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Something to Watch: DVDs

The Watch is a comedy about neighborhood patrol types out to protect themselves from an alien invasion, much as we saw in Attack The Block. It does have one particularly good comedic actor, who you will no doubt recognize from IT Crowd. The other live action film this week is Snowmageddon, and it also has a few actors you will recognize.

In TV, Doctor Who: Series Seven, Part One brings us the first half of the latest season, 7 episodes long. The Christmas special and the episodes in 2013 will comprise the second half, but they will have a special treat among them: Neil Gaiman is writing another episode, and after what he did with The Doctors Wife I can’t wait to see it!

The other TV series this time is Lost Girl: The Complete Second Season, and if you haven’t been following it, you really should start soon. This is a very well done series with a bit of a supernatural twist. Pretty much everything else coming out this week is a re-release of a classic or recent series, with the possible exception of Variable Geo Neo. That OVA set was made back in 2004, but I do not know if it was previously released in North America or not.

There are several quality selections in Western Animation this week from Pixar, including their wonderful feature film Brave. If you missed it in the theaters, now is the time to correct that error, and if you didn’t you already know how good it is. They are also releasing the Pixar Short Films Collection: Volume 2, with still more amazing and intelligent animations for the whole family. A motion comic rather than an animation, Marvel Knights Astonishing X-Men: Unstoppable is the fourth installation in this story arc, with Joss Whedon and John Cassaday bringing impeccable storytelling and quality graphics to the table once again.

The Anime feature film this week is Children Who Chase Lost Voices, another excellent story by award winning Makoto Shinkai, who’s previous works include 5 Centimeters Per Second and Voices of a Distant Star. His animations have a haunting beauty about them, and his stories always go right for the heart. Pretty much everything else is a re-release of some form, such as Linebarrels of Iron: Complete Series, which is coming out in a S.A.V.E. version (Super Amazing Value Edition). That means if you shop around, you can probably find it for around $20 or so.

World War Z

A different kind of End Of The World movie, World War Z is based on An Oral History of the Zombie War by Max Brooks, and the screenplay done by J. Michael Straczynsk (Babylon 5, Jeremiah, Thor, etc.). Brad Pitt liked it enough to be part of the movie project, and when they made the Audiobook the cast included Allen Alda, Carl Reiner, Rob Reiner, and Mark Hamill. I’m thinking this one could be fun.

Lady And The Reaper

Sometimes, in the battle between life and death, the right choice is the wrong choice. Or so, at least, it would seem. This wonderful animation again has nothing actually resembling words, but it doesn’t need them. The video tells the story just fine all by itself.

Something to Watch: DVDs

Topping the movie list this week is The Amazing Spider-Man, the world class reboot of the movie side of the franchise. A related documentary, With Great Power: The Stan Lee Story, is also being released this week. I find that a bit confusing, because I watched the documentary several weeks ago on Netflix, usually the DVD comes first. Eleven Samurai was the 1966 martial arts masterpiece the more recent 13 Samurai got a lot of its chops from, although some have said they felt Thirteen Assassins was one of the models for Eleven Samurai itself. Whatever the relationships, this one has some amazing fight scene choreography and is a classic of the genre.

In TV, Wolf Lake is being released about a small town of Werewolves just outside of Seattle. This was made for CBS, who canceled the series 5 episodes into the first season. So while the 9 episodes in the box are the complete series, you can’t even say it was the first season, since that was supposed to have 13 episodes all together. While it isn’t exactly TV, the original movie house serials from the 30s and 40s became instant episodic programming presented on TV in the 1950s, usually on Saturday mornings to keep the kids entertained. So this would be the place to mention Dick Tracy: The Complete Serial Collection is coming out this week, a total of 4 different serials made by Republic Pictures fro 1937 to 1941, along wit a collection of special features. Why mention a cop show on this web page? He was originally a comic book character, and most of the criminals he was out to get looked just like the criminals from Batman, which is close enough for me.

We have a couple of entries in western animation this week. Arthur Christmas is from Aardman, the animation team that do Wallace and Gromit, as well as Sean the Sheep. We are also getting Red vs. Blue: Season 10, the finest Machinima Combat Comedy series ever made. If you haven’t been following this from day one, you can pick up 10 Years of Red vs. Blue and get all 10 seasons in a single box set. Since season 10 completes the story, once I get my hands on it I am going on a serious marathon, starting at the beginning of season 1 and watching the entire thing to the end. You can also watch it online at that link since it was originally Webisodes.

Kung Fu Panda: Holiday kind of falls between western and eastern animation, since it is a joint effort between the US and Chinese branches
of Dreamworks and Disney. This new short feature is 25 minutes of amazing animation and wonderful story telling. I hope they keep this production quality when they crank out the Kung Fu Panda TV series for Nick, and not hand it off to second string animation teams like the Penguins of Madagascar franchise did.

Horizon in the Middle of Nowhere starts off the Anime section for this week, with the complete first season. Humans came to Earth from the skies, and in order to return they have to follow the path in The Testament. But now only Japan is inhabitable, the other countries surviving armies have each taken over a piece of it, and the Testament ends this year and with it possibly the world. Psychic Squad – Collection 4 brings episodes 40 through 52 of the series, and more insanity from the Pre-teen psychics that have every security agency in the world scared to death.

Maria Watches Over Us continues with season 2, but while the audio is Japanese, it has an interesting set of English subtitles. One is standard English usage, the other retains all of the original Japanese honorifics, especially useful for those trying to learn polite Nihongo. Although there are some sites that claim this one will come out next week, rather than this. I should also mention Ristorante Paradiso, because even though neither of these is really genre, they are both worth checking out.

Sengoku Basara: The Last Party brings the final conclusion to the battleground series that began as a game and expanded into an Anime series. This is a historical epic full of gun-toting mechanized samurai and mystical ninja that stepped sideways through time to get to us.

There is a re-release worth noting this week: Golden Boy, in a complete series package. This started life as an OVA about a law school dropout who went to study what school couldn’t teach, and ended up being a nice little series about the various disciplines necessary to create a Manga/Anime. If you haven’t seen this one before, I think you will find it worth your time.

Big Buck Bunny

Oops! Had to fix a bad video link; this one is from the Blender Foundation, so it should stay good. If you haven’t seen it before, Big Buck Bunny was made as a Blender project a few years back, more I think to prove that you could indeed get professional grade animation out of free open source software than any other reason. In the process they made a wonderful little video about a a friendly rabbit gone Rambo and the evil squirrels you will not soon forget. Grab your own free copy of Blender and start creating today!