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Jellybean evidence has been requested by several folks who looked at the Shrek image the other day and contacted me to say they did not see the jellybeans I said it was made out of. So here is a smaller portion of the same picture, but not shrunk to avoid eradicating the details. It was actually missing from the window the final day I was there. When I inquired about it, I was told they had removed it to get the display area ready for their next creation; something in a Tardis, I believe.
There are no actual genre films that I could find coming out this week, although there is at least one cult favorite coming back with a final film: A Very Harold & Kumar 3D Christmas. I don’t even need to describe it; you already either love or hate this series of films, so nothing I say is going to sway you one way or the other to attend this. There were a number of good ones from last week still in the theaters you might want to check out, such as RA.One, the latest Bollywood Sci-Fi romp. This takes the crown from last year’s Robot as the most expensive Bollywood movie ever made, and also like Robot the protagonist is not quite human, and more of a bad guy than otherwise. Interestingly enough, they actually made the game this movie is about, and folks were able to play it before seeing the film. And there is still time to see In Time, a twisted successor to Logan’s Run.
There are a couple of live action movies coming out this week that look interesting, and I think Bunraku will beat out the competition by a noticeable amount. It had a very limited theatrical run, so for most of us this will be our first shot to see it. Stars include Josh Hartnett, Woody Harrelson, Demi Moore, Gatck, and Ron Perlman, while the premise includes cowboys without guns and samurai without swords. The other live action selection is Snow Flower and the Secret Fan, a story that crosses centuries and cultural evolution to talk about friendship.
There is another film of note this week, and it is a documentary: the Magic Trip, staring Ken Keasey, Neal Cassady, Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, the Warlocks (they later changed their name to the Greatful Dead), and the Merry Band of Pranksters. This is the epic journey the bus Furthur and its humans took in 1964. If you knew what it meant to be On The Bus in the sixties, you can finally see the movie they filmed during that journey a mere 48 years later. I am planning to watch it as part two of a double header, with Howl starting the lineup, therefore watching the core events that caused post WWII America to evolve into the counterculture of the 1960s in one sitting. There is also a western animated feature film, Cars 2, with an all star vocal cast from Disney.
Only one TV series that ran nationally in North America found this week, Transformers Beast Wars: The Complete Series. This show was rather well done, with some good quality 3D animation for its time and a story line that evolved out of the original Transformers series. Personally I thought it was much better done than Transformers themselves, at least until the live action feature films came along.
In anime the primary selection is Amagami SS – Collection 2, continuing the story where all the potential futures for our protagonist are explored, each in their own parallel timeline and universe. There is no indication in what I have read if they continued the previous collection practice of having each shows primary voice actress sing the closing song, but I certainly hope so; it was a very nice touch. Also this week, Gakuen Alice – Complete Collection has schoolgirl friends transferring to a school where explosions, superpowers, and axe-wielding teddy bears are all part of the daily events.
Some days you eat the Borg; some days the Borg eats you…
And possibly the best one ever done; thanks to Edgar Wright for the heads up on this one!
This is one of those rare weekends with multiple genre films being released together, starting with In Time. This story explores what might happen if the gene responsible for aging (telemerase is the enzyme that governs its expression, and therefore the switch) was turned off. Obviously, the world would be overpopulated pretty damn quick, so to keep everything in balance you have to pay with your days, weeks, and years to purchase anything. Pretty much the talking heads quote goes here, Same As It Ever Was. Now there is a temporal Robin Hood, and he could ruin everything for the folks in power by giving time away to the poor.
Also out this week, Anonymous, the tale of what happens when someone hands Shakespeare his plays and demands he perform them on stage. A historical epic fantasy, this one explores some possibilities a number of scholars would prefer you avoid.
On a completely different note, Sleeping Beauty is a romantic fantasy that goes back to the original story you remember, but only if you remember the adult version of it.
Finally, there are 2 rather strange movies this week, but still genre. Johnny English 2 tells us what would happen if James Bond were really Rowan Atkinson, and The Rum Diary returns Johnny Depp to the roll of renowned journalist Hunter S. Thompson. Either of these would be silly. Both of them together pushes us to the realm of the absurd.