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Something to Watch: DVD’s

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.

Something to Watch: DVD’s

Bringing Psychic Warriors to the big screen for the first time, The Men Who Stare At Goats hits the shelves Tuesday. This amusing fictionalization has more truth in it than the government wants you to know about, or certainly any senate budgetary oversight committee.

From AMC, the 2009 miniseries remake of The Prisoner keeps some of the original referents and redevelops others from the ground up. I don’t think it quite lived up to the 17 episode 1967 series, but I am going to watch them both back-to-back before I decide for sure.

For the young female segment of the audience, The Twilight Saga: New Moon is also being released this week. The second film in this series, it is packed with more brooding stares than ever before.

For fans of a much more classic vampire tradition, Orlock the Vampire 3D becomes accessible to the general public. This 1922 silent masterpiece was originally titled Murnau’s Nosferatu, but it was believed all full length versions of it were destroyed. Keith Carter took this one surviving example and processed it for the complete 3D experience, and then Lloyd Kaufman of Troma does the whole introduction thing to round out the package. As a person who has actually paid cash money to sit in a movie theater on Halloween and listen to a live synthesizer player and percussionist create the audio accompaniment for the truncated version of the film, I can’t wait to add this one to my permanent collection.

There are a few quality western animation coming out this week, starting with The Fantastic Mr Fox. This twisted little movie is fairly true to the book it’s based on, and it has a great voice cast. Also, Toy Story and Toy Story 2 Blu-Ray Special Editions (2 disk sets) become available on Tuesday. If you want the standard definition (regular DVD) versions of these releases, you will have to wait until May 11th.

On the Anime front, Darker than Black is accessible, but from the reviews I have seen somewhat disappointing. I need to see it for myself before I can voice a real opinion. I can voice an opinion on Trinity Blood: The Complete Series: it is worth your time to watch. Yet another tale about humans and vampires, but taking a slightly different approach than you might expect. The Standard Edition was released back in December, this is the Blu Ray version. Finally, there is Nabari No Ou – The Complete Series Part 2. In this story line, Ninja’s beat on each other for the right to rule the world, but the primary character, Miharu Rokujou, just want’s to run his restaurant.

Something to Watch: DVD’s

There are some quality DVD’s coming out this week, and some much anticipated releases; but the two are not always the same. The one expected to pull the best numbers this time around is the perfect example of that: The Twilight Saga: New Moon sold tons of tickets to the prepubescent estrogen brigade, while generating noticeable amounts of negative reviews. Which attitude is the correct one depends on who you are, as always, but the saga will continue since the investment has been rewarded by the audience.

The other film that requires actual people to play the parts is Ninja Assassin distributed through Warner Brothers.

From the realm of TV we have the History Channel classic Clash of the Gods TV series. This is a bit different from most of the TV entries I post here, since it has some basis in reality. Some, but not a lot, thanks to the subject matter, so it gets a mention here.

The American animation of note is from Disney (what a surprise), with the title of the Princess and the Frog. Once again, they do a nice job on fitting the best music to the animation, and create a thoroughly enjoyable movie experience.

For imported animations, AstroBoy The Movie finally makes it to DVD, for those of us who missed it on the big screen. It has a serious history, starting in the 1930s or 1950s depending on which path you follow. It has also inspired every robot variant since then, many of which have been real-world builds.

While they don’t have any robots (yet), Genshiken 2 does have an interest in robots, and any other topic you might build a Manga, Anime, or Game out of. Even though it is called 2, this is actually the third series in the franchise. They took a break after the first series, and actually built the anime the characters in that series were watching, Kujibiki Unbalance.

And then there is Tayutama: Kiss On My Deity The Complete Collection. This one comes somewhere between Ah, My Goddes and Ah, My Buddha, and is a ton of fun. The final entry worth noting is Slayers Revolution, season 4 of the classic series. This season was built a decade after the others, reuniting the original cast and creating some closure (and delivering some new excitement).

Something to Watch: DVD’s

First, a bit of news that depresses the heck out of me: my main computer died. I developed some kind of hardware issue that locked it up to the point where I had to unplug it to turn it off, and nothing I have done since will turn it back on again, or even allow BIOS to run. I was in the middle of Second Life, which none of my other computers are powerful enough to support… my Avatar may be dancing there still. Nor can I watch anything on Streaming Netflix (or streaming anything else), I have lost all my iPhone apps, email is evaporated, and worst of all, all the blog entries I was building in advance are gone. I commit initial surgery to the box to try to get it back tomorrow and am already exploring replacement choices, but in the meantime bare with me if these entries are not up to my usual standard.

I am happy to report that Tremors the Complete Series is finally being released on disk. The four movies in the franchise have been available forever, but until now your only option for the TV series was to watch full episodes online. This quirky little TV show was politically incorrect and better for it, and I am looking forward to adding it to the permanent collection.

Justin Time is a direct-to-video release targeted at tweens that could be enjoyable for the right age group. At least I hope it is targeted at tweens. Another direct contender is the Second Best Science Fiction Movie Ever Made, for obvious reasons.

Of the American animations coming out this week, Planet 51 is a very fun film. It didn’t do well with the critics, mostly because we have all seen it before (except the other times humans were the ones living in the 1950s with serious paranoia), but it has quality 3D animation, first class voiceover work, and enough of a twist on the type to be worth your time.

On the Anime front, the total rebuild Evangelion 1.11 You Are (Not) Alone takes the first six episodes of the original series and retells them in feature film format. All of the classic Mecha goodness is here; if you don’t know NERV, this is a great place to start.

Another favorite Anime series, Your Under Arrest, has one more volume available in the US: You’re Under Arrest: Fast & Furious Collection 1. There has never been anything subtle about this series, and they are not starting now. And while a cop show might not be what you expected to hear about from a Sci-Fi site, like Tank Police this one has some serious science fiction aspects (although more like James Bond movies rather than the more obvious genre forms).

Then there is the classic GaoGaiGar for all the Giant Robo fans; it predates many of the series that helped create the modern concept of mechanized warcraft worshiped as gods, and had a formative effect on a lot of them.

I rarely post about documentaries here, but one worth mentioning is Hisashi Tenmyouya: Samurai Nouveau. It tells the story of a graphics designer turned full-tilt artist, and is part of the Viz New People Artist series of documentaries. To get an idea of just how well he can mix the traditional with the modern, visit his home page and see what he has done.

I would have to include Something unknown is doing we don’t know what, another documentary, for the fantasy they pursue if nothing else. And then include it again because there are very few films based on a quote by Sir Arthur Eddington, even if the movie has nothing to do with anything the world-class scientist was referring to. Remember, this was the man who said We used to think that if we knew one, we knew two, because one and one are two. We are finding that we must learn a great deal more about ‘and’. While he got a lot of things wrong, and some of his best quotes have been stolen by mystics and charlatans (not at all the same thing), his best work was explaining subtle differences in the nature of reality. For a physicist, there is no higher calling.

Things to Watch: DVDs

Two films mark this week as a major release date for the young and young at heart. Ponyo was supposed to have been on the shelves before Christmas, and then again in January, but each time they pushed the date back. Unfortunately I can’t read the official Studio Ghibli site, nor do I know which country it is telling us the DVD date is for. But Amazon seems to think it will come out Tuesday, so unless they pull another last-minute reschedule we may hopefully see it this time.

The award for best drama performance while wearing a rug-thick costume with built in animatronics goes to Where The Wild Things Are, the Spike Jonze implementation of the famous children’s book. This live-action film is designed for slightly older kids than the animated Ponyo, but both are wonderful stories that any adult can relate to.

Then there are two made-for-TV programs that you might think were for children, but they aren’t. The 1966 BBC program Alice in Wonderland was definitely built for adults, and even originally aired after 9PM. This masterpiece had such starts as Michael Redgrave, Peter Cook, Peter Sellers, and John Gielgud in it, and its release onto DVD is long overdue.

The other one goes by the shorter title Alice, and was on the Sci-Fi Channel in December. Also designed for adults from the same source material, this one stars Caterina Scorsone, Andrew Lee Potts, Matt Frewer, Tim Curry, Colm Meaney, Cathy Bates, and many others. I don’t think it is any great surprise both of these are hitting the shelves the same week that the Tim Burton/Johnny Depp version opens in Theaters. And that one also has some amazing actors, including Stephen Fry, Alan Rickman, Helena Bonham Carter, and Anne Hathaway; one would think this story draws almost as many quality actors as Hamlet, a tale everyone wants to be in at least once.

For fans of disaster movies, 2012 does its best to kill off the entire planet, and you can’t get much more disastrous than that while we are all stuck in a single gravity well. While this one feels a bit more like a thrill ride than a movie, it is fun.

Speaking of fun, do not miss Gentlemen Broncos; while more a story about a Sci-Fi author than science fiction itself, this one is downright funny.

For classic TV, this time around it is Doctor Who: Dalek War, two John Pertwee era stories. Frontier in Space is grand space-opera told on a tiny budget, and features not only the Daleks but is also the last time we saw Roger Delgado as The Master. Planet of the Daleks may look like a Hartnell story, but it does have some original Dalek background information, plus after the photo layout I just have to grin any time I see Jo Grant with a Dalek.

Besides the previously mentioned Ponyo, there are several other anime titles this week. The Yozakura Quartet don’t play instruments, but are a mixed-blood (demon and human) demon fighting team; this boxed set is the complete collection. Season three of ARIA The Origination is also out, and the 13 episodes are packaged up with the OVA for extra value.

Eureka Seven: Good Night Sleep Tight Young Lovers was a re-imaging of sorts; they took all the same characters from the same world but changed the core premise of Eureka herself. That change to the character’s origin completely changed the dynamic of the plot line. Which means, even if you own the original TV series, you haven’t seen this story yet.

Kurokami The Animation Part 1 show a run time in the product description of 200 minutes, which tells me it is only the first 8 episodes of this 24 episode series. Since that would make the combined total for all three DVD releases somewhere around $90, I think I will watch it on Crunchyroll first and decide if it is worth that much cash, or if I should wait for a less expensive “Complete Series” release.

And I think I finally understand why they delayed Ponyo; because also on Tuesday there will be Special Editions of three other Studio Gibli classics; Castle in the Sky, Kiki’s Delivery Service, and My Neighbor Totoro. If you are missing any of these, now is the perfect time to add them to your collection.

Something to Watch: DVDs

In live action domestic movies, The Box comes out Tuesday. I missed that one at the theaters, but I think I’m going to rent it to watch before I decide if it needs to be part of the permanent collection. The one I will be bringing home for sure is Cirque du Freak: The Vampire’s Assistant, since my collection needs more comedy. For the imported live action movie this week, Battle Girl: Living Dead in Tokyo Bay would be the perfect gift for that Troma fan on your list.

The top TV offering this week is the first 10 episodes (first half of season one) of Flash Forward, one of the few SF TV series currently running based on an actual science fiction book, written by Robert J. Sawyer. While the whole DVD Release Pattern for Season 1.0 and Season 2.0 seems mostly to be a scam to get you to pay more for fewer episodes (my local BestBuy charged $49.95 each for seasons One and Three of Battlestar Galactica, but 44.95 each for seasons 2.0, 2.5, 4.0, and 4.5, even though the full season 4 had almost the same number of episodes as season 3, as one example), this time they did it right. The Season 1.0 package has a coupon to get the Season 1: Complete release at $15 off when it comes out. Since it only costs $20 for 1.0, you are basically paying $5 to catch up on the first 10 episodes now, as we get ready to roll into season 1.5. I hope this works out for them, so we can see this distribution model used for other TV series going forward.

If you have an interest in the history of experimental animation as I do, you might find Celestial Navigations: The Short Films of Al Jarnow would be worth a look. Some of his work you have already seen in PBS presentations like Sesame Street, others will be new, and most will be interesting. Al Jarnow himself is into creating a lot of different kinds of art, check out his site when you get a chance.

There are several interesting Anime titles out this week, the most unusual of which may be the Maria-holic: Complete Collection. This starts off with several standard Anime tropes and gives each of them a twist, and then run the combined results full tilt; even when it gets more-than-normally weird, it stays fun and entertaining. And regardless what that review says, it really does come out this week.