tai Chi school in the world in the 19th century. This Steampunk story adventure started with the film Ti Chi Zero last year, and has one more film episode to go to complete it. From the creators of IP Man and Detective Dee, this one should really not be missed.
But that is not all; on Thursday, the 25th Fathom Events is cranking out Star Trek The Next Generation: The Best of Both Worlds, on the big screen, in resolution well beyond HD. So I think I will have to attend two film events this weekend, both of them quite tasty.
Fairly thin on the shelves this week, Jurassic Park 3D is the only movie of note, and it is left over from 1993, updated for some new technology. Unlike many movies that have been updated to a 3D format, this one is quite worth the effort, in that the 3D processing actually enhances the film experience. There is also a collection of short experimental pieces called Tunnel Vision: The Underground Films By Raz Mesinai which could have some interesting entries in it. Finally there is the made for TV Pegasus Vs. Chimera, which still seems to have a web page.
I didn’t find any live action TV this week, but Marvel Knights: Inhumans is a dark animated feature just over two hours long that looks very interesting. If you followed the Inhumans through their graphic novel adventures with the Fantastic Four and others, you have an idea of the kind of scope this group has for telling a serious story.
In Anime, Rosario + Vampire are releasing both season one and season two as two boxed sets on the same week. Tsukune’s grades suck, so he only has one school that will accept him, but when he get’s there he discovers it is a school for monsters who consider humans lunch. In fact, before long a beautiful vampire girl is snacking on him, and sharing her lunch with a few close supernatural girlfriends. But when real danger threatens, Tsukune unlocks Moka’s super-monster seal, and all hell breaks loose. Psychic Detective Yakumo contains all 13 episodes of the series where the dead tell the crime fighting team what they know about their murders, and the duo has to work hard and fast to avoid joining the rolls of the deceased. It all started when Haruka tried to help a possessed friend get free from her controlling spirit, and got more dangerous by the moment from there.
Naruto Shippūden Box 14 brings us to episodes 167 through 179, a critical juncture where Naruto has manifested eight of his nine tails during the battle over Leaf Village. Does he now have sufficient power to save his friends? Hakuōki: A Memory of Snow Flowers is an OVA collection of 6 episodes in which a Shinsengumi warrior must disguise herself as a geisha in order to gather the intelligence her side needs to win, as Kyoto teeters on the brink of war. Not all of the dangers in the mission require a warriors heart to overcome them.
Galaxy Express 999: Complete Series 2 continues the old-school anime series with the 1998 sequel to the original 1979 show.
I have gathered together a few favorite films to keep me distracted during recovery for the next few days, starting with 2009’s Fish Story. This excellent Japanese Sci-Fi tale covers multiple decades and generations, showing how a punk rock song saved the world through a series of circumstances that don’t at first glance appear to be related. Luc Besson’s Angel-A is also in the collection, a French film about an angel who has fallen to Earth to save the heart and soul of a petty criminal. And then there is Iron Sky, about the Nazi’s who fled to the Moon at the end of WWII and are now returning to invade the Earth, from the Finnish film making team that brought us Star Wreck. That last one even has an English sound track, so I won’t have to read the subtitles, hurrah! If you have missed seeing any of these amazing films you can watch them on many VOD or Streaming services, such as Netflix, and I recommend dong so soonest!
The new Lone Ranger trailer is out, and I gotta say I am now expecting two thirds of the film to take place on trains. They obviously have assembled a great team for this project, and everything I have seen so far is excellent. Now I just need to be patient enough to wait until it is actually released in July so I can attend the IMAX 3D version (at least I hope it is being released in that format).