Attack The Block is a UK movie in which a bunch of inner city kids fight back against an outer space alien invasion, with a little help from Nick Frost. This one looks to be good silly fun, but I haven’t seen a US release date for it yet. Much more serious is Falling Skies is a US TV series that is a lot more serious. When it opens we are already 6 months into the alien invasion, and humanity is fighting for its very existence. TNT will roll out Falling Skies in June, and you can see the new trailer here.
Pick of the week would have to be Source Code, about a soldier who is part of an anti-terrorist task force, and who keeps getting shoved back through time so he can gather intelligence about who planted the bomb, so they can be arrested. But that is not good enough for him; he knows that the true task is to save the victims on the train from the bomb. The problem is doing so would lead to some serious causality loops, possibly as severe as an actual paradox, and that threatens the very existence of the task force, and maybe even the planet. This one is worthy of Philip K. Dick in its twisty recursiveness, and is another win for Duncan Jones.
Also out this week, Super is the story of a man who turns himself into a costumed vigilante after loosing his girlfriend to a drug dealer. The Crimson Bolt may not have any super powers, but he does have attitude and a serious wrench as well as some great actors involved with project. For the younger crowd, the animated Hop shows what happens when the Easter Bunny gets run over by a distracted driver.
Finally, in a bid for the Batshit Crazy award we have Rubber, a film about a telekinetic tire which goes on a killing spree. This one is so outside the box it has a shot at cult status if the quality holds up.
The new trailer for Dreamworks Animation’s Kung Fu Panda 2 gives us the basic plot line as well as making it obvious the quality of the animation is every bit as good as we have come to expect from that production house. The target date for this one is May 26th.
I have been waiting for, and blogging about, Sucker Punch for close to two years now. The wait is over, because it hits the big screen this weekend, and I will guaranteed be there.This animated short, The Trenches, is a bit of a spin-off from the project. There is also a movie coming out this weekend called The 5th Quarter, but sadly it is not based on the book written by Tanya Huff.
Skyline was not well received in part because Earth lost to the alien invaders. To me that wasn’t the point of the movie, but just part of the backdrop; the story was abut never giving up, even when they rip the spine and brain out of your body to use as spare programmable automation parts. I also thought that having humans be one of the resources the invasion was plundering the planet for was a realistic touch. It wouldn’t be cost effective to attack across interstellar distances if you did not maximize your return by utilizing everything you could from the target, and the processing power in the human brain still outstrips any computer we have managed to build so far. Odds are good their programming techniques would use far more than the 10% of the brain that most people are stuck with. A related film coming out on DVD this week, Battle of Los Angeles, I believe is the version from the Syfy Channel TV Movie production team, and not the one that hit the theaters a few weeks back.
This weeks documentary pick is the Walking Dead Girls, with George A. Romero, Lloyd Kaufman, and Bruce Campbell telling all about the rise of sexy bimbo zombies in America’s film culture. Even though I am not a horror fan, I had to mention this one for the silly factor alone.
For the younger crowd, Adventures of a Teenage Dragonslayer includes a wicked vice-principal, an evil dragon, a magical troll, and a 12 year old protagonist. Despite the title, the target audience appears to be noticeably younger than teenagers. Targeting that same audience, Arthur and the Invisibles 2 & 3: The New Minimoy also gets released on disk this week. It can be no surprise that the latter production is the superior product, since it comes from Luc Besson.
In anime, Bleach Uncut Box Set 8 comes out this week, bringing the US releases of the mostly human soul reaper team up to episode 151. One that looks like a lot of fun is Melancholy of Haruhi-Chan Suzumiya & Nyoron Churuya-san. This one started life as a Dojinshi, or fan-created manga, usually put together by a small team of fans, printed in limited runs, and sold at the huge Manga fests they run in Tokyo. This particular series was a parody of the original, done in small 4-panel single page segments, and it became so popular over there that it got picked up by Kodokawa and turned into an Anime series. Fair warning, the characters in this series are done in that terminally cute little-people Anime style known to cause kawaii overdoses in the sugar sensitive.
Also out this week, Ghost Sweeper Mikami Collection 3 continues the story of the money-hungry exorcist and her perverted sidekick as they use their considerable talents to satisfy their own personal desires. Finely, Kanokon: The Complete Series will finally become available. This one was supposed to follow the normal distribution path, first releasing three DVD volumes over the course of 6 months to a year (last year), and then coming out with the box set. But the second and third volumes were delayed to the point where Media Blasters finally announced they would just release the whole thing in a single package and price it low enough that those of us who bought volume 1 separately would not be punished for it. The story line is simple an familiar; boy (Kouta) transfers to new high school, meets girl Fox Deity (Chizuru) and rival girl Wolf Deity (Nozomu), both of whom want him for their own. Trust me when I say the normal high school male is helpless before two human girls in this kind of situation. When the women in question are both goddesses I give no odds on the boy surviving, let alone making a coherent decision about which one to be with. Obviously, this one is a comedy.
The new Super 8 trailer gives you a taste of what to expect from this collaboration between J. J. Abrams and Steven Spielberg. The film itself will hit the big screen on June 10th. To almost no-ones surprise, once more J.J. buried some clues in the video, including a link to the Super 8 Editing Room. Once there you can turn on the projector and watch the few clips already posted, although it looks like they intend to add a bunch more over time until you get a small little self contained movie. If you have a video editor that allows you to step through the trailer a frame at a time you will find some interesting still photos at the end of it as well.