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Something to Watch: DVDs

In movies, the one this week that tells a story worth watching is not genre; Norwegian Wood is an amazing wake-up call straight to the heart, based on the 1987 novel by Haruki Murakami. I can think of a very few movies from the 1960s and 70s that had a touch of this same spirit, like Harold and Maude, King of Hearts, and Butterflies are Free. But the story this one tells is unique, and deserves a place in your awareness. The book has been translated into at least 33 languages so far, the director was nominated for an Academy Award, and the film has won awards at Venice, Toronto, and Dubai.

In genre, Chronicle is the tale of teens with superpowers who fall into the trap you would expect of anyone thinking with their hormones instead of their brains. Descendents tells the story of a virus that turns people into zombies. I don’t see anything here we haven’t already seen done to death many times over, so I will be passing on adding these to the collection. The other title available this time is Dirty Blondes from Beyond, which may at least be silly and sexy, but again shows no promise of anything actually new and interesting.

There is a TV classic becoming available for the very first time: Ghost Story: The Complete Series was William Castle’s attempt to follow his role model Alfred Hitchcock into TV. It only lasted one season, but the actors involved included Sebastian Cabot, Jason Robards, Helen Hayes, Jodie Foster, Angie Dickinson, Geraldine Page, Martin Sheen, Stella Stevens, Karen Black, Rip Torn, Mariette Hartley, and many more. Just as impressive, the writers included Richard Matheson, D.C. Fontana, Robert Bloch and Harlan Ellison. I approve of the fact that this series is being released in a MOD (manufacture on demand ) production model, meaning they don’t burn the disk until you order it. While it may not work in every player or computer (you have to be able to do DVD-R disc format, which most but not all do), it is wonderful to see any RIAA/MPAA organization facing the inevitable and embracing the decades-old changes in the media distribution system. The fact that it also means there is no waste, no warehouse full of discs no one ordered, no pile of money spent on things they can not sell, no resources turned into a finished product that might end up gracing landfills, is nothing but bonus points all the way as far as I can see. Of course, the flip side of that probably means you will be hard pressed to find it on sale anywhere, since there will be no overstocked stores looking to dump it cheap to minimize their loss; but such is the nature of change.

The other TV programs of note this week are much less fictional, but just as entertaining. Mythbusters: Buster’s Biggest Crashes is silly fun for the science/adventure geek from beginning to end, and I probably need to pick up a Buster T-Shirt by now. The Universe: The Complete Season Six is another wonderful History Channel production telling you more about the world you live in, with some high quality simulations to give you visual examples of the various processes driving the stars and galaxies. And the Smithsonian Channel: Air & Space Collection is a DVD version of their online website which I for one want in my permanent collection. If you have any doubts, go to each web site and play the videos; these ARE the Droids you’re looking for!

In Anime, The Book of Bantorra – Collection 1 is about a world where when you die, your soul becomes a book, with all of your secrets there to be read by anyone. It is the job of the Armed Librarians to keep those books out of the hands of evildoers, and they definitely have their work cut out for them. Also new this week, Cat Planet Cuties: Complete Series has sexy alien cat-girl Eris setting up her planet’s embassy in Kio’s house, with various secret agencies and enemy dog-aliens all circling round, looking for an opening. I watched this when it streamed from Japan on Crunchyroll last year and it was silly fun all the way, but see if the dog’s laugh doesn’t remind you of another famous cartoon canine.

Finally, D.Gray-man – The Complete Second Season has been released in a S.A.V.E. edition, so you can now pick up all 26 episodes for around $20 or less.

Fish Story: a review

I wanted to mention a movie you may have overlooked, a quirky combination of science fiction, punk rock, generational legacies, and living your life with true heart. Fish Story is all of that and more, a wonderful visual outing from Japan that is difficult to describe but surprisingly enjoyable. And yes, this is one of those movies that will have you cheering at the end (OK, I might have even jumped up and down a few times while cheering). I don’t know if it ever got any screen time in a movie theater in North America, but it has been released on DVD, so you can pick it up at places like Amazon, or watch it streaming online at places like Netflix. There are other things out there with the same title, so you are looking for the 2009 release from Japan.

New Spiderman Trailer

It will be a few months yet before the Amazing Spiderman reboot comes out, but a third trailer has now been released. I really liked what they did when they rebooted X-Men, because it took you right back to the core of the question facing each of our characters. It made each one a bit more human, showing what went into turning them in to the person they became, so even when you disagreed with their decisions you understood why they made the ones they did. I can only hope they do half as good a job with this one.

Something to Watch: DVDs

Underworld: Awakening is the movie out this week, and while it is the fourth from that franchise it is far from the best of the bunch according to the reviews I have read.

Much more promising, Chuck: The Complete Fifth and Final Season was a great send off for a wonderful show. If you haven’t added anything from this series to your collection yet, they are also coming out with Chuck: The Complete Series this week. The other TV release is The Twilight Zone: More Fan Favorites, another collection of 20 great episodes from the original series.

In Anime, Occult Academy: The Complete Series is a real gem, involving a school researching the paranormal which has a time traveler arrive from the future to try to stop invading aliens from destroying the world, an event which is in his personal past. It includes one of the best examples of character growth I have seen in an Anime, in part I suspect because the character started out as a complete asshole, and had no interest in improving himself; he evolved almost against his will. I watched this every week an hour after it aired in Tokyo on Crunchyroll streaming, which is unusual for me. Normally I will catch up with whatever Japanese and Korean shows I am watching that season over the weekend, but I just could not wait to find out what happened next on that show.

Also new this week, Queen’s Blade 2: The Evil Eye is the conclusion of the battle to become Queen, with the survivors of the previous rounds squaring off against one another. Besides containing episodes 1 through 12 of the second season, it includes episodes 7 through 12 of the OVA series (the first 6 OVA episodes were on the season 1 collection). If this was a live action series, I might make a comment here on how they saved production costs by reducing the wardrobe department to a single employee, who was only given enough of a budget to buy one square yard of cloth, from which everyone’s outfits had to be made. Since this is an animated program, they didn’t even have budgeting problems to use as an excuse for the skimpy outfits, although I suspect no male fans of the series will complain.

The remaining entries are not completely new, but are worth noting. Guin Saga: The Complete Collection, is in a more cost effective package than the two individual season box sets previously released.

Finally, Kanokon: The Girl Who Cried Fox includes both the series and the shorter OVA series (only 4 15 minute long episodes) in a single box set. I find this last kind of annoying since they released the first DVD volume of the series, but never the second and third; if you had the first one, you had to re-buy it again as part of the Complete Collection when that came out. Then they released the OVA series, totaling 60 minutes of video, for the same price as if it was an entire season of full episodes. Now that they have combined the two, it is for the same price as the original complete collection, which means if you already own the complete collection you are again paying for a full season series to get a single hour of new video. I can only recommend this for folks who have never bought any part of the previously released DVDs. And maybe not then, not because they are not fun Anime to watch and enjoy, but simply because they have ticked me off by releasing this in a haphazard manner designed to squeeze maximum bucks for minimum footage out of any potential customers. As a potential customer in a brutal economy, this does not endear them to my heart, and I will not be buying it myself. Media Blasters generally is quite good with its releases and has a lot of great titles. I am not sure what happened this time, but I hope it is not the start of a trend.