Skip to main content

Things to Watch: DVDs

For live action, J. K. Rowling’s next brilliant book has been turned into the next brilliant movie of the series, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. That film is the pivot point for this weeks releases, it seems to me.

In Anime this week, a show with a truck full of pigs, flying saucers, and crazy dream sequences comes along, and what are you going to do except cheer it on? School Rumble – Complete Series includes season 1, season 2, and the OVA, and nowhere in it does anything rumble.

Another new Anime this Tuesday is Naruto Shippuden volume 4 with still more tales on Ninja prowess. While I am a big fan of the nine-tailed fox, I will be waiting for the seasonal box set on this one, so I can see all the episodes at once (plus it’s more cost effective).

Moribito volume 8 also becomes available; the Public Broadcasting homepage of it can be found on the NHK.

Also out this week, Monster – Box Set 1 takes you into the What-If world that asks which decision would you make, when faced with a true human monster?

Alice due Sunday

Did you happen to catch the Syfy Channel miniseries Tinman, the wonderfully twisted version of the Wizard of Oz? The team that brought you that creation return on Sunday, the 6th, with Alice, with their wonderfully twisted version of Through The Looking Glass. This time it brings some serious star power to the party, with a cast that includes the likes of Kathy Bates, Tim Curry, Matt Frewer, Colm Meaney, and Harry Dean Stanton to name but a few. Oh, and my favorite bit: Andrew-Lee Potts got to be the Hatter.

Things to Do: Movies

This weeks top choice for Horror/Spoof goes to Transylmania, college kids doing a semester in Romania with the wrong kind of night “life”. This comedy will probably only be in theaters for a short time, but it is also the only new genre live action I could see being released this week.

December looks to start off as a slow movie month, but Avatar comes along on the 18th, and xmas brings both The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus and Sherlock Holmes to the big screen.

Things to Watch: DVDs

We have two top domestic live action choices this week! The first is Terminator Salvation, and Warner Bros. is holding a online event on December 5th with the director. If you are interested in the history of this kind of event, read all the way to the bottom of this posting to see my latest rant on the topic.

The other big film is Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian, which I just missed seeing at the Smithsonian IMAX theater premier event (tickets were WAY tight). It is also being released as a two movie package if you didn’t get the first one already, Night at the Museum/Battle of the Smithsonian.

If there was a live-action speculative fiction TV show released this week, I managed to miss it. Someone will no doubt point it out to me about 15 minutes after I post this.

It is a DVD, and Fantasy, but it is a DVD Game, not a movie: Harry Potter DVD Game: Wizarding World also comes out on Tuesday.

There are several interesting Anime releases this week. For the classics, there is My-Otome Complete Collection: Anime Legends edition. The Anime Legends series are extremely popular programs re-released with an economical pricing structure. Out as a compilation for the first time this week is Chevalier D’Eon – The Complete Series, a beautifully crafted alternate history sequence, but definitely not a lighthearted story.

Hunter X Hunter Box Set, Volume 4 continues the push for Gon and his friends to track down power in the form of treasure, magical beasts, and so forth. The Gunslinger Girl OVA gives some more background on a few of the formerly human characters, and trust me when I say these are children you would NOT want to meet in a dark alley.

‘Rental Magica’ DVD Collection 1 is an assortment of strange magic users out to battle evil, and come from a variety of magical traditions. Most sites claim this was actually released last week, but since I missed the Anime section last week I though I should mention it now.

About the Warner Bros. Special Events. This is something they have started recently (there is another one coming up for the new Harry Potter DVD release), and seems to involve group watching of the DVD together with an internet connection to the meeting software that allows you to type in questions, which the director (or actors or anyone else they involve from the movie production team) can answer verbally.

If you have been in moderated celebrity events in Second Life this decade, Virtual Places Chat in the ’90s, or live Usenet (meaning IRC or Internet Relay Chat) in the 80’s, you have already experienced this. And yes, I know the Usenet example I cited was from the 90’s, it was just the one I had handy courtesy of a recent post on a different topic. I actually have transcripts from moderated IRC sessions with SciFi authors I asked questions of going back as far as 1984 from QNet (the Commodore version of AOL and Compuserve in those days), but I didn’t have a link to any of them to point to. Perhaps this reference work will help, should you need it.

The bandwidth, and therefore the resolution, has just gotten better each decade; text only in ’84 at 300 baud, downstream-only audio in the mid ’90s at 56K, entire 3D virtual worlds with 2-way audio chat and streaming video by the mid 2000’s with 2-way asynchronous broadband. From the description of what they are going to do and how they will be doing it, this application of the event environment appears to be something we had the technology to do by 1998 or so, except for the Hi-Def video. But since the Video is going to be played locally from a DVD player and not streamed over the Net, it does not in any way change the bandwidth requirements.

Things to Do: Movies

There are a few interesting movies coming to theaters this week, including one that was delayed some months while they reworked it: The Road. Another post-apocalyptic world is explored, but recent reviews are very mixed; a number of folks think it was better (truer to the book) in its original version. This one is on the screens Wednesday to take advantage of the holiday weekend box office window. Actually, everything else does that as well.

There seems to be a martial arts release with no element of fantasy in it, called Ninja Assassin. Since I have almost never seen one based wholly in reality, I thought I should mention it here anyways, just in case.

Another one that probably doesn’t belong here I have to mention for its 1938 War of the Worlds connection: Me And Orson Wells, a movie about the creation of The Mercury Theatre on the Air. The original 1938 broadcast of WotW electrified the country, because it realistically simulated a broadcast radio emergency program; many people thought a real Martian invasion was taking place. Now that I have said all that, I guess I’m going to have to re-watch another old favorite, The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension, which also has a tie-in to that broadcast.

I do see one other actual fantasy movie for this week, this one suitable for the kids as well:The Princess and the Frog from Disney. This animation is only in the Limited release date, for LA and NY, however; the rest of us have to wait until December 11th to see it.

And here is a trailer from a movie currently in production that is going on my see-in-the-theaters list, Season of the Witch

Things to Watch: DVDs

The most important release this week (in my opinion) is Life on Mars Season 2, the UK edition. This one wraps up Sam Tyler’s journey into the past.

Another one to be aware of is Recon 2023, which actually came out on DVD in the US back in August. What makes this one unique is the fact that it only became available in the country it came from this month… go figure!

From the creators of Spy Kids comes Shorts, a silly kids movie that should be fun. The premise is a wishing-stone falls from the sky, and as it gets passed around town things get stranger and stranger. With actors like William H. Macy and James Spader, I think it could work.

A surprising US release this week is Akihabara Deep; the last movie like this I was aware of was called Hackers, and was one of the very first Angelina Jolie movies ever made. I will enjoy watching this import, and doing my best to track down and acquire Bamboo Blade, which isn’t really related beyond coming from the same culture and attitude.

If you are into interesting/strange music, you need to be aware that the Best of Spike Jones DVD is also coming out this week. If you don’t know who that is, I recommend you take some time and learn; you won’t be disappointed.