If you like gaming, check out Did You Know Gaming, they have a lot more than just this history of Doctor Who references in games. Their other site (sister site? friends doing similar stuff?) is Video Game Facts, which also has a ton of cool stuff. And yes, I will get over all the Doctor Who posts in a while, but it is still the 50th anniversary and I am still a bit stoked.
Yep, Sony finally released it today, and it looks amazing, as befits a movie with the name The Amazing Spider-Man 2. I can’t wait for the new episode for the franchise, I like the reboot of the films a lot (although I still like the original trilogy, which had its own set of good points). I love all things Marvel, and still wish my mom hadn’t thrown out my comic book collection in the 70’s. It would be worth a fortune now, including as it did the first hundred or so episodes of Spider Man, Fantastic Four, X-Men, Thor, Avengers, and more, all of them bought new starting at issue #1.
Looking back, I realize I never collected Iron Man, Captain America, or Doctor Strange because I didn’t care for the artwork, but the same style of artwork was OK for Spider Man and a few others, because I related to the character so well. I guess you could say I loved styles like those Jim Steranko created over those like Steve Ditko made, as a general rule, and if you compare those two artists styles you can extrapolate the rest of my preferences easily enough. But the STORIES from all those universes were riveting, both for their sci-fi wonderfulness and their depth of character development with the accompanying interpersonal relationships. To this day, I want more excellent graphics with killer story lines and dramatic emotional development, and I suspect that combination is why the Marvel Movie universe has been such a delight for me. Yes, I will be in the theater for this one. Hopefully in I-MAX 3D for probably two showings in a row.
The Last Days on Mars is a UK movie which is borderline horror and very much a thriller, but it includes some actors I like and some excellent production values. It has been out for a while on iTunes so will only be in a limited number of theaters, but I think it will look good on the big screen. Likewise the Canadian film Ice Soldiers only gets a limited run, also includes some actors I like, and has a very tasty looking trailer. Finally, the anime Puella Magi Madoka Magica the Movie Part III: The Rebellion Story will also be doing a limited run on American screens this week. The American offering this time around is Implanted, which did not look quite as interesting as the others when I viewed the trailer, so I will be waiting for that one to hit a streaming service to see it.
In movies we have The Wolverine, another excellent selection from the ongoing Marvel universe, this time from their X-Men franchise. As usual, you want to stay all the way to the end, so you don’t lose any clues about what might be coming up next. The other film of note is based on a book without so many pictures, The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones. That one was written by Cassandra Clare, the opening volume of her YA series The Mortal Instruments, part of The Shadowhunter Chronicles.
In TV, we continue with the 50th celebration, this weeks offering being Doctor Who: The Doctors Revisited 9-11. This group is Christopher Eccleston, David Tennant, and Matt Smith, and concludes the first dozen Doctors. A worthwhile grouping of the next set of characters, don’t you think?
In Western animation, Marvel’s Iron Man & Hulk: Heroes United is a good companion piece for Wolverine.
In Anime, Aquarion Evol is not exactly a direct sequel to Aquarion, since it takes place 12,000 years later, but it is set in the same universe with the same underlying premise. I don’t remember the first one being quite this filled with less than subtle double entendre’s, but perhaps I just forgot; I should go back and watch it again before I start the new series. The unique series Girls und Panzer is all about the high school girls clubs which salvage, maintain, and go into combat with each other in tanks, and they are doing a duel release this week. They have the complete OVA series at 6 episodes long, and the complete TV series at 12 episodes both hitting the shelves.
One Piece continues the epic, with season 5 part 4 bringing you episodes 300 through 312. Zatch Bell mes out as the complete seasons one and two, but instead of the normal 26 episodes you might assume, this set weighs in at 104 episodes. In this series, creatures known as mamodo come to Earth every thousand years to battle it out and determine who gets to rule them for the next millennium. They can only use their magic when teamed up with a human, and the mamodo known as Zatch Bell has teamed up with 14 year old Kiyo for this round of fighting.
I am back, and I survived the Doctor Who 50th Celebration, which was amazing, no to mention huge. I could make every post to the end of the year about this, and still have material left over to take me into the next. I am not going to do that, but it is amazing that I could if I wanted to. The panels were epic, each with an excellent assortment of people, each different from the others. The displays and exhibits were likewise world class, not to mention the dealer area, with the high points being Big Audio Finish, Forbidden Planet, and the BBC themselves. The line to get into that last area went around the entire display area, because they were set up with a green-screen processing function that everyone wanted to be a part of.
What you can’t really tell from that photo is that the hall keeps going back, and is just as packed the whole way. The friend I attended it with has several much better cameras than I have, perhaps she will have a better version of that image for me to upload.
Coming out on Wednesday rather than Friday this time, Frozen looks like a fun ride. If the trailers are anything to judge by, this one looks a lot like Tangled, which I really enjoyed.