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Something to Do: Movies

We have 5 movies to choose from this time around, 2 of which will be playing everywhere, the last 3 will be more limited. Nerve is not only first out of the gate with a release on Wednesday the 27th, but it also has a Pokemon Go tie in, I guess because the edge-of-your-seat story line just wasn’t enough. Jason Bourne is the other out-everywhere title, and like most spy books/movies it includes science fiction elements in its plot, premise, or gadgets, if you were wondering why I count them as genre.

In more limited release we get Monkey King: Hero Is Back, an animated fantasy starring Jackie Chan as the Monkey King. The last Monkey King movie Jackie Chan was in was the live action Forbidden Kingdom, and Jet Li got to play the famous demigod in that one. Both movies include the Monkey King’s release after 500 years from his prison of ice, a rather pivotal moment in his legend. League of Gods is based on the 16th-century Chinese novel Feng Shen Yan Yi, in which King Zhou becomes evil after a spirit disguised as one of his concubines twists his mind around. And finally the description of Dishoom sounds like a fantasy adventure premise to me: John and Varun go on a suicidal mission to rescue Jaqcueline, the princess, from her evil fiancé. Everybody’s already seen the trailers for the first two movies, here are the ones for the other three.

Monkey King: Hero Is Back – Official Trailer from Viva Pictures Distribution, LLC on Vimeo.

Something to Watch: Discs

There is no actual genre I could find for western Movies and TV, but I will mention Hardcore Henry because it has such a unique visual style. Too bad they didn’t do it as VR. We did much better with Anime, where Arpeggio of Blue Steel brings the warships of the Fog into direct contact with the humans they isolate and attack. Log Horizon: Season 2, Collection 2 has the next dozen episodes about the trapped gamers, who are following up on some rumors about a potential way out while continuing their quest. When They Cry: Rei is the OVA collection with a few comedic episodes and a few more in keeping with the vibe of the main series, dark and chilling. One Piece: Season 8 Voyage 2 brings episodes 469 through 480 home (they are currently running episode 762, to put that in perspective). There are also a couple of shows being released in a S.A.V.E. edition, Date A Live: Season 1, and Code:Breaker; Complete Series.

SDCC: A Few Trailers

SD Comic Con is better than Superbowl for movie trailers, so this week we will briefly skip the Saturday night music posts I normally do in honor of showing off a few of them. The first is from the next generation of the Potter franchise, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, the second Wonder Woman, and the third from Justice League, which seems to have no official web site quite yet. All three of those were Warner Bros. with the last 2 being DC Comics; we also get some from Marvel and Netflix, including Iron Fist and Luke Cage. There are a ton of other good ones as well, I will be fighting the urge to keep posting them, but I don’t know how well I will do with that.

Something to Stream: Taboo Tattoo

We are only 3 episodes into the fall season, and already Taboo Tattoo has me looking forward to the new episode each Monday when I get home from work. The Tattoos are technology from an ancient civilization, each with a special power they give the wearer, a specific trigger that activates them, and a price they exact in return for the abilities they grant. The protagonist is a middle school kid who ended up being given his tattoo when he stepped in to defend a stranger from some street punks. He was promptly tracked down by a couple of American Army tattoo wielders. They had been tasked with locating a group of stolen tattoos and were hot on the heels of the man he had defended. There is also a psycho princess who just used her tattoo to murder her parents and take over the government of her island nation, as a stepping stone to world domination. She has agents with powers going to other countries to kill off the gifted and bring their tattoos back to equip her army. And that’s just in the first 2 episodes; it’s going to be a wild ride!

12 Tomorrows 2016

The MIT Technology Review just published it’s annual Sci-Fi collection 12 Tomorrows, based on stories in the Review of the latest scientific breakthroughs. The authors this year include Charles Stross, John Kessel, Nick Harkaway, Bruce Sterling, and an assortment of emerging writers, and you can get the publication as eZines or in limited edition hardcopy. Over the years this collection has achieved critical acclaim, both from genre publishing prozines like Locus Magazine and by having stories included in various Best Science Fiction Of The Year anthologies.