The choice this week is Spectre, the latest in the James Bond series, and perhaps the last that Daniel Craig will be Bond for. I appreciate the whole Day Of The Dead tie in, considering the timing. There are also a couple of other good choices, including The Peanuts Movie for classic animation fans, and Macbeth for straight-up classic fans. Myself, I will probably be making the Bond selection; I loved the Ian Flemming books, so I should support the films made from them.
Movies brings us Pixar’s Inside Out, where the main characters are various emotions running loose all across our subconscious. A Lego Brickumentary explores the history and uses of Lego’s from perspectives I had never imagined, and ended up being quite an interesting documentary.
TV has Doctor Who: Series 9 Part 1 which contains the first six episodes of season 9 of the new series. If you look at the same show in the UK they have it flagged as season 35, which is really a bit more accurate. The other offering is the single episode animation Toy Story That Time Forgot, from Disney/Pixar again.
In Anime, GLASSLIP: Complete Collection is about an ordinary person working to become a professional glassblower, but when she sees things reflected in glass, sometimes they are things that don’t happen until several days later. When she meets a boy who claims a voice from the future led him to her, she begins to re-evaluate what is going on in her world. If Her Flag Breaks is about a boy who sees “flags” over people who are about to have a major change in their life caused by the choices they make. Those changes might effect their love lives or even just whether they will live or die, and now he has some hard choices of his own to make.
Fairy Tail: Collection 5 contains episodes 97 through 120, which covers almost half a year of episodes at a price equal to Fairy Tale: Part 18, which is the more recent story, but has half the number of episodes for the same amount of money. Finally, Fafner: The Complete Series plus Movie is coming out in a S.A.V.E. edition, which means you can get the whole thing for right around $20.
The trailer for Ghost in the Shell: The New Movie is out, and the film will be in US theaters on November 10th, 11th, and 16th. This is the franchise that first brought Cyberpunk to the big screen in 1995, and along with Akira introduced American audiences to Japanese Anime. Meanwhile, the live action version of Ghost in the Shell, The Movie starring Scarlett Johansson has been pushed back to a March 2017 release, and is currently having its script rewritten.
The short animation Descendants is a wonderful and touching piece of work, but thanks to the CG Society publishing of the article it is even more than that; it is an excellent tutorial in animation production. When you read the Making Of, you get an understanding of what some of the challenges are in the animation process, and some of the options available for solving each one. So if you have ever considered making your own animation, watch this amazing example, read the Making Of, and consider how to apply its lessens to your own production.
Descendants from Goro Fujita on Vimeo.
This short but quality animation is called No-A and pronounced Noah, and it has a lot of heart for having a robotic protagonist. The team that put it together was lead by Director Liam Murphy, Producer Chloe Mortensen, and Executive Producer Xeon Xai. It has won some awards, and you can get some more details here.
The season has already started for both The Flash and Arrow, but these are quite tasty and worth sharing even so.