I don’t see any movies this week in wide release I am excited about, but I have to mention Cars 2 simply because Pixar always does an amazing job with their animation. However, if you are in Seattle, the new Philip K. Dick movie Radio Free Albemuth will be having its theatrical world premiere at the Science Fiction Hall of Fame, kicking off their annual awards presentation. Wish I was on that coast.
The top movie this week is The Adjustment Bureau, yet another Philip K. Dick story given the big screen treatment. I thought the early 1960s stylization of the sets and costumes was a good choice, since that matched up with the era it was written in. Another good one is The Eagle, the dramatization of what might have happened to the Ninth Legion in 120 AD. To counterbalance those, we have Van Von Hunter, a silly live action movie based on an American comic but filmed by Tokyo Pop (you may have recently seen their movie Priest), a now defunct American production and distribution company for predominately Japanese properties. The other counterbalance is Mega Python vs. Gatoroid, just to prove silly movies still sell. I have never been able to figure out why these kind of movies made in the US are so offensive to me, and yet I love Gojira and the like from Japan. Actually the US release of Godzilla with Jean and Mathew was a favorite as well; maybe it’s the monsters.
For TV, Medium: The Final Season becomes available, as well as the full series in a single box set. While I am aware this series was based on someone’s real life, to me it will always be Fantasy.
New Anime this week starts with Bleach Uncut Box Set 9, another handful of episodes in this long running series about the world of the Soul Reapers. When I say a handful, I mean just that; episodes 146 through 156 are included here, only 11 of them. At this rate, it will be a while before we catch up with the current production run, which is somewhere around episode 275. The Kanokon OVA Collection is all about summer break and how the relationships evolve as the Fox Goddess and Wolf Goddess continue to vie for the heart of the human Kouta.
While not actually Sci-Fi or Fantasy, You’re Under Arrest is one of my favorite Anime series, and the Complete Full Throttle set is also the complete season 3. It has been a while since the last season, and this one starts off with one partner having returned from forensics training in the US, while the other one just finished JSDF (Japanese Self-Defense Force) Ranger training, which is as close to Green Beret as makes no difference. If you thought these two were dangerous to everyone anywhere near them before (criminal or not), wait till you see them now! And Kekkaishi – Part 1 has two childhood friends battling it out to see who gets to be the destroyer of monsters using barrier magic. While both are doing their best to protect their people, they are not the same gender, so some romantic tension gets added to the story.
Finally, this weeks classic series re-release is Blue Gender, where our protagonist wakes up from a few decades of suspended animation to discover that instead of the cure for his terminal disease that he was expecting, humans are being hunted as food by giant insects. As usual with such releases, you can pick up this quality series for dirt cheap if you shop around, $20 being the est price I found.
If you haven’t already made plans to visit the Batman Live Experience, I can seriously recommend you do; it looks like a world of fun.
The first production images from Disney’s John Carter of Mars were published in the LA Times, along with an excellent interview with Andrew Stanton. Andy wrote and directed Wall-E and Finding Nemo, and now we will get to see what he can do with a live action Sci-Fi classic. The disappointing part is that he does not intend to show any footage at Comic-Con this year, but word is we may get to see a trailer at Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 come July.
They built it in Barcelona, and everyone loved it. The game played just like normal, on a smart phone, but the results were a bit different, and some folks seemed quite surprised. What a hoot; thanks, T-Mobile. And then, just for grins and giggles, the official Angry Birds theme song.
What would the world have had to been like for Pablo Picasso to have been considered a realist, rather than an abstract painter? This little animation gives you part of the answer to that question.