Last year the movie Monsterz was presented on the big screen by the Japan Society in New York. The film itself was made in Japan and released there in 2013, a remake of the 2010 Korean movie Haunters, telling the tale of two men with supernatural powers battling each other for control. This is another movie that has yet to be released in a domestic North American version, but I live in hope (and refuse to pay the price buying it as an import entails). The Korean original had been available here a few years back, but went out of print around 2013 or so.
There are two excellent choices this time around, the live action option being Tomorrowland from Disney. I have been watching that one spit out new trailers for a while now, and am quite excited about it. We also get the animated When Marnie Was There from Studio Ghibli in a noticeably more limited release. I plan to try to make both of them.
In Movies we have Hot Tub Time Machine 2, a movie I haven’t seen but which was panned by just about every critic I have read. My thoughts are to watch this one when it comes to one of the streaming services I am already paying for anyways. We also get the animated fantasy Strange Magic from Disney and George Lucas, which looks like it could be quite fun (yep, I haven’t seen this one either).
TV gives us Beauty & The Beast: Season 2, which sadly only seems to be available in Standard Def. But it is in time to be able to binge watch it before season 3 kicks off on June 11th.
There is a single new entry in the Anime category this week, in the form of .hack//Roots: The Complete Series. One of this seasons shows which I am really enjoying, Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon?, is up to episode 7 on the anime series, but its Manga only becomes available in the US this Tuesday; I mention it because it usually works the other way around.
Finally, it looks like DC is ready to challenge Marvel for the Group Superhero Team Championship. Yes, I know I had recently said that about the whole prime-time character set they had put together for the movie Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, the film where we get to see a major chunk of the Justice League for the first time. After all, they really were DC Comics most popular super-group, and the only possible opponents in theaters against the Marvel Avengers franchise. But they just up-leveled the entire process by putting together their own small-screen challengers to Agents of Shield, a series that features a lot of lesser known but just as important characters from both the Inhumans and S.H.I.E.L.D. story lines. How could DC Comics possibly go up against them? With Legends of Tomorrow, which feature Arrow, Flash, Atom, White Canary, Hawkgirl, and a few more, out to save not a city, but the world. I particularly like the fact that they brought in Doctor Who companion Rory as Rip Hunter, the Time Traveler who put the team together. Thanks to Topless Robot for the links to the videos!
One of the silliest Japanese trailers I have seen in a long time, The Mole Song: Undercover Agent Reiji looks like a lot of fun. At least if you enjoy Yakuza Comedy and Police Silliness, which I do. As near as I can tell, this one is only available as an Import so far, hopefully it will be released in the US soon. Here is Exhibit A:
The one everybody knows about this week is Mad Max: Fury Road, yet another entry into the Mad Max apocalyptic franchise that began back in the late 70s. Like all the other films in this series, this one takes place in a desert, which Australia has a lot of. The filming location this time was the Namib Desert in Namibia, so I guess they decided the Australian deserts they did the first few films in just weren’t post-apocalyptic enough. Fewer people know about Time Lapse, a movie which has been racking up the awards on the Film Festival circuit for the last year, and is finally making it to some regular theaters. As near as I can figure it, this is a modern retelling of the 1960 Twilight Zone episode A Most Unusual Camera, where a camera that takes pictures of the future makes life in the present much more complicated (and possibly much shorter) then it would have otherwise been.