The movie choice for the week for me is Gantz, the live action variant of the Manga and Anime favorite. While some of the reviews I have read complain about it’s pacing, I really don’t care, I just want it for my collection. And if it bothers me enough, like anybody else I could always re-edit it to exclude the boring bits. Anyways, this is just the first in the set; Gantz 2 will be out soon, so I will reserve judgement until I see how the entire work fits together. Red Faction: Origins is the only movie of interest out this week in English, giving some serious detailed background to the game environment that spawned this film. From Thailand, Panna Rittikrai’s latest offering BKO: Bangkok Knockout is also out this week, continuing the work he did in Ong Bak and Chocolate.
Police, Adjective is not genre but rather crime comedy from Romania’s Corneliu Porumboiu that has won awards from all over the globe, and Norwegian Ninja is action comedy based on Norway’s major government scandal of 1984 (pick up some great wallpapers from the flic here). I pretty much had to mention these two, since they are each different in their own way from anything else you might have seen.
Notice how I went out of my way to avoid mentioning A Big Box of Zombies, with 8 zombie movies that were made from 1936 to 1971. While it is important to study your enemies to be ready to defend yourself come the Zombie Apocalypse, I really don’t think that this collection is the optimal way to do that. But it is fun. *grin*
TV this week is the latest version of a classic: Nikita: The Complete First Season. The successor to 1990’s La Femme Nikita movie and the subsequent TV series that ran from 1997 through 2001, this new spin on the story is a whole lot of fun.
In Anime, Neo Angelique Abyss: The Complete Collection tells of life on Arcadia, where evil demons battle the small number of Purifiers set against them. The humans are not doing very well, but Angelique may hold the secret that will allow them to survive. Ikki Tousen: Great Guardians Part 1 was supposed to be released this week as well, with Part 2 coming in October, but Media Blasters has announced that they have evaluated the market and decided to do a single box set release of the entire series, but that will not be available until March of next year. Great Guardians is the third season to become available in the US, although there is now a 4th season in Japan and they are working on a fifth.