There isn’t any genre films on the big screen this weekend as near as I can determine; but that’s OK, because we will have the Doctor Who Christmas Special on Friday instead. This will be the first episode where Alex’s Professor River Song shares the screen with Peter’s incarnation of the Doctor. When you add in that Steven Moffat wrote the script himself, and the director this time has also been directing Sherlock episodes, it is bound to be something special indeed.
Terrestrial Human
In Movies, Dragon Blade is an epic historical fantasy about the battle between the Roman Empire and the ethnically diverse people of 36 countries, some of which would combine with still more nations to become China century’s later, for control of the Silk Road. It stars Jackie Chan, John Cusack and Adrien Brody, and was massively successful in its native China earlier this year. A lot of the critics were not kind to it, but it is worth seeing for the huge battle sequences alone. Also this week, Pan is a retelling of the origins of the classic literary hero who refused to grow up, and it also was not kindly received by many of the critics.
TV has Defiance: Season 3, which is the first major network TV show to be an online game, with the events of each environment impacting the story line of the other. Lots of different Aliens scattered all over the Earth add to the drama and action. Also this week, Dominion: Season 2, one of the few stories where Humanity is under direct threat by the Angels. Strangely enough, there doesn’t seem to be any Anime this week.
There was a ton of new and amazing music in 2015, like My First Story with Alone and the Wagakki Band with Ikusa. Then there was Superfly with White Light and Passepied with Tokinowa. One of the groups that surprised and delighted me this year was The Full Pledge Munkees, an amazing Ska band out of Singapore, represented here by their song Positif MV. And that really only covered the first 4 months of the year, and didn’t even mention One OK Rock, who finally had their big breakthrough in North America with their release of their first US album this October. Like most such events, their overnight success came after a decade of working their tails off to get there.
DC’s Legends of Tomorrow is a show I have been waiting for, and in a few more weeks it becomes real. Launching on Thursday, January 21st, it takes everything they have been building to in Arrow and Flash and consolidates them into a single program with a multiplex story arch. If it is even half as good as I have been hoping, it should be a world class ensemble superhero show, just like Avengers or X-Men, but owned by the DC team instead of Marvel.
Apocalypse was the mutant who could absorb the powers of other mutants, controlling them until he had drained them dry. After thousands of years he is back, and wants to remake the world as his own plaything. X-Men: Apocalypse will arrive on the big screen on May 27, 2016. I assume no one is surprised that I am looking forward to seeing the latest addition to the franchise, since it just seems to get better every movie from my perspective.
Silly fun at its finest, The Brothers Grimsby is a warning that the only thing more dangerous than the world’s greatest spy is his brother. It will be on the big screen next March 11th.