Monty Python as filmed by Michael Bay is the best way I know to describe this video edit. It underscores the difference between films from two completely different decades, and the changes in film making between those times. It also says a lot about how a good editor can make a trailer say anything they want it to, no matter what the original source material has as its actual content. Seeing this and knowing the movie this came from, I begin to understand how I got suckered in to a few films that wasted both my time and money. So if you decided to make your own trailer for one of your favorite films, what would it look like?
The world just can’t seem to have enough Gundam, and the next series to launch is GunPla Builder, a tribute to all who build and fight the Gundam Plastic Model class of Bots. It is coming to TV Tokyo this October. Thanks to Danny Choo for the heads up on this one.
This week brings an amusing animation, Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2. Evolution has definitely happened in their absence, and there are all kinds of food animals to brave on their way to saving the world.
If the only release I mentioned this week was Iron Man 3, it would be sufficient. It truly gave that particular subset of the Marvel franchise a beginning, a middle, and an end, making each of the previous offerings fulfill a part of the overall story arc, when they appeared to just be stand alone films when they were first made available. The TV series Doctor Who: The Complete Seventh Series is also being released, but it came out in Part 1 and Part 2 sets a while ago; this is just more cost effective packaging.
In Anime, Is This a Zombie: The Complete 2nd Season brings Ayumu’s problems to the forefront. He was murdered by a serial killer and resurrected by a cute Necromancer who refuses to talk with him. Then a magical girl with a deadly pink chainsaw and a vampire ninja each decided he was worth doing. Between his harem of mystical misfits and his decaying body, Ayumu could end up even deader before he solves the mystery of his own death! The other new anime is Rio: Rainbow Gate!, about the woman on her way to becoming the Most Valuable Casino Dealer in the world. She is Luck Incarnate, but she has a serious set of challenges in front of her. The once noble Queen Claudette has devolved into a tyrant with the support of the court and the church, and a new generation of women warriors are banding together to oust her from power in Queen’s Blade: Rebellion. Like many other programs, you can watch it on Crunchyroll.
There are a few classic anime series being re-released this week as well, including GTO: Great Teacher Onizuka is in a complete series box set, as is Blue Submarine No. 6. The 2004 live action feature film Casshern is an alternate history tale of genetic engineering in the hands of a multinational conglomerate who uses it to create mutants bent on the destruction of humanity, and the hero who emerges to save us all. Dreamworks is putting it back on US shelves for the first time in years, if you missed this when it initially came out now is your chance to catch it. It is based on the 1973 anime Robot Hunter Casshern, in that series it was androids rather than mutants putting humanity at risk.
Silly and offensive… but that actually describes a lot of my favorite movies. Check out the trailer for Ghost Team 1, and see if it doesn’t give you a giggle. They definitely have a new twist to the found-footage mocumentary.
The new Fox program Almost Human kicks off on November 4th. It looks very much like a remake of >Total Recall: 2070, which was itself an amalgam of a number of Philip K. Dick’s more paranoid police state stories and the Isaac Asimov series of R. Daneel Olivaw/Elijah Bailey mysteries. Robot Daneel and his human partner Elijah were cops who were very good at solving locked room murders, although the “room” was generally a sealed habitat either in orbit or on a planet.