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In movies, The Cobbler is a story about a shoe repair man working in the same shop his family has run for generations who is granted the ability to live his customers lives by walking in their shoes… literally. The premise has a lot of potential, but the critics paned the movie brutally, and is is coming out on disc only a month after it was in the theaters for very little money, not a very promising sign. These Final Hours is a film about the last 12 hours before a meteor wipes out all life on Earth; but even though its theatrical run was limited to a handful of screens in Australia, it has received acclaim from the critics and a 78% rating from Rotten Tomatoes. While not genre, Blackhat does star Thor’s Chris Hemsworth, but that may be about all that can really be said for it. In western animation we get Batman Unlimited: Animal Instincts, a new Batman vs. Penguin story.

In Anime, Muv-Luv Alternative: Total Eclipse, Collection 2 the fight to save humanity from alien invaders continues, but mankind may be its own worst threat. The leaders of several nations are willing to sabotage each other in an attempt to gain power, allowing the invaders to conquer still more of the planet. The Familiar of Zero: “Rondo” of Princesses brings season 3 of Louise the Zero and her magical misadventures with her human familiar and newly undead husband Saito. Finally, Michiko & Hatchin is having the complete series released in a S.A.V.E. edition, meaning you can now pick it up for somewhere in the neighborhood of $20.

Yet another Netflix exclusive TV series, this one was put together by The Wachowskis (The Matrix and Cloud Atlas) and J. Michael Straczynski (Babylon 5 and World War Z), a couple of my favorite Sci-Fi creators. As usual with Netflix originals, on June 5th you don’t just get the first episode, you get the entire first season. I worked very hard to ration myself for the Daredevil series, to not just binge watch it in a single weekend. I can already tell I am going to have the same fight with this show.

I didn’t find any genre movies or TV shows this time, but there are still a few worth mentioning. Spare Parts is a true story of the four undocumented Mexican-American high school students who went head to head with the team from MIT in the National Underwater Robotics Competition, using robots made from spare parts. The TV series Halt and Catch Fire: The Complete First Season takes place the year after IBM came out with the Personal PC, with a fictional company comprised of renegade engineers reverse engineering it and improving on it, as the computer race got off the ground. While the characters are fictional, the engineering issues they face and the solutions they come up with for them are the very ones the entire industry was working on at the time. The personality mix of the engineers will look very familiar to anyone involved with any cutting edge engineering project; thinking outside the box and radical innovation are not done by ordinary engineers, but by the exceptional. Masters of Sex: Season 2 is also a story about real-life cutting edge science which actually took place in the past, as doctors Masters and Johnson did the research that would change our understanding of the most basic aspect of human nature.

In Anime Natsume’s Book of Friends: Season 4 follows our protagonist as he continues to give the yokai their names back. He is learning how to deal with the yokai and humans that surround his life and now must learn about himself as well. The World God Only Knows: OVA Collection finds the girls forming an Idol band among other wacky goings-on, now that Keima has become something of a wizard. I should also mention that the classic Patlabor: The Movie, previously available only in SD, is coming out on Blue Ray this week.

Studio Ghibli has produced some amazing animations in its history, and it looks like When Marnie Was There is yet another in a long line of triumphs. The box office results in Japan were poor for this one, but the critical reaction was positive to the point of acclaim, and this is another beautiful feature length production in the Miyazaki style. It will be premiering in New York and Los Angeles on May 22nd, and go into wider (but still limited) release after that. If you are lucky enough to be in a town where you can catch it on the big screen, you should try to do so.

This is the week when Avengers: Age of Ultron hits the big screen, and I will definitely be in the theater to see it. The word came from Chris Evens (Captain America) earlier today that they have already set up the shooting schedule for Avengers: Infinity War, filming the two part movies back to back over 9 months beginning in the fall of 2016. Part one will be out in May of 2018, part 2 in May 2019. Also they started filming on Captain America: Civil War today as well. That film will be near-Avengers in scope, including the return of Iron Man, Falcon, Black Widow, Hawkeye, and the Winter Solder, and giving us the new characters Black Panther and Scarlet Witch.

If you are up for a marathon, AMC Theaters, Showcase Theaters, Regal Theaters, and Cinemark (and probably others I didn’t find) are running 27 hours worth of Marvel titles back-to-back for the new Avengers premier. You start at 6PM Wednesday give or take a few minutes, and finish with the 7PM showing of the latest one Thursday evening, like so:

6:00pm IRON MAN
8:25pm THE INCREDIBLE HULK
10:35pm IRON MAN 2
1:00am THOR
3:10am CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE FIRST AVENGER
5:30am THE AVENGERS
8:48am IRON MAN 3
11:15am THOR: THE DARK WORLD
1:45pm CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE WINTER SOLDIER
4:20pm GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY
7:00pm AVENGERS: AGE OF ULTRON

Obviously the one that caught my eye was Guardians of the Galaxy, which has not been part of the Avengers filmography. This may be confirmation that there will be a film where the two teams meet, or perhaps it is Marvel/Disney figuring that film was popular enough they can sell out the theaters even though it isn’t new.