Todd Miro has put together an absolutely brilliant article explaining quite a bit about how today’s movies ended up looking the way a lot of them do, and posted it at Into The Abyss. If you’re into making your own movies, particularly if you process them through a computer (and who doesn’t these days), there will be bonus material for you in this one.
All forms of audio/video/text storage
The countdown is on for the new Doctor Who; in the UK, it happens on BBC1 this Saturday, April 3rd, here in the US we will be a few weeks behind on April 17th on BBC America. For those in the US who can’t stand the wait, there will also be a Premiere Screening and Q&A Event in NYC on April 14th, with the questions being answered by Matt Smith, Karen Gillan and Steven Moffat. Remember, this is the season where Neil Gaiman Is Confirmed as an episode writer. So what, you may be wondering, makes this well-known information worth posting on April Fools Day, when it is obviously not a joke? This wonderful little article at SFX, called Tie-Fi, where they present A brief pictorial history of the bow tie in sci-fi. I couldn’t stop laughing, and yet it is so true! Grin if you got ’em…
I have been waiting quite a while for this one; the 800 pound gorilla in the movie theaters this weekend will be Clash of the Titans. A remake of the original 1981 Ray Harryhausen classic, the changes in technology between then and now promises good things for the movie going experience. I do have to say though that watching the Owl in the original on the big screen brought the kind of sense of wonder that is rare (and it also helped solidify an already strong life long addiction to robotics that I still haven’t outgrown).
In more limited release (NY and LA the first weekend, expanding out over the following several weeks) is the epic period piece The Warlords, in the tradition of Hero and the House of Flying Daggers. Staring Jet Li, it will be available on VOD (Video On Demand), Amazon, and X-Box Live on the 4th, so everyone will have access.
The main entry for this weeks list has to be Sherlock Holmes; with Robert Downey Jr. as Holmes, Jude Law as Watson, and Rachel McAdams as Irene Adler, this was the Steampunk treat of the holiday season. If you happen to pick up your copy on Blu-Ray and have a BD-Ready player online and a web browser connected to the internet (so you can ask questions), you can join the live event on April 1st and hear Downey answer your questions about the movie.
On the Anime front, Negima? Season 2 appears to be a bit different than season 1, which to my mind expands the range of the show. It still has all the magic, but not as many sneezes.
There is a new entry in the US-released Lupin the 3rd collection, Lupin the 3rd Episode 0: First Contact. It has been a while since the last new episode we have gotten, and the fact that it is Subbed rather than Dubbed indicates the new North American distributor may be an independent operation.
And then there are Strike Witches, an elite aerial combat team that blasts aliens out of the sky, wearing propeller boots and wielding weapons, but with one rather noticeable missing item.
Other releases worth noting include Neo Angelique: Abyss and Six Strange Tales of Liao Zhai 2. There are also a few Complete Collection releases that had previously released each season as a box set, like Aquarion, Kannon, and Otogi Zoshi.
If you are a fan of animation, one program you should try to catch every week is Digista, or in English the Digital Stadium. Each week they have a guest who is a professional in the digital arts field, usually but not always animation. That guest, referred to as the Curator, nominates four works by unknown new talent for the panel and the audience to review and judge. One piece each week is declared the winner and goes into the permanent collection of the Digital Stadium Hall of Fame. Once a year all the entrants to the stadium become part of the annual competition, at which the DIGISTA Awards are handed out.
This program is a wonderful showcase for new animation talent, giving them world wide exposure. You can watch each weeks program anywhere NHK World is available. If your local cable company does not carry them (mine does, if yours doesn’t start calling and writing them to tell them to add it, or you can get them off a satellite), you can watch the animations online from the hall of fame page. Other NHK programs I never miss are Imagine-Nation for the weekly Anime, Gaming, and Manga news and features, and J-Melo for news and performances from the Japan music scene. The animation that won this weeks Digital Stadium entry is called Confessions of Fumiko; enjoy.
There are two new genre selections to choose from this weekend. The first is Hot Tub Time Machine, which looks to be silly fun requiring no mental straining at all. The main sense of Deja Vu generated in this one just might be that we have seen these jokes before. If you are more in the mood for animated fun, How To Train Your Dragon could be just the ticket. It is built by the same team who did Shrek and Kung Fu Panda, so expect more of the same great humor and animation quality.
And there is a third choice: Waking Sleeping Beauty. I don’t normally recommend documentaries, but this one tells a behind-the-scenes story about the rebirth of the Disney animation studios that received a lot of attention on the Film Fest circuit.