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Something to Watch: DVDs

The movie choice for the week for me is Gantz, the live action variant of the Manga and Anime favorite. While some of the reviews I have read complain about it’s pacing, I really don’t care, I just want it for my collection. And if it bothers me enough, like anybody else I could always re-edit it to exclude the boring bits. Anyways, this is just the first in the set; Gantz 2 will be out soon, so I will reserve judgement until I see how the entire work fits together. Red Faction: Origins is the only movie of interest out this week in English, giving some serious detailed background to the game environment that spawned this film. From Thailand, Panna Rittikrai’s latest offering BKO: Bangkok Knockout is also out this week, continuing the work he did in Ong Bak and Chocolate.

Police, Adjective is not genre but rather crime comedy from Romania’s Corneliu Porumboiu that has won awards from all over the globe, and Norwegian Ninja is action comedy based on Norway’s major government scandal of 1984 (pick up some great wallpapers from the flic here). I pretty much had to mention these two, since they are each different in their own way from anything else you might have seen.

Notice how I went out of my way to avoid mentioning A Big Box of Zombies, with 8 zombie movies that were made from 1936 to 1971. While it is important to study your enemies to be ready to defend yourself come the Zombie Apocalypse, I really don’t think that this collection is the optimal way to do that. But it is fun. *grin*

TV this week is the latest version of a classic: Nikita: The Complete First Season. The successor to 1990’s La Femme Nikita movie and the subsequent TV series that ran from 1997 through 2001, this new spin on the story is a whole lot of fun.

In Anime, Neo Angelique Abyss: The Complete Collection tells of life on Arcadia, where evil demons battle the small number of Purifiers set against them. The humans are not doing very well, but Angelique may hold the secret that will allow them to survive. Ikki Tousen: Great Guardians Part 1 was supposed to be released this week as well, with Part 2 coming in October, but Media Blasters has announced that they have evaluated the market and decided to do a single box set release of the entire series, but that will not be available until March of next year. Great Guardians is the third season to become available in the US, although there is now a 4th season in Japan and they are working on a fifth.

Something to Watch: DVDs

From Norway we have Troll Hunter, a fantasy adventure done in the venerable Blair Witches style of pseudo-reality film style (think no budget, shoddy film gear, and total lack of skill sets). Three collage students take a cheap film camera and follow a hunter into the wilderness, eventually figuring out that he was hunting creatures the government claimed were bears, but which turned out to be much less of this world. Also out this week, Assassin’s Creed: Lineage is a compilation of three short films that together make up a prequel to Assassin’s Creed II, bridging the gap between movie and game.

For TV, the primary selection this week is The Event: The Complete Series. I haven’t actually seen any of this shows episodes, because the premise and trailers struck me as somebody trying too hard to jump on the Lost bandwagon, which was kind of silly considering Lost was terminally past tense long before then. Much more interesting is the Live From Tokyo documentary about the city in Japan that has 1,000 bands playing each and every night.

Live From Tokyo Trailer from Lewis Rapkin on Vimeo.

In western animation, I have to vote for the New Adventures of Captain Amazing-Lad, pretty much a parody of any other superhero cartoon going. In eastern animation this weeks winner has to be Samurai Girls, which takes place in an alternate timeline where twenty first century Japan is still ruled by the Tokugawa Shogunate. The entire series may only be 12 episodes long, but they cover a lot of cultural and social upheavals in that time. Also out this week, the new Eden of the East: Paradise Lost brings us the next feature film in the exciting series. It would have gotten my top spot vote if it had been a season instead of a movie.

New Babylon 5, Bladerunner

The folks over at Deadline are reporting that Ridley Scott is signed on to helm a new rendition of Bladerunner. The classic Philip K. Dick story explores one of his favorite themes, what does it mean to be human and how can you tell if someone is? Details are few and far between yet, such as will this be a prequel or a sequel, but I really don’t care. As a person who already bought every different edit and version of the original movie, I will definitely be in the theater for that one. Meanwhile, Trekweb reports that Walter Koenig has been talking about J. Michael Straczynski getting his hands back onto the rights for Babylon 5 and rolling out a new feature film for the franchise. That is another universe I have never gotten tired of, and I look forward to returning to it as well.