In the theaters this weekend the best new film looks to be Robin Hood, the gazillionth time someone has converted the story to a video format. With folks like Russell Crowe, Cate Blanchett and Ridley Scott involved, this version might just be something special.
If you are anywhere near Oregon, you might want to make some time to see Wild Space A Go Go, a rather silly sounding retro 60s multidimensional outer space musical comedy and sex farce. While not actually a movie what with the live human beings on the stage and all, it certainly sounds like a lot of fun.
For those with a leaning to fantasy based thrillers, there are a few good movies this week. Legion tells the story of one heavily armed angel out to save the life of a single human being, doing battle against the hoards of evil. While Daybreakers tells the story of R&D time traveling Vampires out to save the human race as a whole. With an all star cast and a soundtrack that includes compositions by Kate Bush, Daybreakers is the one I am bringing home this week before the others.
In the imported live action movie category, Legend Of The Tsunami Warrior from Thailand has an impressive array of talent and resources. It successfully blends fantasy, action and romance into a thrilling tale of the four sided race to retrieve sunken treasure and control a weapon of mass destruction. With Princesses, Pirates, and Paupers all going for the finish line you might be able to catch your breath every so often, but not frequently.
A twisted little variation on the classic theme is Malice in Wonderland, this one from the UK. You need a warped sense of humor to fully appreciate this movie, but it does look like a lot of fun.
Samurai Harem: Asu No Yoichi Complete Collection also looks to have a serious humor component, as well as being the first Anime for today’s post. A typical coming of age story involving a clueless martial arts teenage master and an assortment of heavily armed homicidal young women who take offense at his lack of social graces.
A release of Xenosaga DVD Complete Series – Viridian Collection puts this series into a low cost package for the first time, so if you haven’t already grabbed it, now is you chance. While this anime series was based on a game of the same name, it has interesting characters using giant robots in outer space to fight aliens, so whats not to like?
This one is a bit different, a fantasy classic in the making based on the Ramayana called Sita Sings the Blues. It blends the original epic tale with the creators own experiences and commentary supplied by an assortment of Indonesian Shadow Puppets to present a wonderful little story. I am glad to see there is now an official DVD release, assuming Nina Paley, the person who brought this into existence, is getting a fair percentage of the take. She originally released this under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike License last year, giving it to the world. She did set up a way to Donate your approval to the movie (I contributed; did you?), but I suspect a lot more folks would be willing to support the project when they get their own physical copy for their permanent collection. More information is available here.
The best version of Star Wars yet… at least the best version that tells the original 3 movies in 2 and a quarter minutes using Lego’s. This one’s a hoot; thank you Science Fiction Geeks for the heads up on this one.
The video after that is a real commercial for the TomTom team, who now has an assortment of official voices from Star Wars to feed you your driving instructions. It just cracked me up, so I had to include it today. Thanks to SciFi/Fantasy author Lillith Saintcrow for that link!
The 800 pound gorilla for this week is obvious: Iron Man 2. If it is half as good as the first one, it will be twice as good as everything else opening this week.
Top of the list this week has to be William Shakespeare’s Hamlet. While it is not Sci-Fi, I think having conversations with ghosts counts as Fantasy, but there is an even better reason to add this to your collection: This is the version staring David Tennant and Patrick Stewart. It also just aired this past week in the US on PBS, and you can watch it online any time you like at PBS or embedded here (at the bottom of this entry).
For comedy films there is Tooth Fairy, starring Dwayne Johnson as a man who bursts the mental bubbles of children by telling them Santa Clause and the Easter Bunny do not exist. As his punishment, he is forced to be a real tooth fairy for a week.
In the TV series category, the Saving Grace Collection becomes available on Tuesday. This is actually a repackaging of seasons one and two, released together where they were previously released separately, gearing everyone up for the release of the final season in June. If you are not familiar with this series you want to be; you can start by watching episodes online (the direct link goes to a “series so far” video, you can watch full episodes there).
While it should have been a series or miniseries, The Fallen were built as a couple of made-for-TV movies and originally aired at ABC Family. Like Samurai Girl from the same network, this involves a high school student having to go to war with the forces of good and evil (on a celestial level, in this instance). If you missed them when they originally aired, now is your chance to see them.
There are a couple of interesting entries in the 17+ category this week. The Ultimate Pleasure Box from Surrender Cinema is a collection of R rated films that pretended to be porn but were actually Sci-Fi and Fantasy films with periodic breaks for some soft core action. As near as I can tell they used the porn aspect to get the funding to make the films, and instead created some modern B movie SF/F classics. In case there was any doubt, there is nothing socially redeeming in any of these movies, but they are good clean dirty fun. The other one is Space Girls in Beverly Hills, which seems to have started out like the other set but never got the funding.
There is nothing really new in the theaters this week, unless you are part of Sci-Fi London, so this might be a good weekend to catch up on anything you have missed that is still in the theaters. Coming up in May there are some great films on tap, starting with the sequel Iron Man 2. I expect the seats to be packed for that on, opening on May 7th. I may even have to brave the crowed for a midnight show, just because I can’t wait. The other big-screen epic I am expecting a large crowd to attend is Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time on May 28th. While movies based on games have not generally been of high quality or very successful with a very few exceptions, the trailers give me great hopes for this one, as does what Disney did with Pirates of the Caribbean.
There are a few less well known movies in May I think might end up being quite enjoyable, and surprise a lot of people. TiMER has been winning awards hand over fist on the Film Festival circuit (I think they are just shy of 20 or so by now), and has a great cast and an original concept. It hits New York on the 8th, but goes into wider release on the 14th. The Wild Hunt tells the story of a young man who follows his ex-girlfriend into a medieval re-enactment game, and the lines between reality and fantasy get fairly blurred.
