Skip to main content

Something to Do: Movies and TV

A project with a reasonable budget hits the broadcast TV screens on January 9th: The Cape. This one looks like it will be a lot of fun, as you can probably tell by looking at the trailer. And it has Summer Glau in it, always a draw for me, and I think this time she even gets to play a normal human… sort of. Also, on the first BBC America kicks off season 4 of Primeval: Back from Extinction. This is their second attempt to turn the series in a whole new direction, and the tag line is in part a play on words both from the plot line (since two of the characters, Abby and Connor, return from the prehistoric to rejoin the rest of the cast) and the fact that they had been canceled at the end of season 3. With season four, they also bring Alexander Siddig to the party.

This months major hits have already hit the big screen, but you would think there would be one left for the final weekend. As it turns out, there is: No Sanctuary is the tale of a group of strangers pinned down in a church, trying to protect a girl with incredible powers from an army of the undead. I don’t hold out much hope or even interest in this one; you would probably do better to catch up with a movie you had previously missed this week.

Something to Watch: DVD’s

In the movie selection section we have Resident Evil: Afterlife; the theatrical version was in 3D, but very few DVDs have been released in that format so far (my local Best Buy just set up a display with 16 titles last week for the first time ever, even though they have been selling the TVs and DVD players for months and months). Which has to be kind of rough on the sales people who are depending on a commission for selling you an entertainment system that has very little actual entertainment you can play on it. Cable 3D offerings so far are one sports channel, and the Discovery Channel which also pioneered Hi-Def over a decade ago and currently has the largest HD title library of any cable channel.

The other movie worth noting this week is Legendary Assassin, about a female cop and a martial arts drifter she befriends. Shortly after they encounter one another, all hell breaks loose as the town starts to come apart around their ears. The final film I should mention is Chrome Angels: Cyborg Conquest, a cyborg sexploitation flic that appears to have an actual logical sci-fi plot line to it that leads to a fully realized conclusion, somewhat rare for the program category it exists within.

For live action TV this week, there is a mention that Dr. Who: The Complete Davros Collection will be re-released (originally issued in 2008) several places around the web, but the only site I could find that mentioned having disks in stock or coming anytime soon was in Australia, so that is probably just a rumor as near as I can tell.

Gintama – Collection 3 starts off this week’s set of new anime releases, with the continuing story of alien invasion and takeover in 17th century Japan. Disarming the samurai and turning the majority of the population into slave labor for their factories, while distracting them from their fate by introducing health care, graphic novels, and TV, is a ploy we have seen in this world as well. Sakata Gintoki, or Gin, is a vagrant samurai addicted to Shonen Jump and Anime, who is getting by with his odd-jobs company. Animation is good but not spectacular, audio bed is good, but the main draw here is the combination of historical events in our parallel universe (you may have noticed we didn’t get the alien invasion) with the make-you-think aspects of two radically different cultures colliding who were also not even close on technology levels.

Dragonaut: The Resonance- The Complete Series compiles the two previously released seasons into the entire package for the first time. The premise is that the Earth is about to be destroyed by an incoming asteroid, and the teams of Dragons and Dragon Riders are our best hope of survival. But as usual, it isn’t really that simple. Animation is excellent even if the character designers are of the Barbie School (not even close to anatomically reasonable for the female form), music is good, and the story is about the conflict between two totally different evolutionary tracts (with life forms from each side trying to determine if they can co-exist, and working together to survive). This one is surprisingly better than you were probably expecting.

There are several titles being re-released in more economical sets this week. Baccano! – The Complete Collection is one of the better animes released in the US this year (2007 and 2009 in Asia), about immortal mafia, monsters, and alchemists (and several other groups) who hunt each other down across history, with the main body of the tale taking place in the 1920s and 30s in and around NYC. Each episode gives you slivers of stories from various characters perspectives, leaving you to assemble the mosaic in your mind as each new piece of the puzzle is revealed. The animation is excellent, the incidental music does its job to perfection supporting the mood of each scene without pulling attention away from the action, while the primary music is spot on, and most of all, the story being told grabs your attention as it unfolds.

Finally, Ragnarok The Animation is a typical quest type fantasy, and all the usual suspects are involved. The only thing I can find to recommend about this one is the discounted price, although if you prefer this genre it may be worth checking out.

A Christmas Carol and Blackadder’s App; Season’s Greetings!

I hope the holidays find you happy and with loved ones. I wanted to remind everyone that Doctor Who: A Christmas Carol will actually air in the US on Christmas day, mere hours after it airs in the UK. BBC America made that promise about Torchwood for the last miniseries, but failed to follow through with it. Hopefully this time they will do better. I should also mention they will roll out season 4 of Primeval on New Years Day, so there are good things to look forward to on TV this holiday season. In addition, I also wanted to let you know that the new Blackadder Soundboard App By BBC Worldwide is now available to install on your iDevice. With a ton of the best Blackadder quotes, including some from Blackadder’s Christmas Carol and Blackadder Rides Again, this one is just in time for some holiday fun (and at 99 cents it is not overpriced).

Something to Do: Movies

The 800 pound gorilla in the theater for this weekend is Gulliver’s Travels, towering over the competition by orders of magnitude. The Jonathan Swift classic political satire gets remade as a TV show or a movie every three to ten years, with greater or lesser degrees of adherence to the core attitude of the original story. But this time around they have an amazing cast, which includes Jack Black, Emily Blunt, Amanda Peet, Billy Connolly, and Catherine Tate, to name just a few. And since they are bringing the same Special FX technology to the table they used for Night At The Museum, you know it is going to be visually amazing as well. So it just remains to be seen if they will faithfully deliver the scathing commentary on the nature of man when ensconced in the halls of power, or play it strictly for laughs and box office returns. Previous versions have been divided fairly evenly between the two approaches, but I have my hopes up for the former considering the attitudes of many of the actors.

According to IMDB, it is not the only film of interest being released this week; the documentary Trek Nation should also be coming out, with should being the operative word. They are apparently still seeking a distributor, per their home page. I hope they find one soon, or consider releasing Direct To Disk so we can have access to it.


Something to Watch: DVDs

In live action movies, Salt tops the list this week, in a twisted flic fully worthy of Philip K. Dick. I was a bit surprised when I first found out he didn’t write this one, as he has written so many like it. Also released for the younger crowd, Missy and the Maxinator is a live action kid-as-superhero film in which the teachers are out to take over the world.

There is only one live action TV entry this week, but it is an important one: Caprica: Season 1.5. This series was more like reading Sci-Fi than watching it, something you constantly had to think about and extrapolate from in order to understand. It dealt with some of the most important issues our current technology raises today, and did not sugar coat them or spoon feed the audience with a preprocessed answer. Unfortunately, most of the American audience wanted to be entertained, not educated, and the same non-Sci-Fi aware powers at the Sci-Fi Channel who brought you the WWE made sure to kill it without even letting all the episodes air. I am still waiting for an explanation of what mindless muscle boys beating on each other has to do with science fiction when it occurs outside of a Mad Max franchise.

For western animation this week we have the return of Futurama: Season 5, and I just want to say I am very glad that Comedy Central decided this program was worth financing for another round. If anything, this season was more outrageous than any previous, since they didn’t have to strictly follow broadcast television guidelines. I am hoping for many more seasons like this one.

The one new anime offering this week is the Bleach – Season 7 Uncut Box Set, Bringing us up to episodes 122 through 133 of this spirit world combat sequence. To put that in perspective episode 300 just aired on Crunchyroll and in Tokyo last week. That means there is a gap of years between what you can add to your collection here and what the actual current episode is. I am going to use this as a contrast and compare opportunity; If I watch the seventh season and follow it with the current season and do not feel like I am missing anything in between, that would be a good indication that the writing has gotten stale and the storyline is static. If I am missing some names of people and spirit realms but the action and structure of the two seasons are consistent with each other, that would indicate they settled on a formulaic structure and are only plugging in the villein du jour for the story arc and telling us the same tale over and over. If, on the other hand, it becomes obvious I am missing something fundamental in the relationships of the characters and the nature of the struggle they are involved in, that tells me they continue to evolve the underlying concepts and personalities, and perhaps this series could be worth continuing to follow and support. One thing is undeniable whatever the verdict; this anime has had some of the best J-Rock music of any series, and I will post on that soon.

The other anime release this week is a re-release in a cost effective package; Tenchi Muyo! GXP- The Complete Series [Viridian Collection], which will run you less than $30 for all 26 episode. This is one of a fistful of Tenchi series (and Tenchi isn’t even the main protagonist in this one, but all the other details are there), and for the most part they involve our hero being an unlucky klutz who gets dragged into serving on the galactic police by mistake, usually as bait in a trap. Except for the series of time-travel movies in which he was an unlucky klutz, or the sequence of Magical Girl tales in which he was an unlucky klutz, or the… you get the idea. The other detail which is always true is there are four (sometimes 5) girls doing the Romantic Interest part, and one of them is always a galactic police officer, and one is always the dread pirate Ryoko. If you are looking for something profound and beautiful, look elsewhere; this one is just silly fun, but it is very GOOD silly fun.

GANTZ live action

They have made a live action version of GANTZ, which all by itself is amazing news. It is going to play in a limited number of theaters in the US for one night only as part of its world premier on January 20th, 2011, as yet another Fathom Events Original. And yes, if you click on that last link and enter your zip code, you will get to see just how close to you this show will be, and grab tickets if you are so inclined.

If you haven’t read the manga or watched the anime, the basic premise is simple. An alien sphere with a cybernetically integrated dead body manifests in a vacant apartment in Tokyo, and begins gathering other dead people. It does not communicate verbally or even directly with them, but makes a small handful of rules known to them by physical example. The quicker a given person picks up on the rules and figures out how to abide by/exploit them, the higher the odds get that they might survive the current situation, even though a prerequisite to being chosen was being dead.

It uses a Trek-like beaming technology to grab them a split second before they actually die, and makes it known that if they complete a certain number of missions for it, they will be released unharmed and alive. If they fail, they will be beamed back to a fraction of a second before the moment of their death to suffer their original fate.

If they are damaged, no matter how seriously, during the mission, but are still alive when beamed back to the apartment, the beaming process will rebuild them whole and well, by integrating the recording of their physical bodies it stored of their molecular state when it first appropriated them, but with their updated current memory gestalt. If they die before being beamed back, they have died the final death.

While they are on their missions for the sphere, no one in the normal physical world will be able to perceive them on any level, although their mission targets will have no problem observing them. Which makes it a bit difficult to get help from your friends and family to escape, or even flag down a passing police car, but makes it very simple for your targets to target you in return.

And the final detail; your mission is to kill your targets, with no way of knowing if they are monsters worthy of death, out to kill off humanity, or victims the sphere has decided would be amusing to watch die. Each and every mission, the clock is ticking; how will you choose this time?