One of the least politically correct superhero comedies ever made, Misfits has been signed up for season 5 according to Digital Spy. Apparently they are also considering doing a movie, and if that happens we may get the return of a few of the earlier cast members as well. So far only the first two seasons are available in the US except through a service like Hulu Plus, and yes, this show is the reason I got a Hulu account.
For those who have not already seen this, get ready; it is going to be one hell of a ride! Star Trek Into Darkness looks like a killer production for the rebooted franchise, and if I could only get my Tardis working properly I would have already seen it.
Ok, not QUITE back yet, but coming soon, at least, as this trailer for Despicable Me 2 tends to indicate. I love the minions, and they have yet another opportunity to become their insane selves in the new movie. It should be hitting the big screen on July 3rd, just in time for some holiday silliness.
This Friday we have The Croods, the cave family working hard to invent civilization as we know it. I enjoyed the various trailers, and think this one should be quite amusing. And let’s face it, I’ll watch anything made by Dreamworks.
There isn’t much this week, but The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey is worth checking out. I was hoping they would have stuck with the one book = one movie format they did with the Ring series, but this one book they are dragging out into 3 movies. They are doing this by showing you a number of complete battles they mentioned in one or two sentences in the book, dragging in filler from some of Tolkien’s other works, and so forth. That’s it for movies, and there do not seem to be any live action TV shows this time around.
We do somewhat better in Anime, with One Piece Season 4 DVD Part 4 bringing us episodes 242 through 252; at this rate, we may catch up with real time episodes in another few years. Toriko: Part 3 continues the gastronomic combat series (it doesn’t deserve to be on the menu if it doesn’t have at least as good a chance of having you for diner when the hunt finishes).
Fate/Stay Night: Complete Collection is all 24 episodes of the Stay Night storyline, but remember there is also a movie called Fate/Stay Night: Unlimited Blade Works, which is an alternate retelling, an OVA collection called Fate: Prototype, and another TV series titled Fate: Zero, so I tend to take exception to the Complete Collection part of the designation.
Vampire Princess Miyu TV is an actual complete collection of the TV series, although there was an OVA set for this show as well. The half human vampire girl is doomed to be a teenager forever, fighting the forces of darkness to save mankind. The series aired in 1997 through 1998, but it was a sequel to the original 1988 show, so this is old school style anime. Another classic being re-released this week is Shin Getter Robo vs. Neo Getter, a Giant Mecha battle drama from 2000. It is an OVA of four 30 minute episodes. Finally, the much more recent Corpse Princess: The Complete Series is being released in a S.A.V.E. edition, which means you can add it to your collection for $20 or so if you shop around. She’ll kill anything that’s dead, to protect the living.
The obvious choice would be The Incredible Burt Wonderstone this week, with some great comedians doing an excellent job of showing us exactly how professional magicians deal with the real world. The cast for this flic is amazing, I can not imagine the creators getting all these excellent actors assembled for the project if they didn’t have a story worth telling. But it is not the only offering this time around; Vanishing Waves is in very limited release, but it has already won a ton of awards on the Film Festival circuit. It is about making neuro-enhansed real time contact with a coma patient, and exploring all the ways that might go in a non-physical environment. And then there is Noise Matters, which I swear reminds me of nothing so much as the comically brilliant indi film from Sweden, The Sound Of Noise. The core of both films center around people who take what most folks hear as noise, and weave them into complex musical presentations of scope and beauty. Where the films go from that starting point is radically different, but they do seem to share a bit of an attitude no matter how much they diverge.