What would the world have had to been like for Pablo Picasso to have been considered a realist, rather than an abstract painter? This little animation gives you part of the answer to that question.
We already knew that Japan was not the only source of world class Anime; both Korea and China have major studios that have been cranking out some quality animation, with the three of them often working together, and with the US, to create the finished product. This wonderful little ultra-short story (8 minutes and change) isn’t from a mainstream studio, but seems to be a small team trying to break past the limitations of their animation shop into real production. Considering how good the Doctor Who Fan Built Anime was, all I can do is cheer this group on as well, since they have already exceeded the other. Did I mention that this video impressed me? Way to go, WolfSomke, and thanks to Escapist for the heads up on this one.
If you have seen any of my previous posts on the subject you know I have been looking forward to Green Lantern for a while now. The wait is finally over, and I will be in my local theater on Friday.
In movies, Red Riding Hood pits the darling caped cutey against a werewolf, or perhaps the werewolf hunter is the true evil one? The Twilight director Catherine Hardwicke put this together, but did rather a better job of it than in that series of films, or perhaps just had better source material to work with. For alien invasion fans, Battle: Los Angeles is hitting the shelves. Legend of the Fist: The Return of Chen Zhen, is a martial arts movie about a wealthy playboy by day who becomes a masked crusader by night, fighting the Japanese occupation forces and Chinese mafia in 1920’s Shanghai. Staring Donnie Yen, playing the hero first portrayed by Bruce Lee in Fist of Fury, this one is tasty. And while it probably isn’t genre, Miente looks pretty interesting with a double handful of film festival awards and a killer soundtrack.
In TV, Haven: The Complete First Season is sort of what would happen if you merged Twin Peaks with Castle; each week there is a murder to be solved, but they died in some really weird, near supernatural way. Based on Stephen King’s novel The Colorado Kid, there is an overlying mystery to be solved about the town itself that makes these things happen there driving the story arc. There is some good dynamic tension between the FBI lady, the local cop with no sense of touch, and the bad-boy rouge type who might be one of the good guys.
There are two classic Doctor Who episodes being released this week. Doctor Who: Frontios is a Peter Davison era story with Tegan (Janet Fielding) and Turlough (Mark Strickson) as the companions. A group of human colonists who fled the destruction of the Earth are being used as spare parts for some underground aliens with gravity control technology and a mining operation. Time and The Rani is the first Sylvester McCoy episode, with Mel (Bonnie Langford) as the companion. The Rani has enslaved a planet and built a supercomputer by networking a bunch of really smart beings together, including Pasteur and Einstein from Earth, as the first step in her master plan.
There are a number of Best of the 80s packages involving a couple of disks with eight or ten of the best episodes from the show, usually including the pilot and series finale, coming out this week. I mention it because one of them is genre: Knight Rider, but I will not be adding any of these to my collection.
For western animation, Marvel Knights: Spider-Woman Agent Of S.W.O.R.D. was a 2009 TV series that now becomes available on disc. While I have been loving the live action films Marvel has been putting out, I have not been very impressed with the quality of the animations as a rule. Which is kind of strange when you consider how much I have been enjoying the animated comics productions, but there it is.
In Anime, Demon King Daimao – Complete Collection is the new series for the week; when he took his entry aptitude tests at the Constant Magical Academy, the results he heard were Future Occupation… Devil King. While trying to avoid that fate, he ran into more than the usual amount of girl trouble, some trying to help, others trying to hinder, but every one with their own agenda. In re-release in a cost effective package is the masterpiece Last Exile – The Complete Series Viridian Collection. One of the best steampunk anime’s ever made, one of the best aerial combat anime’s ever made, and one of the best anti-war anime’s ever made, it is hard to believe you can now pick the whole thing up for around 20 bucks. I think this one has to be on my top ten list of best anime’s of all time.
Eden of the East is now available to watch on Netflix from beginning to end, and you can follow that up with part one of the King of Eden movie (run the movie AFTER season one of the series). The story is simple; a dozen people have been given cell phones with a huge bank account attached, and they will either be the first to save Japan, or they will die at the hands of the folks who set up the project. A few work towards that goal, a few use the money for their own fanatic purposes, and a few try to destroy the country and everyone in it in the hopes they can escape their fate by eliminating those who may come back to neutralize them. This is one of the more interesting stories I have seen in the last few years, so I figured I should mention it here, and both the animation and the character development make this worth a look.
According to SFX, this is the first 3 minutes of the first episode of season 4 of True Blood. If Tinkerbell held orgies, they might look a bit like this at the front entrance. Notice the familiar face in the last minute of the footage who will be playing her dead grandfather this season, and the timescales of fairyland compared to mortal realms implied by their conversation.