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Something to Watch: DVD’s

In movies, Red Riding Hood pits the darling caped cutey against a werewolf, or perhaps the werewolf hunter is the true evil one? The Twilight director Catherine Hardwicke put this together, but did rather a better job of it than in that series of films, or perhaps just had better source material to work with. For alien invasion fans, Battle: Los Angeles is hitting the shelves. Legend of the Fist: The Return of Chen Zhen, is a martial arts movie about a wealthy playboy by day who becomes a masked crusader by night, fighting the Japanese occupation forces and Chinese mafia in 1920’s Shanghai. Staring Donnie Yen, playing the hero first portrayed by Bruce Lee in Fist of Fury, this one is tasty. And while it probably isn’t genre, Miente looks pretty interesting with a double handful of film festival awards and a killer soundtrack.

In TV, Haven: The Complete First Season is sort of what would happen if you merged Twin Peaks with Castle; each week there is a murder to be solved, but they died in some really weird, near supernatural way. Based on Stephen King’s novel The Colorado Kid, there is an overlying mystery to be solved about the town itself that makes these things happen there driving the story arc. There is some good dynamic tension between the FBI lady, the local cop with no sense of touch, and the bad-boy rouge type who might be one of the good guys.

There are two classic Doctor Who episodes being released this week. Doctor Who: Frontios is a Peter Davison era story with Tegan (Janet Fielding) and Turlough (Mark Strickson) as the companions. A group of human colonists who fled the destruction of the Earth are being used as spare parts for some underground aliens with gravity control technology and a mining operation. Time and The Rani is the first Sylvester McCoy episode, with Mel (Bonnie Langford) as the companion. The Rani has enslaved a planet and built a supercomputer by networking a bunch of really smart beings together, including Pasteur and Einstein from Earth, as the first step in her master plan.

There are a number of Best of the 80s packages involving a couple of disks with eight or ten of the best episodes from the show, usually including the pilot and series finale, coming out this week. I mention it because one of them is genre: Knight Rider, but I will not be adding any of these to my collection.

For western animation, Marvel Knights: Spider-Woman Agent Of S.W.O.R.D. was a 2009 TV series that now becomes available on disc. While I have been loving the live action films Marvel has been putting out, I have not been very impressed with the quality of the animations as a rule. Which is kind of strange when you consider how much I have been enjoying the animated comics productions, but there it is.

In Anime, Demon King Daimao – Complete Collection is the new series for the week; when he took his entry aptitude tests at the Constant Magical Academy, the results he heard were Future Occupation… Devil King. While trying to avoid that fate, he ran into more than the usual amount of girl trouble, some trying to help, others trying to hinder, but every one with their own agenda. In re-release in a cost effective package is the masterpiece Last Exile – The Complete Series Viridian Collection. One of the best steampunk anime’s ever made, one of the best aerial combat anime’s ever made, and one of the best anti-war anime’s ever made, it is hard to believe you can now pick the whole thing up for around 20 bucks. I think this one has to be on my top ten list of best anime’s of all time.

Watch Eden of the East online

Eden of the East is now available to watch on Netflix from beginning to end, and you can follow that up with part one of the King of Eden movie (run the movie AFTER season one of the series). The story is simple; a dozen people have been given cell phones with a huge bank account attached, and they will either be the first to save Japan, or they will die at the hands of the folks who set up the project. A few work towards that goal, a few use the money for their own fanatic purposes, and a few try to destroy the country and everyone in it in the hopes they can escape their fate by eliminating those who may come back to neutralize them. This is one of the more interesting stories I have seen in the last few years, so I figured I should mention it here, and both the animation and the character development make this worth a look.

Something to Watch: DVD’s

The Wild Hunt has been making the round of Film Festivals for a year or two picking up some awards in the process, had a limited theatrical run, and is finally coming out on disk this week. A LARP reenactment gamer group is deep into their dungeons and dragons when a jilted non-gamer comes looking for his ex-girlfriend to win her back. Things get ugly when the line between game and reality gets blurry. Winning the award for strangest movie of the week is Rubber, the story of a tire that comes to life and terrorizes the countryside. That works with a whole car and has in several previous movies, but a single tire just doesn’t weigh enough to harm anyone larger than a chihuahua.

While not really genre, I have to mention Burn Notice: Season Four, if only because they have that whole McGuiver technology thing going on, and their tech is dead on target. Plus I love the show, of course; The new season kicks off on June 23rd.

In western animation we get Green Lantern: Emerald Knights. The trailer looks interesting, they are going to give us some info on the origin of the Green Lantern Corp, and Nathan Fillion gets to play Hal Jordan. Obviously the timing on this never-before seen feature length animation is to tie in to the movie release in the theaters, and I’m in.

Moribito: Guardian of Spirit – Complete Collection is a difficult story, with a warrior woman who needs to save one more soul before she dies, and a prince who may be that soul trying to save his kingdom. Together they may be each others salvation.

Revolutionary Girl Utena – The Student Council Saga is the first of three box sets of remastered video with a newly created Dolby Digital 5.1 Japanese soundtrack of this classic series. Containing the first 12 episodes, it has a ton of additional improvements and upgrades; this is more of a special edition set than anything else. Which makes it kind of amazing that if you shop around you can pick it up for as little as $30, especially considering this is in limited production, with only a certain number of them being made.

Something to Watch: DVDs

For silly action fun we have Drive Angry, in which Nick Cage escapes from hell and goes on a road trip. There is one interesting classic collection being released as a box set this week: the Stanley Kubrick: Essential Collection. It has nine films, including genre favorites Dr. Strangelove, 2001: A Space Odyssey, A Clockwork Orange, and The Shining. Of course, you can pick up the individual programs for 7 to 9 dollars each, but if you don’t have any of them this could be a cost effective way to go, especially since the non-genre films have the same high quality.

There is a miniseries I absolutely had to mention, Phil Plait’s Bad Universe. Phil has been blogging for years under the heading Bad Astronomy, which he started to post corrections to the bad physics and astronomy he saw in the science fiction TV shows and movies he otherwise loved to watch. He was somewhat qualified for this, being an astronomer with ten years working on the Hubble Space Telescope, an astronomy educator, and on the side wrote some books on the topic as well. The Discovery Channel brought his blog on board and put the programs together, but you can still see the original Bad Astronomy here.

There are two good entries in the TV series category this time around, starting with season three of True Blood. This gives you plenty of time to catch up or review the season before season 4 kicks off on June 26th. Or you can re-watch all three seasons with HBO GO, which allows HBO subscribers to watch a vast library of their series and movies on your computer, ipad, ipod, or android phone or tablet any time you like (and anywhere you have a connection). The best bit is if you have HBO with your cable or dish service it just comes with it for no additional charge, yet another VAR (Value Added Resource) all the media services are adding to their arsenals to keep their subscribers happy. And did I mention, the George R.R. Martin series, Game of Thrones, has exclusive interactive features with every episode you can’t get from your TV set? Trust me, if you are paying for HBO anyways, you really want to add this functionality. Unless you have it already from your cable or satellite provider, since they are also in the category of media services madly implementing portable viewing with Apps and websites for no additional charge to make their product more appealing and keep you as a customer.

The other TV series is SG-U: Stargate Universe: The Complete Final Season, which is a bit sad when you realize the entire cast found out the show was cancelled when they received tweets about it. You can, of course, also watch episodes online.

There are likewise two Anime choices worth noting. Guin Saga – Part 2 continues the story for the final 13 episodes as the leopard-headed gladiator and his two young royal charges continue to unravel the mystery that has plunged their original land and this new sorcery-infested local into war. Mazinkaiser Skl is an old school mecha combat series OVA that was an offshoot of the Mazinger series. It has that whole Go Nagai 1970s early Saturday morning cartoon thing going for it, so I don’t expect to see it racking up any amazing sales records (it won’t be coming home with me, as an example). But it was a major entry into the evolution of the Giant Robo genre, and is worth watching just for its historic value.

Something to Watch: DVDs

The lead movie this time is definitely I Am Number Four, a fun little teenage alien romp from Michal Bay. Don’t be looking for compelling dialog or an intricate plot with this one, but it is a visual adrenalin ride that is quite enjoyable. Compare that to Death Hunter: Werewolves vs. Vampires, a movie apparently so bad that it doesn’t seem to have a web page even on IMDB, and it looks even better. Death Hunter might make a double feature with Gothic Lolita Psycho, a gore fest in a style unique to Japan, also being released this week.

The western animation offering this time around is Gnomeo and Juliet, the twisted classic Shakespeare tale as told by garden gnomes by way of the folks who did Shrek.

New anime this time around includes Shin Koihime Muso: Otome Tairan, a story about a girl who will turn into a cat without the proper antidote. While a team works on putting that antidote together, other things come to light indicating she may just be the first victim in an attack on the kingdom. I almost didn’t mention Queens Blade 2: Evil Eye Series Part 1, since I generally wait for box sets rather than individual volumes (it’s more cost effective, but the real reason is I want to watch an entire program in a back to back marathon). This release falls between the volume (at 4 episodes usually) and the season (usually 13 or 26 episodes, depending on the complexity of the story and the depth of the pockets financing the project). This Series Part 1 release has 6 episodes, breaking the smaller season in half or the larger one in quarters. There have been quite a few programs released in this way the last few years for the express purpose of charging you for 75% the total price of a season twice, but the manufacturers SRP of this one is the same as a volume while delivering 133% of the entertainment. Even if Season 2 ends up being 26 episodes long, I find this a good inducement to pick these up as they become available since they are not very expensive for the amount of anime you get, especially if you shop around.

This time around, Air Gear: Complete Box Set S.A.V.E. is getting re-released, giving you a cost effective option for this modern classic. High school combat on jet-powered wheels forms the conflict for this story, while the core is more about the Noyamano sisters and how they relate to each other and to our protagonist. Another classic re-release is Samurai Champloo: The Complete Series, where two antagonistic Samurai and one crazy waitress team up for a road trip they should have never started and might not survive. Finally, Soul Eater: The Meister Collection gives you the first 26 episodes in a single box set. In a lot of ways this is the Bleach wannabe series, but as usual you can watch a few episodes online before you plunk your money down. And did I mention that the story was excellent, and included a lot of fan service?

Something to Watch: DVDs

In Movies, the 2011 remake of The Mechanic is a stand out rebuild. The original 1972 film was quite edgy at the time, starring Charles Bronson as the elder hit man and Jan-Michael Vincent as the young apprentice out to learn how to kill. They added some twists for the remake, and the combined talent of Jason Statham, Donald Sutherland, and Ben Foster noticeably upleveled the game, even if Sutherland died too early in the movie (it was necessary to keep the plot rolling). Why am I mentioning this non-genre film? Because the original was such a cult classic that it became a genre unto itself as soon as it hit the screen.

The indie science fiction film I Heart Doomsday has won a ton of awards at film festivals all over the world, but if it went into theatrical release it slipped right past me. Perhaps there is a reason for that and I should check this one at Netflix. And that leaves us with another feature length film to consider: RiffTrax: LIVE! Reefer Madness. RiffTrax is the successor to MST3K, with a lot of the same people writing the gag lines. I just wish they would put the theater back on a space ship.

There is a western animated feature length film from Marvel this week: Thor: Tales of Asgard. Based on the graphic novel of the same name it covers earlier adventures of the same five Asgard characters we just saw in the movie the other week.

In TV, all the entries this time around are old, starting with The Feathered Serpent, a 12 episode 1976 series that starred Patrick Troughton as the evil Nasca and Diane Keen as the Empress Chimalma. The story takes place in Aztec Mexico (which surely explains all the British accents) where Troughton is a fanatical Aztec priest out to topple the peaceful Emperor in the name of his human-sacrifice demanding god. Just like his time as Doctor Who, Troughton was the star of a children’s program, but this time he didn’t get to be the good guy.

The Twilight Zone: Season 4 also comes out this week. This isn’t the kind of show I have to explain to anyone; if you don’t know what the Twilight Zone is you have either never owned a TV or just moved here from Mars.

The Bionic Woman: Season Two brings the second round of the classic series back to be watched again. This 1975 spin-off of the 6 Million Dollar Man did well in its own right as well as having a number of crossover episodes with the original series. I quite enjoyed the 2007 rebuild of the franchise, but since it was apparently just me and some folks hiding behind the bleachers, it did not take off.

New anime this week is Allison & Lillia – Part 1, a planet with a single continent that has been at war since forever, with the inhabitants of each side of the dividing mountain range constantly fighting. While this program airs on NHK in Japan, it doesn’t play on either of the NHK channels I get here, nor is it available to watch on Crunchyroll, so to see it legally I went to The Anime Network where I watched the first episode to get a feel for the series. This is a period piece anime, with its old fashioned mores, prop-driven planes, and vintage cars; it would have been the mid 1930s if it took place on Earth, warming up for WWII. While it doesn’t look like anything exceptional, I did find the first one entertaining, and I look forward to adding it to my collection if I can find it for a good price.

The classic anime being re-released this time around is Excel Saga: Complete Series. If I had to pick a category for this series, Psychotic Anime Parody would pretty much sum it up, with a side order of Hysterical. If they missed messing with any anime tropes, it slipped by me; they made fun of the majority of them I could think of. If you don’t already own this and you have even a vestigial sense of humor, this would be the one to go for.

Finally, there is a classic old-school re-release: Project A-Ko: Remastered Special Collector’s Edition brings new quality from a classic. Created in 1986, Project A-Ko could not be shown on American TV at that point with its violence, nudity, and interstellar diplomatic issues, but it still gained a cult following. I think IMDB said it best with their description: Project A-ko is the typical love triangle of three school girls and their confrontations with aliens, giant robots, and women who look like burly men. At exactly 25 words, that quote is a legitimate implementation of the Fair Use rules, and at $14 most places it could be worthwhile updating to the remastered version.