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Something to do: Movies

This weekend has three films coming out, two of them pretty much everywhere. They kick off on the 14th, with The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, a film by the National Treasure franchise team. It takes a stab at reproducing that magic with real magic as part of the premise, and yes, that team includes Nick Cage. This is particularly anticipated because it is not a remake of another film, which seems a bit rare these days.

Two more films roll out on the 16th, with Inception in wide release, telling an original tale of dream theft and the thought police that I have been waiting about a year to see. With an all star cast and deep pockets production money, as well as a concept that has NOT been done to death by Hollywood copycat studios, this makes the second original work in a single weekend. While I am looking forwards to Sorcerer’s Apprentice as a feel-good film, Inception bodes well to becoming a movie with a permanent impact on the genre. I have already started to consider the best films to group it with for a marathon of twisted flicks, with Dark City and Blade Runner leading the pack.

The other film on the 16th is in limited release, The Wild Hunt, originally scheduled for release in May. A man looses his girlfriend to a bunch of guys in a medieval re-enactment game, but it isn’t a game to everyone. In fact, some get downright intense about how they wish to proceed.

New Resident Trailer

The new Resident Evil trailer is out, and looks quite good. I am not a horror movie fan, or a fan of movies based on games, but the Resident franchise is done very well, and looks more like an Aliens-style action adventure to me. The Elvis on Black Velvet speed painting video may not be genre, but William Gibson sent out the link, and it was too much fun sad to share.

Something to Do: Movies

There are a number of tasty films coming out in July, with two good ones this weekend. Despicable Me is the feature length animation to see. The villain played by Steve Carrol is out to steal the moon, but three little girls may just end up reforming him. I got an extra grin out of the fact that the villain’s name is Gru; how many here have played that game? If action/adventure is more to your taste, Predators also hits the big screen on Friday. In this next installment on the franchise, a handful of the worlds best killers have been kidnapped to another planet to be prey in a hunt. I am thinking I may have to see both of these.

The following weekend has three films coming out, two of them pretty much everywhere. On the 14th, The Sorcerer’s Apprentice by the National Treasure franchise team takes a stab at reproducing that magic with real magic as part of the premise, and yes, that team includes Nick Cage. Two more on the 16th, with Inception in wide release, telling an original tale of dream theft and the thought police that I have been waiting about a year to see. The other film on the 16th is in limited release, The Wild Hunt, originally scheduled for release in May. A man looses his girlfriend to a bunch of guys in a medieval re-enactment game, but it isn’t a game to everyone.

Two more films the week after that, where Valhalla Rising follows a viking with supernatural strength to a mysterious and violent place. There is some discrepancy between various sources on whether Rising will be released the 16th or the 23rd, but it will be both in theaters and on Video On Demand, so it should be accessable to just about everyone. I might not have included Salt as a genre film, except it is vary obviously every Philip K. Dick book ever written, even if he didn’t write this one, so how could I leave it out?

Harry Trailer

The new Harry Potter trailer is just a bit dark, and the last book is broken into two different films, but it still looks like fun to me. So even though we all saw it this weekend in the Theater, here it is again.

In the land of Authors, I have to endorse this review of Ken MacLeod’s Restoration Game, and encourage anyone who hasn’t read MacLeod to get off their ass and buy and read a copy of everything he has ever written. He comes at the world from directions most of us cannot imagine. I would also like to recommend this weeks favorite Steampunk Romance author, Gail Carriger, who managed to create a wonderful milieu and the characters to populate it. If you can’t afford to buy them, hit your local library and read Soulless, Changeless, and Blameless, and see how the stories and series began.

Something to Do: Movies

While I have never been a fan of M. Daze Shamarama, finding all of his previous works yawnworthy, the trailer for the live action version of The Last Airbender looks really good. I also enjoyed the award winning animation series it is based on, Avatar: The Last Airbender. And yes, I do watch select programs on Nickelodeon, and the Cartoon Network as well; I don’t want my inner child to evaporate from lack of sustenance. So I will be parked in front of a 3D big screen this weekend (doesn’t that trailer just scream 3D?) in the belief that they didn’t use up all of the interesting footage just to entice me to buy that ticket. If it really is as good as the trailer indicates it might be, I will even start identifying the director by his actual name, since he may have finally made a movie that doesn’t put me to sleep.

Green Hornet trailer

When the original Green Hornet TV series used to air, in Japan and China it was rebroadcast under the title The Kato Show, because as far as everyone in Asia was concerned, Bruce Lee was the star of the program. Looking at the trailer for the new Green Hornet Movie it looks like they might be going down that same road again, with Jay Chou as Kato this time. Jay has made a number of excellent films in Hong Kong (including the frustrating Curse of the Golden Flower, where the only character left alive by the end of the film was the one guy you wanted to see dead from the beginning), but I believe this may be his first venture in an American move.