Amazon streaming video is releasing Ronja, The Robber’s Daughter next Friday, the 27th. Based on the Astrid Lindgren fantasy novel and put together by Goro Miyazaki at Studio Ghibli, with Gillian Anderson narrating the story. On that same day, Netflix will launch iBoy, a movie about a teen with cell phone superpowers running around London. I plan to check them both out, as they both look interesting in completely different ways. The Ronja trailer is here, see my previous post for the iBoy trailer.
I found this video amazing; it is an explanation of how they used a real person to create a game character, and in the process invented the combination of technology needed to allow that person to act in real time in the game. Which means that anyone with deep enough pockets (which would have to be very deep, at this point) could schedule time to get themselves scanned and processed, buy the gear including the head mounted camera system, and do the same thing. It allows you to be fully immersed in the 360 VR game environment as yourself, with everyone able to see and hear you, right down to your current facial expression. Of course, it will be a decade or so before the price comes down enough that the rest of us get to try this out, but its good to know it is on the way.
Picturehouse teamed up with the Science Museum in the UK to give away 10 pairs of tickets to the Robots exhibition. Why is this important enough to mention, even though the odds of my stopping by before it closes are slim to zip? Because I wish I could be there, and if I mention it you might manage to actually make it. This isn’t a collection of metal boxes with faces painted on them; it is the 500-year-old story of humanoid robots and what it means to be human. The presentation is set in five different periods and places, with over 100 robots, 15 of which still work today. If you are one of the luck few that manage to attend this display, I would be grateful if you could take a few pictures and send them my way, so I could post them here. The exhibition will be running from from February 8th to the 3rd of September 2017, so you have a bit of time to catch it.
Based on the 2010 Kevin Brooks novel, Netflix’s iBoy should be a wild ride. It looks like they did it as a single movie rather than a series, and you can watch it on Friday the 27th. Yes, that does mean the end of next week.
The one western program I am excited about this week is 12 Monkeys: Season Two, the Syfy channel show with a great cast and story line. Roger Cormen is still making workmanlike films on shoestring budgets, and his Death Race 2050 is the latest to be released direct to disc. The animation Long Way North has been winning awards on the Film Festival circuit for the last year or better, but it never got a wide theatrical release, and also comes out direct to disc this week. And then there is Surf’s Up 2: Wave Mania, which I have also found no theatrical release for, but it might have been on TV at some point. This is a joint project between Sony Pictures and the WWE, with a number of their star wrestlers doing the voice actor work for the surfing penguins.
We don’t have much in Anime this week either. Nothing new, and just the latest box set each for two returning favorites. Naruto Shippūden Set 29 has episodes 362 through 374, while Fairy Tail: Collection 6 gives us episodes 121 through 142. Both of these long running shows are well worth following.
Another good Jackie Chan film coming out later this year is Kung Fu Yoga, and the trailer looks quite amusing. This Bollywood/Chinese hybrid film should be the second in a series, since Jackie previously played an archeologist running all over the place while hunting a treasure down. That was in The Myth in 2005, with Stanly Tong directing both films. He was also supposed to be an Archeologist in the Jackie Chan Adventures animated series. Bollywood has a serious hand in this release, and it looks like he gets at least one choreographed song-and-dance sequence with his beautiful archeologist costar, Amyra Dastur. Being a big fan of Bollywood films, I am keeping my fingers crossed they get multiple songs in. This will be hitting US theaters on Friday, January 27th, only two weeks from now, and I will be there to see it!