Skip to main content

Top of the list this week has to be William Shakespeare’s Hamlet. While it is not Sci-Fi, I think having conversations with ghosts counts as Fantasy, but there is an even better reason to add this to your collection: This is the version staring David Tennant and Patrick Stewart. It also just aired this past week in the US on PBS, and you can watch it online any time you like at PBS or embedded here (at the bottom of this entry).

For comedy films there is Tooth Fairy, starring Dwayne Johnson as a man who bursts the mental bubbles of children by telling them Santa Clause and the Easter Bunny do not exist. As his punishment, he is forced to be a real tooth fairy for a week.

In the TV series category, the Saving Grace Collection becomes available on Tuesday. This is actually a repackaging of seasons one and two, released together where they were previously released separately, gearing everyone up for the release of the final season in June. If you are not familiar with this series you want to be; you can start by watching episodes online (the direct link goes to a “series so far” video, you can watch full episodes there).

While it should have been a series or miniseries, The Fallen were built as a couple of made-for-TV movies and originally aired at ABC Family. Like Samurai Girl from the same network, this involves a high school student having to go to war with the forces of good and evil (on a celestial level, in this instance). If you missed them when they originally aired, now is your chance to see them.

There are a couple of interesting entries in the 17+ category this week. The Ultimate Pleasure Box from Surrender Cinema is a collection of R rated films that pretended to be porn but were actually Sci-Fi and Fantasy films with periodic breaks for some soft core action. As near as I can tell they used the porn aspect to get the funding to make the films, and instead created some modern B movie SF/F classics. In case there was any doubt, there is nothing socially redeeming in any of these movies, but they are good clean dirty fun. The other one is Space Girls in Beverly Hills, which seems to have started out like the other set but never got the funding.

For Anime releases this week, most (like Darker than Black) are re-releases, sometimes because the original release was recalled. The exception is Rozen Maiden + Rozen Maiden Traumend DVD Complete Set, available in a single package for the first time.