From the team that did Chicken Run and the Wallace and Gromet series of films comes The Pirates! Band Of Misfits. As always with the output from this group expect a wonderful animation leaning heavily on the comedy side, but there will be a bit of a wait for it; this one comes out in March of 2012.
Emil Goodman created a very interesting Steampunk video as an initial concept piece for a project known as Henry Waltz. If he gets to build out the entire project, I will definitely be in the audience when it rolls out on the big screen.
HENRY WALTZ – VISUAL TEASER from Emil Goodman on Vimeo.
From Norway we have Troll Hunter, a fantasy adventure done in the venerable Blair Witches style of pseudo-reality film style (think no budget, shoddy film gear, and total lack of skill sets). Three collage students take a cheap film camera and follow a hunter into the wilderness, eventually figuring out that he was hunting creatures the government claimed were bears, but which turned out to be much less of this world. Also out this week, Assassin’s Creed: Lineage is a compilation of three short films that together make up a prequel to Assassin’s Creed II, bridging the gap between movie and game.
For TV, the primary selection this week is The Event: The Complete Series. I haven’t actually seen any of this shows episodes, because the premise and trailers struck me as somebody trying too hard to jump on the Lost bandwagon, which was kind of silly considering Lost was terminally past tense long before then. Much more interesting is the Live From Tokyo documentary about the city in Japan that has 1,000 bands playing each and every night.
Live From Tokyo Trailer from Lewis Rapkin on Vimeo.
In western animation, I have to vote for the New Adventures of Captain Amazing-Lad, pretty much a parody of any other superhero cartoon going. In eastern animation this weeks winner has to be Samurai Girls, which takes place in an alternate timeline where twenty first century Japan is still ruled by the Tokugawa Shogunate. The entire series may only be 12 episodes long, but they cover a lot of cultural and social upheavals in that time. Also out this week, the new Eden of the East: Paradise Lost brings us the next feature film in the exciting series. It would have gotten my top spot vote if it had been a season instead of a movie.
The folks over at Deadline are reporting that Ridley Scott is signed on to helm a new rendition of Bladerunner. The classic Philip K. Dick story explores one of his favorite themes, what does it mean to be human and how can you tell if someone is? Details are few and far between yet, such as will this be a prequel or a sequel, but I really don’t care. As a person who already bought every different edit and version of the original movie, I will definitely be in the theater for that one. Meanwhile, Trekweb reports that Walter Koenig has been talking about J. Michael Straczynski getting his hands back onto the rights for Babylon 5 and rolling out a new feature film for the franchise. That is another universe I have never gotten tired of, and I look forward to returning to it as well.
I enjoy webisodes of programs like Eureka or Battlestar Galactica, where an ongoing TV series has bonus content you can only watch on the web (or wait for the DVDs to come out). It often includes background into things they don’t cover in great detail on the TV shows, or a chunk of the story arc that takes place between two seasons of the main program, bridging the gap to tell you how we got there. There have also been several programs that got their start that way, most notably Sanctuary. Now it seems a new one is coming out, Bryan Singer’s HPlus, and judging by the trailer it is going to be a monster. Thanks to Sci-Fi author Steven Hunt for the heads up on this one. The premiss is H+ is a direct neural interface that connects your brain into the Net and allows you to process information and be productive like never before. It gives you such an advantage over the competition that everyone has to have it, and all but a tiny percentage of the population has it installed. And then the system crashes, killing everyone who has it; this series is about what happens next.
The new online portal JManga was launched today by the Japan’s Digital Comic Association, a coalition of 39 Japanese publishers. This site is a place for The companies to generate excitement for their products, which they predominately do by allowing fans to read many of the titles online, having creators interviews, and hosting a forum where your question about a given manga might be answered by the person who wrote or drew it. This site has been in closed Beta for a month or three now while they worked the bugs out, and tweaked they layout and features. With that many digital publishers signed on I expect this site will be the go-to place for all things Manga. Many of these groups already have their own Manga sites and apps, such as VIZ Manga, while others do not, but by banding together they will have the best chance of reaching their target market.