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Something to Watch: DVDs

Topping movies this time around we get Edge of Tomorrow, the movie based on the excellent book All You Need Is Kill by Hiroshi Sakurazaka. I find it interesting that they changed the title of the movie to the tagline for the disc cover: Live Die Repeat. The other live action film this week is Sharknado 2: The Second One, so even a new rebooting of Howard The Duck would have gotten top billing over that. However, there is one more that is worth your time to check out; the animated Jack and the Cuckoo-Clock Heart. It features a world class voice cast in both its English and French audio versions, and the animation quality is top notch. I don’t find that much of a surprise, since this is from the team that brought us A Monster In Paris, is produced by Luc Besson, and is based on the concept album by the French rock band Dionysos, and the graphic novel La Mécanique du cœur written by their lead singer.

There are several good choices in TV, beginning with Hemlock Grove: The Complete First Season, the made-for-Netflix supernatural series. I found it very interesting, and just spooky enough to make it a good selection for an October release. American Horror Story: Coven – The Complete Third Season is likewise an excellent choice for the month that includes Halloween. Bates Motel: Season Two, Houdini, and The Following: The Complete Second Season round out the selections this time.

In Anime, Rozen Maiden: Zuruckspulen is a twisted tale of time and fate unraveling, as the adult Jun speaks with his younger self. Their goal now is to try to revive Shinku to prevent Kirakisho, the seventh Rozen Maiden, from unleashing destruction on both of their worlds. Also this week Gargantia on the Verdurous Planet is a far future tale of what happens when several members of the space-faring branch of humanity accidentally finds their way back to Earth. This one was the best series in the Spring season of 2013 for me, I watched each episode as it became available before any other show. This release includes the entire 13 episode series, the two OVAs, and the 13 Petite Gargiantia Mini-Episodes as well as the Petite Gargiantia Special. In other words, everything they ever made for the series is in the box set, including a bunch of things not previously seen outside of Japan. I would have posted the Viz Streaming Anime link rather than the Crunchyroll for this one, except it didn’t seem to be working.

Mobile Suit Gundam UC – Part 4 is a slightly misleading title, since the original series consisted of 7 one hour episodes, and this 90 minute long release is the fourth and final part of it. If you are a Gundam fan, you will not want to miss this one. And a couple of non-Terrestrial Pirate shows are being re-released this time around, Bodacious Space Pirates and Space Pirate Mito.

Ascension trailer

Syfy has a pitiful track record at made for TV movies, but both their original TV series and their miniseries have been excellent, and Ascension looks like it could be a winner. The premise is simple; what if the space race Kennedy started in 1962 didn’t collapse once humanity made it to the moon, but kept going. If that progress had been steady, by now we would be launching our first expeditions to the nearer stars… and what a different universe that would have been! Of course, to keep up that constant development, you would have needed someone to race against, who also didn’t falter or pause.

Something to Do: Movies

There doesn’t seem to be anything I have been waiting for this week. I suppose Left Behind could be interesting, in an end-of-the-world sort of way, and it does have Nicolas Cage, so there should be some good over the top moments. For the younger set The Hero of Color City has a diverse group of animated crayons fighting for the imagination of children everywhere. It does have quite an impressive collection of voice actors, but somehow I suspect I will be doing something else for the weekend.

Something to Watch: DVDs

In movies Transformers: Age of Extinction is for the serious action junky, as any one who has seen the previous films in this franchise can attest. For myself, my must-have entry in this category is Space Station 76; anything that gets proclaimed the best science fiction comedy since Galaxy Quest has to be a keeper.

Our only genre entry in TV is Beware the Batman: Dark Justice – Season 1 Part 2, another animated adventure.

In Anime Psychic Detective Yakumo: Complete Collection is abut a girl with a number of possessed friends and a guy who can communicate with the dead. They team up to try to bring some peace, or at least control, to their school. Zombie-Loan: Complete Collection is about a girl who can see death coming, in the form of black rings around peoples necks. When she sees the rings on two of her classmates she warns them of their danger, but it turns out they have the rings because they kill zombies to pay off a loan. When they learn of her abilities, they try to use her to increase their profit margin.

We also get the continuation of a few favorites in the form of Bleach: Season 22 with episodes 304-316, and two from the Luffy franchise, One Piece: Season 6 Part 1 with episodes 337-348, and One Piece: Film Z, a feature length program. I should also mention that Steins;Gate: Complete Series is coming out in an Anime Classics version, which means you can pick up this twisty time travel tale fairly cheap.