Starz signed up to put Neil Gaiman’s American Gods into production, and it looks amazing so far. They have a new trailer I had to share here, and since they also posted their SXSW panel, I am throwing that in as well. The show premieres on Starz on April 30th, these should help you get ready for it! Thanks to Tor for the heads up on this one!
This week is the Disney live-action remake of Beauty And The Beast, more specifically the live action remake of the 1991 Disney animated version of Beauty and the Beast. Just last year we had the French remake La Belle et la Bête, but of course that one was the remake of the 1946 masterpiece La Belle et la Bête by visionary filmmaker and poet Jean Cocteau. That one was a direct adaptation of the 1757 story of the same name, written by Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont and published in an anthology of fairy tales. The other option this week is Atomica from Syfy Films, which seems to be a mid-future thriller with the potential to become a slasher movie, although I do like a couple of the actors involved.
The Western winner this week is Passengers, an excellent character driven romantic drama set against the backdrop of deep space during an era of interstellar expansion. Solace has a psychic doctor assisting a detective in tracking down a serial killer. The only problem is the serial killer is a psychic too, and a much better one than the doctor working with the FBI. It has a world class cast and an interesting trailer, the critical reviews indicate the movie has some serious flaws but the chemistry between the cast makes it work despite them.
In Anime, K: Missing Kings is the movie bridge between season 1 and season 2; there are 7 kings in the world, each with their own special power which they can grant in greater or lesser degrees to their followers. And there is war between the secret kings, with the potential to overturn the mundane world entirely. Ben To: The Complete Series is being released in a S.A.V.E. edition, with a totally different kind of war. In grocery stores across Japan, the battle for half-priced Bento boxes has become fierce.
Nevertheless She Persisted is a sci-fi/fantasy flash fiction collection featuring unique visions of women inventing, playing, loving, surviving, and – of course – dreaming of themselves beyond their circumstances, according to the event’s page at Tor. It was the reaction of some world-class authors to the statement made when Senator Elizabeth Warren was silenced on the floor of the United States Senate for reading the words of Coretta Scott King last month:
Yesterday, on International Women’s Day, a number of those authors ran with it, turning an attempt at subjugation into the inspiration behind a collection of stories you absolutely need to read. And you don’t have to pay a penny to do so; they are posted online at Tor, free and accessible to all. Enjoy, and perhaps even be inspired; I certainly was.
Tomorrow we get Sword Art Online the Movie -Ordinal Scale- in a one night special event presentation. I had to include one more trailer for it, since this one is different than the others. When we hit Friday Kong: Skull Island, with what appears to be the biggest King Kong ever put in a movie. I had to include that trailer as well, because I think both movies are going to be a lot of fun.
This time around we get Moana, a quality animation telling one of the stories of the transpacific culture that spans a range of islands from Tahiti to Hawaii. They have been some of the most successful explorers the world has ever known, and have an artistic and musical tradition unique on the planet. As near as I can remember, this film is the first sympathetic treatment of that culture to receive world wide distribution and major box office success. Also out, Bad Kids of Crestview Academy, what you wold get if they filmed The Breakfast Club in the Nightmare on Elm Street neighborhood, a comedy/horror. About the only thing we get in Anime is the S.A.V.E. edition of Wanna Be the Strongest in the World!, which has both the complete series plus the OVAs. I am not certain that that one is even genre, but being a series about an Idol who becomes a Pro Wrestling Diva I am going to call it Fantasy, if only so I don’t have to skip the Anime entry altogether.