The fantasy choice this week is Byzantium a tale of two lonely vampire girls hiding from their past. The cast includes Gemma Arterton, a personal favorite of mine. While not genre, the film Redemption also stars a favorite in the form of Jason Statham, odds are good if you are in the mood for an action flic this will be the one you want.
The fantasy film this week is a re-release of 1965’s Beatles Help!, but since this is the first time ever a fully restored version will be available on Blue Ray, perhaps it could be counted as a new release. Also, while not exactly genre, The Incredible Burt Wonderstone is a fun film with more than a tip of the hat to the magically inclined.
In TV, Todd & the Book of Pure Evil: The Complete Second Season is finally being released in the US. It has been available on streaming for a while through various paid streaming services, but this will be the first opportunity to add it to your permanent collection in this country. Meanwhile, the cast and crew have been trying to raise the funds to get a third season going; read about it at their web site.
In Anime, Heaven’s Lost Property: Forte is season 2 of the series and continues the trail of havoc the wishes of the high school protagonist creates as his android angels (or angelic androids, they are a little unclear on that point) carry them out. Juden Chan: The Complete Series is about spirit girls from another universe who charge up the depressed so they can live their lives, and what happens when they meet a boy who can see them.
Another spirit girl is a shinigami called Momo: The Girl God of Death, who does her best to help the spirits of the no longer living she guides to the other side. Helps so much she herself winds up in trouble, in fact. This is more of an OVA than a series, since the entire thing is only six 25 minute episodes long, but all of them are here.
Old school anime from the late 80s, Saint Seiya Movies 1 & 2 are being re-released together, with the 3rd and 4th movies in another box set. I couldn’t find a link to the official web site, so I linked one of the TV series instead, where you can watch episodes and get an idea of the program.
The new official trailer for Mortal Instruments: City of Bones has been posted, and it is looking quite good. Based on the YA series of urban fantasy novels by Cassandra Clare, I am sure Sony is hoping for the same kind of audience reaction earned by the Twilight and Hunger Games series. If they get it, they have 5 more books already written and ready to turn into films, as well as 3 Steampunk prequels set in the Victorian era. Having one of her books turned into a movie has to be pretty exciting stuff for someone who started out writing Fan Fiction.
The folks over at Academic Earth believe everyone deserves a world-class education, so they have put together a collection of free online courses from the top schools on the planet, including Harvard, MIT, and Stanford. Not content to stop there, they have also put together a wonderful little collection of short educational videos they refer to as Electives, designed to tweak your curiosity, engage your attention, and encourage you to seek out more information. The example I am embedding here is from a true literary classic, Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, a book named for the temperature at which books burn. I will be ransacking this excellent site for months and years to come taking advantage of the resources freely on offer, and I urge you to do the same. Thanks to the folks at Worlds Without End for the heads up on this one.
Only a few more weeks before Despicable Me 2 hits the big screen, so I thought I would throw out a TV spot or two to get everyone in the mood. I love the minions, for me they are the core of the movie, and I am ready to see them in action again! I also appreciate the creators attitude, because unlike many franchises they are fully supporting fan-built homages including a great collection of Fan Videos.
Friends of the Planetary Society, founded by Carl Sagan and others to promote the colonization of space, have a Kickstarter project: ARKYD. The team at Planetary Resources has begun a project for mining the asteroids, starting with the ones featured in all those tweets from Low Flying Rocks which come much closer to the Earth than a lot of folks find comfortable. Step one is finding them heading our way when they are still far enough away that we have time to intercept them, and for that they are launching a gaggle of small telescopes specially designed to see the faint reflected light from their surfaces. And when there aren’t any rocks fling at us, they can use the telescope farm to monitor interesting things, like Jupiter and Saturn. One of the telescopes will be used to allow pretty much anyone who wants to contribute to take their own pictures of the things that interest them from an orbiting telescope, or have a picture of their choosing photographed in space, with the Earth as a backdrop. There are still 11 days until the project funding window closes, and they have made over $900,000 of their one million dollar goal, so you still have time to contribute and help make this project happen! And, if you contribute a hundred dollars or more, you also get a years membership in The Planetary Society along with the other rewards.