Stan Lee is one of the instructors at the Smithsonian class The Rise of Superheroes and Their Impact On Pop Culture, along with several others. The basic course takes 6 weeks and is free, but if you want a verified certificate that will cost $50; if you pass the class, besides the certificate itself you will get digital artwork created by comic book artist Dennis Calero (X-Factor, X-Men Noir). It was created just for this course, and is digitally signed by Stan Lee and Michael Uslan. This is the 4th time they are holding the course, and the first class took place/was posted this week, on the 17th. Since it is an online course, you can take it at any time, but it is fun having the forums to interact with your classmates and instructors as each week’s materials are posted. EdX is a massively open online educational system with some very interesting classes started by a collaboration between MIT and Harvard that quickly expanded to some of the best schools on the planet.
Kevin Smith is going to be building the TV show version of The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the Eighth Dimension, all because he did such a good job directing some recent episodes of The Flash. Some people at MGM saw those episodes and offered him a shot at creating a TV show for them, and that is what they decided on. As he said on a podcast at the Kevin Smith Blog: Basically you just do the entire movie for season one, then season two you finally do the sequel we’ve all dreamed about, Buckaroo Banzai Against the World Crime League. I can’t wait! No guesses who might carry it yet, but this is one TV show I have been waiting a few decades for them to make. Thanks to pretty much everyone for the heads up on this, but the first one I saw was from Cheryl Eddy at IO9, which is part of Gizmodo these days.
Roald Dahl wrote the story, Steven Spielberg directed the movie, and Disney is distributing it; The BFG is finally coming to the big screen in July. The Big Friendly Giant has been a children’s classic since it was first published, I am looking forward to seeing how they did with this iteration of it.
The only interesting film this week is The Angry Birds Movie, but that’s OK. Next week we get two winners to chose between, X-Men: Apocalypse and Alice Through the Looking Glass.
The one new Movie title isn’t genre, and Janis: Little Girl Blue looks like it actually came out this past week. But it is an excellent documentary about an amazing artist who we lost too soon, so I had to mention it anyways. The IP Man Trilogy puts 3 of the movies in that series into a single box, at a noticeable savings over buying them individually, so if you don’t have them already now might be the time. Likewise DC Universe is releasing a number of their animated feature films two to a box for the price of one this week, including Son of Batman/Batman: Under The Red Hood, All-Star Superman/Superman Doomsday, and Superman vs. The Elite/Superman: Unbound. TV is represented by Nova: Rise of the Robots, also not genre but very worth watching.
We do better in Anime, with some actual new genre titles like Assassination Classroom – Season 1 Part 1 bringing the first 11 episodes of the series home. Akame ga Kill: Collection 2 is the second half of that rather twisted story line, this time with the old enemies working together. Black Butler: Book of Murder has two OVAs about Ceil and the Demon Butler, and a cast that includes legendary author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle; that alone should make this an important selection. Finally Gunbuster: The Movie tells the tale of the monsters between the stars, and the humans who go out to fight them. The time dilation caused by their near light speed transitions means the ones they go out to protect may be long dead before the battle is even joined.
Chu’s day is a high energy J-Rock girls band from downtown Tokyo who seem to be playing live somewhere every day. In fact it was difficult finding official studio tracks to post, most of their official videos are them playing live in some club or at some event. The first track is Rocking Shoes, the second is Cycling, at least one of them is from their 2015 album Have A Nice Chu’s Day.