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Something to Watch: DVDs

Underworld: Awakening is the movie out this week, and while it is the fourth from that franchise it is far from the best of the bunch according to the reviews I have read.

Much more promising, Chuck: The Complete Fifth and Final Season was a great send off for a wonderful show. If you haven’t added anything from this series to your collection yet, they are also coming out with Chuck: The Complete Series this week. The other TV release is The Twilight Zone: More Fan Favorites, another collection of 20 great episodes from the original series.

In Anime, Occult Academy: The Complete Series is a real gem, involving a school researching the paranormal which has a time traveler arrive from the future to try to stop invading aliens from destroying the world, an event which is in his personal past. It includes one of the best examples of character growth I have seen in an Anime, in part I suspect because the character started out as a complete asshole, and had no interest in improving himself; he evolved almost against his will. I watched this every week an hour after it aired in Tokyo on Crunchyroll streaming, which is unusual for me. Normally I will catch up with whatever Japanese and Korean shows I am watching that season over the weekend, but I just could not wait to find out what happened next on that show.

Also new this week, Queen’s Blade 2: The Evil Eye is the conclusion of the battle to become Queen, with the survivors of the previous rounds squaring off against one another. Besides containing episodes 1 through 12 of the second season, it includes episodes 7 through 12 of the OVA series (the first 6 OVA episodes were on the season 1 collection). If this was a live action series, I might make a comment here on how they saved production costs by reducing the wardrobe department to a single employee, who was only given enough of a budget to buy one square yard of cloth, from which everyone’s outfits had to be made. Since this is an animated program, they didn’t even have budgeting problems to use as an excuse for the skimpy outfits, although I suspect no male fans of the series will complain.

The remaining entries are not completely new, but are worth noting. Guin Saga: The Complete Collection, is in a more cost effective package than the two individual season box sets previously released.

Finally, Kanokon: The Girl Who Cried Fox includes both the series and the shorter OVA series (only 4 15 minute long episodes) in a single box set. I find this last kind of annoying since they released the first DVD volume of the series, but never the second and third; if you had the first one, you had to re-buy it again as part of the Complete Collection when that came out. Then they released the OVA series, totaling 60 minutes of video, for the same price as if it was an entire season of full episodes. Now that they have combined the two, it is for the same price as the original complete collection, which means if you already own the complete collection you are again paying for a full season series to get a single hour of new video. I can only recommend this for folks who have never bought any part of the previously released DVDs. And maybe not then, not because they are not fun Anime to watch and enjoy, but simply because they have ticked me off by releasing this in a haphazard manner designed to squeeze maximum bucks for minimum footage out of any potential customers. As a potential customer in a brutal economy, this does not endear them to my heart, and I will not be buying it myself. Media Blasters generally is quite good with its releases and has a lot of great titles. I am not sure what happened this time, but I hope it is not the start of a trend.

Total Recall trailer

Much like the last new Total Recall trailer, with some extra footage. My only regret about this version of the Philip K. Dick classic is they are skipping Mars. Probably because we abandoned our space program and they didn’t want to show China colonizing the planet with us left out.

Something to Do: Movies

The first blockbuster of the summer is finally here: The Avengers, with Joss Whedon at the helm and all the actors you would expect in their various rolls. If you have been going to the movies for the past handful of years you have been watching them build up to this one, movie by movie. If you haven’t, no need to panic, because you can do them ALL AT ONCE!!!! Two different theater chains are running marathons of all 6 of the movies (yes, I know there are way more than 6 Marvel movies, but in this instance we are only talking about the 6 leading up to the Avengers, and even at that they are only including the second Hulk movie, where I think they should have started with Hulk 1), select Cinemark theaters will let you watch them all for $20 for the set, assuming you are close enough to one of the theaters with the deal and they haven’t already sold out, while AMC has the same deal going for the same set of movies at twice the price. In order, the films for the marathons are: Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk, Iron Man 2, Thor 3D, Captain America 3D, and The Avengers 3D.

Something to Watch: DVDs

Not exactly a top week for movies on DVD, the only genre flic I could find was Thunderstorm: Return of Thor, based on a comic book version of the god published by Fox Comics back in the 1940s. While I found the concept interesting, I am underwhelmed by its execution, and would sooner recommend the non-genre Haywire, which is at least a fun action romp. Or if you are interested in a documentary, Films Of Fury: The Kung Fu Movie Movie is a lot of fun, giving some background and history along with some interviews to tell you how we got here.

In TV The Invisible Man: The Complete Series is the 1975 David McCallum version, which took place between his Man from Uncle and his VR.5 series. Also out this week, Curiosity with Stephen Hawkings has a first rate mind looking at the creation of the universe.

Story Corps: Animated Shorts is an animated subset of one of the biggest oral history projects ever attempted, put together by the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress. If you have been following their broadcasts on NPR or listening to their podcasts, you will probably want to check this one out.

In Anime the new release is Psychic Squad: Collection 1, a story of 3 young psychic girls and the guy who has to try to keep them on mission in the field. His survival, and the planet’s, are both in question. There streaming service is not available in my part of the world, depending on where you are you may have better luck (it is all a matter of licensing).

Finally, Dirty Pair: Features DVD Collection is being re-released by Right Stuff, becoming available for the first time in the US since ADV went out of business. If you already have ADV’s Dirty Pair Movie Collection this is the same set, but if you don’t it will bring you closer to completing your collection.