When aliens invaded Edo era Japan, built skyscrapers, introduced motorized vehicles and pizza delivery, and told the Samurai they could not use their swords, many were not happy. Chief among them was Gintama, a Ronin desperate to make a name for himself. The new trailer for the live action feature film from this manga/anime franchise looks just cheesy enough to be good campy fun on the big screen. The release is on July 7th in Japan, maybe by Christmas in North America if we get lucky.
This week the movie choice is The Mummy, with a tone closer to the original movies than the more recent trilogy. The one thing it has in common with the more recent work is it does still look to be Action driven, rather than the original Horror underpinnings.
SPIDER-MAN: HOMECOMING is a perfect title, since Marvel recently negotiated getting the character back into the shared universe which includes The Avengers, and that agreement will run through at least 3 more films. It will be in theaters July 7th, and I will be there to see it in the IMAX theater, no doubt about it!
You would think this weekend would be a no-brainer, and you would be right: Wonder Woman is definitely the movie to see, and it is decades overdue. The Alamo Drafthouse in Austin upset a few folks when it announced a Women-only showing, but it sold so well they added a second showing, and may have to add a third before we hit the weekend. This is the first movie in the DC universe that has excited me as much as the string of blockbusters Marvel has been cranking out, and I can not wait to see it in IMAX 3D.
Before I Fall has the teen protagonist living the same day over and over, dying at the end of each iteration, and trying to get it right. While the basic premise seems to be somewhere between Groundhog Day and All You Need Is Kill, this one is based on best selling author Lauren Oliver‘s book of the same name. We also get The Last Kingdom: Season Two this time around, the multi-award winning presentation of the uniting of England in the days just before King Arthur might have come along.
In Anime, Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya is the companion movie that goes along with the series. I didn’t get to see it in theaters, mostly because I don’t live in New York or San Francisco, and I am looking forward to finally checking it out. If anyone has streamed it before now, it completely escaped my attention. Endride: Part 1 finds Shun transported deep below the Earth’s surface, although which Earth isn’t immediately obvious. His only hope of getting back home is to team up with Prince Emilio, who is out to kill the king; this first dozen episodes introduces you to the story, and takes you through the point Shun discovers his new powers and gathers a team of rebels to help him move forward. I have to say I have a bit of a problem with the title Gosick: The Complete Series, Part One; it can be the complete series, or it can be part 1, but it can’t be both. Now that I have that out of my system, this is a tasty little series set in the 1920s, with a series of mysteries to solve and a brilliant detective who never leaves her hothouse to solve them (sound familiar?). Enough of the cases have a para-physical shading that I get to count it as genre and include it here. Finally Hi-sCool! Seha Girls: Complete Series is just silly fun, with three girls being the human avatars of classic Sega game platforms, fighting their way to 8 Bit Heaven!
Another new Marvel TV show is coming out: The Gifted takes place in the X-Men universe, so this one will be running on Fox. A suburban couple discover their children have mutant powers, and a government agency is coming to take them away. Pretty much everybody behind the cameras have been working on Marvel projects for years, mostly the X-Men/Wolverine movies and the Daredevil/Jessica Jones/Defenders TV series. It will be coming to the small screen this fall.