There are several good choices this time, starting with Suicide Squad, which I have more hope for now that they retooled it somewhat to add more humor. DC saw the box office Deadpool pulled and figured they would give it a shot, I am hoping this makes it a bit more fun than their entirely dark take from the recent Superman/Batman outing. If you are looking for something lighter and more family friendly, the classic tale The Little Prince is brought to life in an animation format for the first time, and it looks excellent. Finally the fantasy Nine Lives is about a business man who gets trapped in the body of his cat. I ordinarily wouldn’t even consider this one, but it has Kevin Spacey and Christopher Walken, so it could be good.
Tesla Noir, French Animated Steampunk, and turning people into animals against their will; this is an interesting week for disc releases. April and the Extraordinary World is French animated Steampunk at its finest, and I can’t wait to see it. The Lobster is already coming out on disc, even though it is still in its limited run of theaters. If you don’t partner up and couple down by a certain age, you are transmogrified into an animal and turned loose in the wild to fend for yourself. The American Side has the protagonist drawn into a race to find a secret device designed by Tesla with unknown powers and potential, hidden somewhere near the power plant that Tesla also designed, but which was built by his adversary Edison at Niagara Falls. There is also another DC animated release, Batman: The Killing Joke, which might have been better if they hadn’t brought it to the screen.
In Anime, Gundam Build Fighters: Complete Collection looks like a good choice, as does The Rolling Girls: The Complete Series, kind of a superhero road trip. Plus World Break: Aria of Curse for a Holy Swordsman is the complete series in one box, about reincarnated warriors going to school together, and Jormungand looks at illegal arms dealers out to save the world. For once I haven’t seen a single one of these, so I am going to flip a coin and start streaming the winner.
Alderamin on the Sky is told as a history of a legendary tactician and general, who became great because he was lazy and had no interest in fighting. It is set in a very steampunk universe, with compressed air rifles and airships, and a technology base from around 1820 or so. It opens with our protagonist traveling with a childhood friend he is escorting on her journey to a military academy. They meet new friends on the ship they are sailing on, which runs into trouble leaving them stranded behind enemy lines. I was hooked by the end of the first episode, and every episode since has been better than the one before. We are up to the 4th episode, with a new episode popping up every Friday.
I had to share just one more, so here is Nerd HQ 2016: A Conversation with the Cast of Orphan Black, having A Conversation For A Cause. This particular gathering raised $4,000 for the charity, and everyone did an excellent job. Including the audience; the questions were quite thought provoking, and the answers positively inspired.
I have always been a Holmes fan, and Sherlock is the best there has ever been. So here are two offerings from this weekends Comic Con event, the new trailer, and the related gathering from Nerd HQ 2016 which benefited Operation Smile this year. The sessions of this project are referred to as A Conversation For A Cause, and it is exactly that. The format is a small intimate room at the San Diego New Children’s Museum, which seats a limited number of people, all of whom pay a noticeable (but not exorbitant) amount of money to attend. A small group of major players of some cult favorite show gather on stage, with another cult favorite actor from an unrelated property as the moderator. The folks on stage have a chat about the program they are involved in, then the moderator invites questions from the audience.
As near as I have been able to tell, 100% of the money raised by this series of events goes to the charity. The audience gets to have the kind of one-on-one experience with the show makers that used to be common several decades ago, when only us nerds and geeks even knew this kind of convention was happening, but which seems to have evaporated around the turn of the century. The participating actors, writers, and directors of these shows all get to contribute their time (and money; lots of them also make a contribution beyond their mere attendance), connect even more personally with their most loyal fans, and by doing so generate an impressive amount of revenue for the charity. As a person who was a member of the group who created the original Beg-A-Thon which was then used as the model all PBS radio and TV stations put into play to raise public awareness and money (crowdfunding decades before most people became aware that it was an option), I don’t see a downside to this project. The fact that they then make these sessions available to the general public (with or without editing, it could go either way but what I see makes me think without) is just yet another bonus as far as all us fans are concerned. Enjoy!
And the 3 new Han Solo movies; Games Radar has been doing an excellent job of covering the Sci-Fi scene since they picked up the SFX web site and added it to their online team. Click the first link to read about the trilogy of Han Solo movies, and check out the video for a quick run down of the con from the other week.