The new animated silliness of Hotel Transylvania finally has a trailer I can actually post, not to mention an official web site now. This one looks like fun, and will be out some time in September.
It is finally time to go see Pirates! Band Of Misfits in all its silly animated glory, and I am ready! If you are in the mood for something a bit more serious, John Cusack plays Edgar Allen Poe working with a Baltimore detective trying to catch the killer reenacting all of Poe’s most horrible scenes in The Raven. Right now the link to the film’s web page takes you to IMDB instead, I think their DNS entry is hosed. If you are in an area that gets limited release films, Warriors of the Rainbow: Seediq Bale tells the true story of the aboriginal Seediq tribes who rebelled and almost drove the conquering Japanese army off the island in 1930s Taiwan. Quite a range to choose from this week.
If you are a Studio Ghibli fan, and love movies like My Neighbor Totoro, Howls Moving Castle, or Spirited Away, and you happen to live in the central East Coast portion of the US, the AFI Silver Theater is presenting Castles in the Sky: Miyazaki, Takahata and the Masters of Studio Ghibli. These masterpieces of animation equal or exceed anything done by the classic Disney studios and have won critical acclaim all over the world. The American Film Institute Silver Theaters in Silver Spring, MD, is not alone in this presentation. The co-presenters are the Freer Gallery of Art, the National Gallery of Art, and the Japanese Information Center, a department of the Japanese Embassy. I already own almost all of these on DVD (one has yet to be released in the US), but I have never before seen the ones in this program on the big screen. After this past weekend, I can tell you they are amazing to see in a real theater, and if you have the chance to go there are plenty of wonderful films yet to be presented.
There are no wide releases of note this week, but if you are near a theater that gets limited release films, My Way is the most interesting film out there, and the sad part is it is based on a true story. Two high school rivals, one Korean and one Japanese, become enemies and end up fighting together in most of the major theaters of WWII, and eventually have no one to depend on except each other. They start out fighting for the Japanese in China, one an officer and the other a conscript, where they are captured and forced to fight for the Chinese on the Russian front. Soon they are captured by the Russians, who in turn place them on their western front to fight the Nazi’s. In turn, they are captured by the Nazi’s, who put their new cannon fodder along the entrenched installations in Normandy, to fight the invading Allies. Originally titled D-Day, this is a Korean film which has won some awards around the world and done some serious box office in Asia.
The movie Looper is a movie about a bounty hunter in the present who gets paid to kill time travelers arriving from the future. And one day, the guy who arrives is an older version of him, and all sorts of hell breaks loose. They do have a nice tag line: Hunted By Your Past, Haunted By Your Future. Bruce Willis is the older-me time traveler, this one will be hitting the big screen on September 28th.
Lockout hits the big screens this weekend. Written and directed by Luc Besson, who obviously loved Escape From New York, since this is pretty much the same story except it takes place in an orbital prison. This one looks like good mindless fun from the guy who brought us things like The Fifth Element and Angel-A.