There are two excellent choices this time around, the live action option being Tomorrowland from Disney. I have been watching that one spit out new trailers for a while now, and am quite excited about it. We also get the animated When Marnie Was There from Studio Ghibli in a noticeably more limited release. I plan to try to make both of them.
In Movies we have Hot Tub Time Machine 2, a movie I haven’t seen but which was panned by just about every critic I have read. My thoughts are to watch this one when it comes to one of the streaming services I am already paying for anyways. We also get the animated fantasy Strange Magic from Disney and George Lucas, which looks like it could be quite fun (yep, I haven’t seen this one either).
TV gives us Beauty & The Beast: Season 2, which sadly only seems to be available in Standard Def. But it is in time to be able to binge watch it before season 3 kicks off on June 11th.
There is a single new entry in the Anime category this week, in the form of .hack//Roots: The Complete Series. One of this seasons shows which I am really enjoying, Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon?, is up to episode 7 on the anime series, but its Manga only becomes available in the US this Tuesday; I mention it because it usually works the other way around.
In movies, The Cobbler is a story about a shoe repair man working in the same shop his family has run for generations who is granted the ability to live his customers lives by walking in their shoes… literally. The premise has a lot of potential, but the critics paned the movie brutally, and is is coming out on disc only a month after it was in the theaters for very little money, not a very promising sign. These Final Hours is a film about the last 12 hours before a meteor wipes out all life on Earth; but even though its theatrical run was limited to a handful of screens in Australia, it has received acclaim from the critics and a 78% rating from Rotten Tomatoes. While not genre, Blackhat does star Thor’s Chris Hemsworth, but that may be about all that can really be said for it. In western animation we get Batman Unlimited: Animal Instincts, a new Batman vs. Penguin story.
In Anime, Muv-Luv Alternative: Total Eclipse, Collection 2 the fight to save humanity from alien invaders continues, but mankind may be its own worst threat. The leaders of several nations are willing to sabotage each other in an attempt to gain power, allowing the invaders to conquer still more of the planet. The Familiar of Zero: “Rondo” of Princesses brings season 3 of Louise the Zero and her magical misadventures with her human familiar and newly undead husband Saito. Finally, Michiko & Hatchin is having the complete series released in a S.A.V.E. edition, meaning you can now pick it up for somewhere in the neighborhood of $20.
This time around the Cosplay is from a number of places, in honor of Borderlands: The Handsome Collection going into wide release. You can go to the home page or just enjoy the video, your choice.
This Machinema, titled Journey into the Metaverse, won all the awards when it was released in 2011, and well it should have. It is a truly unique piece of video production, and is worth adding to your permanent collections.
With the power put into everyone’s hands by the growth of computer capabilities on an almost daily basis, people who want to create their own movies are starting to have a lot of the same tools as the major studios. What this means for folks who have a vision of the film they want to create is they have to approach the studios in a whole new way. Where it used to be good enough to go in with a verbal pitch for your film (This is like The Birds meets Jaws, and everyone is running for their lives), that doesn’t cut it any more. Now you have to prove you have the story telling chops and a tale worth financing by creating your own little preview, more than a trailer but less than a feature film. One of the best examples I have seen of this recently is Controller, about a girl who wants to escape from the corporation who controls her. To do so, she remotely takes control of her boy friend and forces him to wipe out anyone who would stand in the way of her freedom.
It was good enough that Fox is putting up the money to actually make the piece, so we can hope to see the extended story soon. I don’t know how long ago this trend started, but I first became aware of it when the first 6 minutes of Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow was created in just under a decade, and the results shown to a movie company that decided to finance its completion. This is definitely a great way for people to spend minimum money to create something that might get them to realize their dream; thanks to The Dissolve for the heads up on this project!
CONTROLLER (控制者) from Saman Kesh on Vimeo.