After watching yesterday’s video I explored a bit more, and somebody is actually compiling the best, or at least strangest, commercials from Japan each week or 3. These include some serious genre references and products along side the merely wacked out, and I enjoyed them too much to keep them to myself. I particularly enjoyed the Kyary Pamyu Pamyu spots on each video, using her music to promote her fashion line, and the Mecha spots they had long before we started doing Iron Man commercials..
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I love the amazing array of genre coming out of Japan, but some of their output is strange. I THINK this may be a recruiting video for McDonald’s street theater staff in Tokyo (why don’t we have that here?), but it could also be a girl with Hypno Toad genes creating her own cadre of dancing zombies. Maybe a commercial, maybe a music video, maybe filmed as part of a collage film making course; hard to tell from this side of the screen, but definitely different. Thanks to Japanator for the heads up on this one.
Not just any Pacific Rim trailer, this is the one they showed at Wondercon. It has to be Guillermo del Toro’s tribute to Japanese movies and anime, and I am very ready to see it. It will hit the big screen on July 12th, and has a great little viral site.
As the 50th anniversary continues, the BBC are just about to launch a new special… The 4th Doctor. Tom Baker is featured for this round, with a series of quotes. The quote out of that set I particularly like:
The very powerful and the very stupid have one thing in common. They don’t alter their views to fit the facts. They alter the facts to fit their views. Which can be uncomfortable if you happen to be one of the facts that needs altering.
I suspect the Tom Baker special will be available soon, and I can’t wait to watch it. Everything they have put out for the 50th year celebration so far has been a real treat, I can’t wait for what comes next!
At long last, it is finally time for Iron Man 3! Rumor is the teaser at the end of the credits this time will be for Avengers 2, another film that can’t come along soon enough to suit me as well. And a link to the official Iron Man 3 for those who don’t use FaceSpace.
There doesn’t seem to be any new genre films this time, except for the very low budget Agent Beetle, so Not Fade Away is my only recommendation. However, if you have missed any of the Trek movies now might be the time to collect them up. A bunch of them are being re-released to sync up with the release of Star Trek: The Best of Both Worlds this week, along with Star Trek: The Next Generation, Season 3 on Blue Ray. There is another re-release that most Americans will have missed the first time around; 1988’s The Navigator: A Mediaeval Odyssey. This time travel story is quite a bit different in that the time travelers are escaping from the Black Death in the middle ages and end up in a modern New Zealand city.
I already mentioned the Trek TV releases, the other good TV worth mentioning this week is Nova: Earth from Space, a two hour special. There are some pretty amazing images there.
In Anime, Fairy Tail: Collection One puts the entire first series in a single box set. This mystical mayhem series is in the tradition of Dirty Pair, where collateral damage costs multiple times what stopping the bad guys saves. Also new, Qwaser of Stigmata II contains all 12 episodes of the second series plus the OVA. Now that the first ancient artifact has been resolved, a new eldrich weapon needs to be tracked down, this time hidden with a member of a girls school and with serious competition hunting for it.
Patlabor The Mobile Police is re-releasing the original 7 volume OVA series that started it all. After that one Mamoru Oshii followed it up with the second OVA series, a 47 episode TV series, and three movies. All of which set his universe up to spawn the next great story series advance and cult classic, Ghost In The Shell. One of the best sci-fi cyberpunk stories in Anime it also grew into multiple movies and TV series.