This week we get Doctor Who: Series Ten, Part Two, and that seems to be it for Western genre. Score: A Film Music Documentary looks interesting if you have ever wondered about the science of enhancing the movie experience by the application of the right music during the right scenes. The Good Witch of the West looks to be the only Anime option at the moment, and since I haven’t seen it I can’t say one way or the other if it is good or not.
The Kobe band Fredrick has another opening to a popular Anime, Koi to Uso, in English: Love And Lies, a story of future Japan where the government selects your life partner with an eye to increasing the dwindling population. I haven’t seen the show yet, because I don’t have a subscription to the only streaming service I have found it on. But I do enjoy what they have done for the opening theme, Sad and Happy, the first track presented here. It was posted July 31st, and has well over 2 million views so far, and was released on their August 16th single. The other track is a live version of their song Only Wonder, recorded at Studio Coast 2017, and also part of their 2nd single. Japanese singles are a bit different than the ones in North America; this one has a total of 5 live tracks and 3 studio recordings.
Almost, at least. The movie I most want to see this Friday isn’t a movie at all; it is the pilot episode of the new TV series The Inhumans. Not only is it in movie theaters, but it is in IMAX format, which means on the biggest screen you can see it on! If it were only in 3D it would be prefect, but I am not going to let a detail like that stop me from seeing it. There is also a fantasy animation called Animal Crackers about a magical circus being released this week, which I would ordinarily be going to see; maybe next weekend.
We have two titles from the DC Universe this week, with Gotham: The Complete Third Season and the animated DCU: Batman and Harley Quinn both hitting the shelves. I find the live action TV show addictive, at least the first two season, so I look forward to binging my way through it. The fantasy comedy Killing Hasselhoff will also be out this week, so I suppose I should mention the associated non-genre comedy Baywatch will also be out come Tuesday. Finally, Anime has Ushio & Tora: Complete TV Series, a tale of yokai vs. human vs. yokai.
Shishido Kavka is the stage name of Shishido Yūna, a great singer who plays her own drums. She started off in the band The News, but broke out and released her first solo album in 2012, with her most recent offering being an EP released this past February. She was born in Mexico and was taught to play the drums by by Daniel “Pipi” Piazzoll (drummer, and grandson of Astor Piazzolla, a famous Tango musician some years back) in Argentina. The first track here is actually two songs, Miss Me and My, while the second is the short (only about half the song) version of Rock And Roll Widow.
There are several interesting films out this week, although some of them will be in limited release. The classic Terminator 2: Judgment Day has been reprocessed into 3D, and there are now a couple generations of Terminator fans who have never seen it on the big screen in the first place to enjoy it. Birth of the Dragon tells some of the Bruce Lee story, although according to his daughter they completely bypassed his philosophy of both Martial Arts and storytelling, so she bailed on the project as not representing her dad. Unleashed is a modern fantasy about a woman whose cat and dog were turned into handsome male humans, it has been winning awards all over the festival circuit and looks very amusing. There is a new French animation called Leap!, original title Ballerina, also coming to theaters on Friday. France has been at the forefront of international film making since the 1890s, and has been creating some amazing animations at least since WWII. They may only have a few movies which break across the language barrier each year, but the ones that do are usually minor (and sometimes not so minor) masterpieces. If you live within driving distance of one of the larger Megaplex theaters, one of them may be carrying The Villainess, a South Korean movie about a woman trained from youngest childhood to be an assassin for a criminal organization. When a government agency offers her freedom and a place in society if she works for them for a decade, she jumps at the chance to escape. When they betray her in turn, the vengeance train goes off the rails and rampages down main street. And one more that I really want to see is the Bollywood film A Gentleman. A RomCom where a case of mistaken identity changes everything!