13 Assassins is an action movie set at the end of Japan’s feudal period, where 13 samurai are out to stop an evil ruler and save the country. This one gets my vote as best film for the week. Bloodrayne: The Third Reich has our half-vampire heroine up against the Nazi Vampire Army in WWII, and she has to stop them before they make Hitler immortal. Finally, Witchville is another made for TV movie from Syfy, so obviously I will be passing on this one, much as I did for their earlier efforts, like Sharktopus and Mansquito.
Also from Syfy is one of my favorite TV shows, as they roll out Eureka: Season 4.0, with the second half of the season hitting the airwaves on July 11th. It continues to confound me how they can produce such excellent TV series and such sucky TV movies. The lamentable The Cape: The Complete Series is also becoming available this week. It had such great actors and a good concept, but they dropped the ball on the execution part of the process (writing, filming, editing, etc.), which is why it evaporated after a single season. There is an enjoyable documentary TV series coming out, Mysteries at the Museum: Season 1 from the Travel Channel, which I will be checking out.
On the Animation front, Transformers: The Headmasters has been out for better than 20 years, but never previously available legally in the US. This is an alternate reality spin on season 4, where Optimus Prime never died and a whole new species of bots entered the battle. And finally, Mobile Suit Gundam 00 the Movie : A Wakening of the Trailblazer has the the Extraterrestrial Living-metal Shapeshifters (ELS) assimilating everyone in sight in a very Borg-like fashion. I am not a fan of the animation styles either of these classic Anime series used, but they both had very well developed story lines and situations, if you followed the original Japanese dialog and ignored the English forced on them to try to make them fit the Saturday morning cartoon time slot and target audience.