Announced this past Saturday, Continuum has been renewed for a second season. Lots of other great announcements out of Fan Expo Canada, which ran in Toronto over the last weekend. For those of us who have been missing out because we live in the US, it was also announced Continuum will be coming to a major U.S. network, but no clues yet which one it is. Supposedly they will start with season one and dovetail straight into season two, which is kind of a clue that they won’t be hitting the screen any time too soon, since they just got the go-ahead to start production on season two. Still, I can’t wait!
While there are no exciting new movies this week, there is one exciting movie being released in IMAX for the first time: Flying Swords of Dragon Gate IMAX 3D. This is a 2011 remake of the classic Dragons Inn films from China, starring Jet Li, and the 3D is some of the best I have seen from that part of the world. It will only be around for 2 weeks, so catch it while you can.
There are two animated full length feature films worth checking out this week, with The Pirates! Band of Misfits being another excellent comedy from the folks who brought you Chicken Run, Wallace and Gromit, and Shaun The Sheep. The trailer alone had me in stitches, the movie itself is a hoot. On the more action/adventure side of life Starship Troopers: Invasion is the fourth story in the film sequence, with Casper Van Diem as the executive producer. Which may be a bit confusing since it is an animated presentation rather than live action; but it is part of the feature film series, and not the Roughnecks TV show animations. And with Shinji Aramaki as the director (his work on the Appleseed movies, Halo, and Gasaraki among others prove his skill set in producing adult oriented mecha power suit combat films) this will definitely end up being a production Robert A. Heinlein would have been proud to see.
The live action movie this time is Battleship, which still makes me scratch my head; I consider this the strangest choice for a computer game you would want to turn into a movie, perhaps exceeded only by Solitaire. Unlike the two animated feature films this week, I will catch this one on streaming when it hits that market rather than add it to the permanent collection.
In TV, Once Upon A Time was one of my two favorite shows on broadcast TV (Grimm being the other) last fall, and with the new season kicking off at the end of September the timing is perfect for this DVD release. A big chunk of why I think that is I normally DVR broadcast TV shows and watch them from the hard drive, but with this series and Grimm I decided to try out a strictly streaming approach. Unfortunately between my workload from the office and some capacity issues with the streaming servers during peak usage times I missed some episodes of each series before they were replaced by the following weeks offering. So now I have a chance to catch up with everything that happened before the new season starts, and yes, I did grab the $10 off coupon the ABC Once site has posted, good for this week only.
The other TV show this go round is The Walking Dead: The Complete Second Season. I am not a horror fan generally, but my friends who are seem to love this show. I may get around to checking it out soon if they keep up the positive comments.
For western animation I am a bit torn on whether to give a recommendation or not. I absolutely love Dreamworks and all their masterpieces of whatever length, but this week is just confusing. The DVD is Dreamwork’s Spooky Stories, which is made from Shrek’s Thrilling Tales, as well as Scared Shrekless and Mutant Pumpkins From Outer Space. I already own the latter two discs which were released months ago, and I own another Shrek short DVD which may or may not be the third story under a different title. But if you don’t own any Mutant Vs. Alien or Shrek short presentations than I can definitely recommend it, as the stories are hysterical. I just wish they would have been a little less ambiguous about the included titles, so I would know if I already owned them all, or at least had a search function of the Dreamworks home page so I could find more information.
In Anime, Freezing is a tale of genetically enhanced schoolgirls called Pandora’s out to kill alien invaders with the aid of their male partners, known as Limiters. And yes, you may assume the males job does not involve any actual combat, this series being more fan service oriented than anything else. One particular newly forged battle couple (Satellizer el Brigette as the Pandora, Kazuya as the Limiter) seems to be under attack by their classmates as well as the aliens, and must work twice as hard to annihilate their opponents. This one is a bit pricey, running around $42 for 12 episodes.
Pretty much the opposite of that series is Koihime MusÅ – Ultimate Collection, about a woman warrior from historical times who becomes a role model for other oppressed women, who all take up arms and flock to her banner. This boxed set is comprised of 3 full series each of which is 12 to 13 episodes, plus a few OVAs, so even though the asking price starts at $52 for the set (lowest price, it ranges up to $80), you get 975 minutes of program for your money, which works out to $1.30 per episode for this series.
Finally, K-ON! Season 2 – Collection 2 becomes available. I know it isn’t genre, but it is about rock music, and that is good enough for me.
Yes, next Saturday night we have a new Doctor Who episode, Asylum of the Daleks, on both BBC UK and BBC America. This episode kicks off season 7 of the New Who series, and continues into next year, leading us to the 50th Anniversary Special. The BBC America trailer covers the season, the BBC UK trailer covers the episode, and I will be there to watch it! I am not one of the very limited number of people at the special screening of the episode in New York City tonight, but I don’t feel bad, because neither is Steven Moffat, and it is his show.
The Mars Descent Imager camera, MARDI for short, took a bunch of 1600X1200 pixel resolution pictures during the decent and landing. As usual with things that happen so far away, the bandwidth of the uplink back to Earth was the choke point on our retrieving the sequence, but now we have it. The original capture rate was 5 images per second, but this playback is at 15 frames/second, so it takes noticeably less than the original 7 minutes of terror (watch second video for that one) to play the video back. Use the link to watch the video on YouTube if you want to see it in full 1080P resolution. Thanks to Peta Pixel for the heads up on this one.
Not the original Terry Nation production that ran on the BBC for four seasons beginning in 1978, but according to the Hollywood Reporter, a brand new production made for the Syfy Channel for the US market. You can find a more extensive article about the project at The Guardian, although the facts available remain the same except for the item they consider the director worth mentioning for (the TV show Heroes in the US, the movie Goldeneye in the UK). As depressing as the plotline often was, I enjoyed the original Blake’s 7, and look forward to seeing if it gets the same quality of reboot as Syfy gave Battlestar Galactica.