No way to know yet, but if the trailer is any indication, this could be the best film of the franchise to date. ‘Nuff said!
There really aren’t any genre movies this week, but Keeping Up with the Joneses could be amusing if they didn’t go too over the top. Or it could be a good week to catch up with something you missed that is still in the theaters.
In Movies the two primary winners, both sequels. Tim Burton’s Alice Through the Looking Glass can be picked up by itself, or in a two-pack with the earlier film Alice In Wonderland. I saw both of them in the theaters, and I highly recommend each of them. Independence Day Resurgence is all about the action visuals, more than the plot or dialog, although a few of the actors were able to make something out of what the writers gave them to work with. There is also the kid-centric Nessie & Me for those looking for something to share with your children.
Anime doesn’t really have any new genre titles this time around, but the classic series The Vision Of Escaflowne is being re-released, both the complete series and the movie in a single boxed set. For those who already own some portion of it they are also coming out with the movie separately, and each 13 episode season in its own box. Finally, a 4 movie set made up of Memories, Paprika, Steamboy, and Tekkonkinkreet is being released, four of the finest anime feature films ever made.
A headline I never expected to see when I became aware of this amazing songwriter/poet’s work back in the early 60s, but that I would have cheered on even back then; Bob Dylan has always deserved to win a Nobel Prize! Part of the reason is that he never stood still, but kept creating new works with new attitudes, year after year, and decade after decade. The only other artist I know that could match him on that level was David Bowie; had Jim Morrison survived longer, there might have been three of them.
Two weeks into the new Anime season, and I already have a few favorites, with Izetta: The Last Witch topping the list. It is the early days of WWII Europe in a parallel timeline, with Germany blitzing over the surrounding countries one after another, and the Austrian princess trying desperately to make it to England to sign a mutual defense treaty. The twist is, this universe had a race of magic users, and the lone survivor is a childhood friend of the Princess, and not a fan of the government of those who inflicted that genocide. The first episode grabbed me within the first 5 minutes, the second was better than the first, and while that is no promise that it will keep delivering at that level I like what they have done so far. The Simulcast is on Saturdays at 11:45am EDT, I will be checking it out each weekend. Sadly, the legitimate trailer I found for it is way too short to give you a feel for what they are doing, so you should just go watch the first episode.
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center does not often partner with someone to create a music video, but they did for this one. NASA Goddard video producer David Ladd got together with musicians Javier Colon and Matt Cusson to create a piece about NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) that they hoped would ignite the imagination of young potential future engineers and scientists. Besides inspiring the kids, it also needed to engage the parents and educators around them, so they could encourage and support them during the education period they would need to go through to reach that goal. The first lesson to be learned would benefit all of them, whatever they decided to do with their lives: that nothing is beyond their reach if they put the effort into it! That seemed like a pretty positive thing to me, so I had to share it here. This is how we build the future.