There have been a number of trailers released for Lucy, the new Luc Besson science fiction film starring Scarlett Johansson and Morgan Freeman, but I like this one the best. It should be on the big screen around August 8th or so.
This is an interesting choice; by going with the 1980 Days of Future Past story line, they get to merge the three original X-Men movies with the reboot of the franchise from First Class. I like the thought that we haven’t seen the last of the original lineup yet, and I have to appreciate the timing, since the future they traveled back from was 2013. It will be on the big screen on May 23rd.
Jupiter Ascending looks like it will be quite the treat, and is scheduled to be in theaters on July 18th. The new trailer has a bit more of the plot and a lot of action sequences. And yes, this is from the Wachowski’s.
I know that lots of sites are doing April Fools gags today, but I would rather talk about Terry Pratchett’s wonderful creation Discworld which overall is funnier than most of the pranks going on. In all it comes to about 40 books these days, with hopefully at least a few more waiting to make it into our hands. From the first story The Color Of Magic to the most recent release Raising Steam, they are every one of them poking fun at all aspects of small mindedness, bureaucracy, prejudice, and superstition. There are a large number of wonderful recurring characters that you will find yourself relating to, often because they make up the limited number of sane people (and sane not-people) to be found in a given tale. They tend to come in groups, like the City Watch, the Witches, Ahnk-Morpork, the Wizards, and Death (yes, Death is both an individual and a group; see Soul Music, or perhaps The Death Of Rats).
The Discworld universe is in a steampunk/fantasy branch of the Multiverse, where wizards and engineers have an equal hand in creating the future, and humans share the land with a full range of other races, including Golems, Vampires, Dwarves, and Igors (the last very handy if you are suddenly in need of transplanted organs and limbs). Figuring out which order you should read the books in can be difficult, I recommend using the group approach. Go to the Novels chart on Wikipedia to find the earliest story instance of each group. Read each one of them, and I feel confident one of them will become an instant favorite, even if you don’t particularly care for the others. Then read through all of the novels in that group; by the time you finish that set, you will have met enough of the characters and picked up enough of the background for the other groups that you will know which one you want to read next. You can also read them in story-line chronological order for each group, either method will do nicely.
Sooner or later you will have read everything he has written about Discworld, but do not despair! He has written other stuff, including an excellent collaboration with Neil Gaiman. And there are four Discworld TV miniseries released on DVD, 15 stage plays have been published, two feature length animations have been created, a number of fan productions from around the world have been released into the wild, and a ton of radio plays of the stories have been recorded by the BBC and others for you to enjoy as well. There are several projects in production, including a 13 episode TV series about The Watch, a miniseries of Unseen Academicals, and the fan production of Troll Bridge. Once upon a time Sam Raimi was going to do a feature film from The Wee Free Men for Sony, but that fell through. All is not lost though, because Rhianna Pratchett announced she was going to pick up the project instead.
The definite winner this week is Captain America: The Winter Soldier, and I am more than ready for the next chapter in this franchise. There are a double handful of lesser works also available this time around, including The Pirate Fairy from Disney, Jinn from Exxodus Pictures, and Under the Skin, the other film that Scarlett Johansson stars in this week, noticeably more mature than the first. For the serious Trekkie you also want to be aware that Starship Farragut: Conspiracy of Innocence also should become available this week, the next in the series of Fan-built Federation movies. I have not been able to confirm that last, but I am hopeful.
The top of the movie list this week is the Keanu Reeves remake of 47 Ronin, the latest in a long line of films, TV shows, plays and operas based on this historic true story. This is the first time I am aware of that it expanded this deep into the realm of Fantasy, but I thought the dragons were a wonderful choice. If you are more in the mood for an indi production, Knights of Badassdom is about a bunch of LARPers who accidentally summon a succubus from hell while playing in the woods. As you might expect from the description, this is a comedy/horror film, with several of my favorite actors in it.
I couldn’t find any real genre in TV except for re-releases, but Psych: Season 8 certainly comes close, considering the massive number of pop culture references the show manages to cram into every episode. This was the final season for the show, so it includes the series finale.
In western animation we have The Pirate Fairy, another adventure in Never Never Land from the gang at Disney.
In Anime, Ebiten: Complete Collection pokes fun at the art form itself, with a rabid group of anime fan girls with tenuous grips on reality, a maid on a secret mission, a Neko faculty adviser, an ass-tronomy club full of robots, aliens, and telepaths (and one poor guy who actually thinks it is a serious astronomy club), and more twisted anime parodies and allusions than you have probably ever seen collected in one place before. Expect to see the barrier between fantasy and reality shattered every 5 minutes or so. Then in Happiness: Complete Collection, the classes for magic users and non-magic users are kept completely separate until a gas explosion destroys the magical building and they have to combine the classes. Rest assured chaos and comedy ensue, as the two groups try to adjust to each other.