The film Z for Zachariah takes place after the end of the world, where the three known survivors end up in a love triangle. It was nominated for the Grand Jury Award at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, and author Robert C. O’Brien had another of his books turned into a movie, The Secret of NIMH. But I am just not sure that a movie with only 3 actors in it can hold my attention all the way through. The other option this week looks more interesting to me, but may be on far fewer screens: Memories of the Sword is a Korean historical fantasy taking place during the Goryo Dynasty.
In Movies I have to consider Big Game a fantasy, even though I don’t think that was the intention of the film makers. The plot has a thirteen-year-old boy armed with a bow and arrows who has to save the President (Samuel L. Jackson) from a group of kidnappers while fleeing across Finland. The trailer was quite nicely done, I think it might just be a fun film. We also get Lego DC Super Heroes: Justice League Attack of the Legion of Doom!, action adventure on the silly side from DC Comics and Warner Bros. Studios.
TV has The Walking Dead: The Complete Fifth Season, which gives you plenty of time to catch up with the show before season 6 starts on October 11th. I figured this program would last two seasons, three tops; I obviously underestimated the attraction of Zombies. While not genre, I enjoy the show a lot and so will mention Elementary: Season 3 also comes out this week. The network the show runs on, CBS, now has its own OTT streaming service, CBS All Access, allowing you to watch the shows the day after they air on your computer, tablet, or smart phone.
In Anime the new show is Kamigami no Asobi: Ludere Deorum, in which Zeus decides that the gods have lost touch with the mortal world. His solution is to kidnap Yui and throw her into a garden with 8 hunky gods, assigning her the job of teaching them about humanity and mortality. The gods being so easily bored, things get way more interesting than most mere mortals would ever find comfortable.
There are also a number of returning shows with new seasons, which run the gamut of categories. Love Chunibyo & Other Delusions! Heart Throb brings season 2 home, to follow in the footsteps of the original story. Not only does he have delusional Rikka to deal with, but now his childhood delusional reinforcement buddy Satone Shichimiya is back, ready to drag him into a fantasy world he may never escape from. The combat-gamer series Fate/stay night: Unlimited Blade Works, better viewed on their CrunchyRoll Page, also brings us a new series worth of episodes. And as usual Fairy Tail: Part 16 brings us another 11 episodes in this wonderful ongoing saga.
My favorite Anime series this season was GATE, and it pretty much still is. But now Daisuki has an exclusive on a new truly kick ass show that has caught my attention: God Eater is an amazing project, using edits and camera work normally reserved for the better live action programs, and almost never seen in animations. The animation quality itself is also far better than normal, with a lot more attention to detail. I should mention that by “Exclusive” I don’t mean they are the only service that has it, but it looks like they do have any given episode a good 4 weeks ahead of the competition. So if you find this one as worthy of attention as I do, that is an excellent reason to sign up for a Free Daisuke Membership, and maybe even consider getting a premium/paid membership, if you like what you see there well enough.
The core story line is also grittier than the other offerings, but seems to be extracted/stolen directly from Attack On Titan; giant god-like creatures are breaking through the protective walls humanity is hiding behind, and eating everybody they can catch. While they are doing all the parts of it so much better than we have seen before, it is sad that they didn’t come up with their own plot line, but only swiped someone else’s story. Of course, the people that read the original Manga might argue with that interpretation, but that is how it appears to me.
I am excited about Heros Reborn, because when the original series of Heroes came to the small screen, it kicked ass for the first season and was almost as excellent for the second. It may have slowly degraded after that, but I stuck with it to the end. Even in the final season it had a lot of story to tell, but sadly had lost some of the threads, and some of the characters were no longer people we cared about.
In the Heroes Reborn reboot we have a number of our favorite characters from the original series, and an assortment of original characters, in what looks like a pretty good mix. We also have a good mix of story telling media, with Dark Mater Webisodes already available to enjoy (I posted the first one after the trailer, you should watch them all), the soon to be released comic book Heroes: Season Five, the App with its plethora of goodies and extras, and the 13 episode TV mini-series itself. This is not that dissimilar to what the first series did with their Heroes Evolution’s series of web sites, which included some strictly for mobile devices (not as common in 2006 as it is today).
Bottom line, the new offering has the potential to be good, and I can’t wait to start watching it and see if it lives up to that potential! The TV show portion of the new series hits the small screen on September 24th at 8/7PM (that whole time zone thing); I look forward to finding out if they did the topic justice, and hearing what everyone else has to say.
Hot on the heels of last weeks brush with U.N.C.L.E. we get two spy thrillers, the first being Hitman: Agent 47. He got that number because he is the 47th in a line of genetically engineered soldier/assassins, and he is not terribly happy about his fate. Now someone is out to unlock the secret of his creation and build an army of unstoppable killers, and he is the only thing standing between them and world domination. Then there is American Ultra, where a stoner turns out to be a highly programmed MK-Ultra sleeper agent, accidentally activated while working the overnight shift at his convenience store. Now the government is trying to shut him down permanently and he is running for his life. This one is as much a comedy as an action/adventure film.
Some amazing short animations have been collected up in Walt Disney Animation Studios Short Films Collection, which I incorrectly identified as being available last week. Most of them are fantasy, and one or two are sci-fi. Non-genre but no less surreal for that, The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared is a strange and wonderful Swedish film that everyone ought to see at least once. For the musically inclined, the docudrama LAMBERT & STAMP is about a couple of guys out to make a movie about a rock band who ended up being the managers of The Who. They didn’t have a clue what they were doing, but somehow wound up helping to shape one of the iconic rock bands of the last century. Finally the Western animation feature Batman Unlimited: Monster Mayhem has a subset of the Justice League trying to deal with a consortium of criminals in Gotham on Halloween.
TV has Once Upon a Time: Season 4, a show that gets better with each story. The release date gives you a month or so to binge your way through it before season 5 kicks of on September 27th. The week also brings the UK series Atlantis: Season Two Part Two, also a fantasy although not quite as imaginative.
Anime this week is represented by Future Diary: Complete Series, in which a dozen combatants receive a cell phone app which shows them their death three or four minutes before it happens. If they are very quick and very lucky they might live through it, surviving to face the next challenge which will come along much too quickly. If you are a fan of the manga this is based on, you might also enjoy watching the Live Action version, streaming now from Japan.