This week’s selection is another spooky but funny animation, ParaNorman. A town is invaded by zombies, and their only recourse is to ask the help of the strangest kid in town. It certainly looks like silly fun to me.
Animated romantic musical comedy horror is a lot of fun, and the latest entry in this admittedly rather tiny niche market is Hotel Transylvania. Target date for release is September 28th, and I for one intend to be there to see it.
Warriors Of The Rainbow: Seediq Bale tells the true story of the aboriginal Seediq tribes who rebelled and almost drove the conquering Japanese army off the island in 1930s Taiwan. Their initial attack succeeded, taking the invaders by surprise and killing most of their primary targets; but knives and bows only win for so long against aircraft and poison gas. The other movie worth checking out is an animated Doctor Seuss story, The Lorax. I was particularly impressed with Danny DeVito, who played the title character in the English, Spanish, and Russian versions of the film.
In TV we have Grimm: Season One, one of the better supernatural police procedural programs to come down the pike in many a year. The writing is very intelligent, so of course I expected it to be cancelled half way through its first season and was quite happy to find out we will get a second one. They also picked an excellent cast who jell together quite well onscreen, and base the series on a very interesting premise. This one will definitely be joining my permanent collection.
There are several new and interesting collections in Anime this time around, starting with Rental Magica: Collection 1. A company of wizards and witches have misplaced the company president, and immediately put his son in charge. The problem is the son doesn’t have a lot of knowledge about magic himself, and is also something of a coward in a near combat situation. So the monsters and evildoers the company is up against become much more dangerous to the magicians in the ranks, and the son is in danger of destroying the family business if he can’t get his act together. The 12 episodes in this box set are the first half of the story so far.
In The World God Only Knows: Season Two the champion dating sim player and his demon tormentor continue to free girls from the lost souls who posses them. When a giant lost soul takes over a large portion of the school and turns them into love starved zombies, they will need to recruit another demon to help them win. Also continuing, One Piece comes out with season 4 part 1, continuing the effort to become King of All Pirates.
It doesn’t look like we get any genre movies this week, so I thought I would mention the documentary Jiro Dreams of Sushi, about the award winning ten seat sushi restaurant in a subway station in Tokyo and the man that runs it.
We do a little better in TV this time, with both Touched By An Angel: The Complete Fifth Season and Touched By An Angel: Seasons 1 through 5. The show ran 9 seasons, so the latter set brings you to just past the halfway point. If you missed it when it originally aired it was quite a well done fantasy about helpful spirits. The other TV release is Sheena: The Complete Second Season, which completes the series which ran from 2000 to 2002. The original Sheena TV series ran in the 1950s, and both series were based on the comic book which ran from 1937 to 1953, the very first comic book series with a female protagonist. Wil Eisner and Jerry Iger created the character, which they based on H. Rider Haggard’s 1886 book She.
The anime release for this week is Golgo 13: The Professional, and that is more spy thriller than sci-fi or fantasy. It is also a re-release, the original feature length film came out in 1983. And yes, this is the movie, not the OVA.
A Cat Anime done with stop motion wooden dolls from Nekomacitta did a pretty good job of explaining to Japanese children the dangers of a nuclear power plant issue such as the one Fukushima and the surrounding countryside just suffered last year. It is a fairly balanced presentation which cites both the good and bad points of such a power generating system, apparently not driving one to a preordained conclusion but rather letting the audience weigh the options and come to their own conclusions. I say apparently because I have not had the opportunity to watch the entire 20 minute animation so far, but just the outtake presented here. Thanks to The Asahi Shimbon for the heads up on this one.
My favorite part of the original Despicable Me movie was the Minions, so it is good to know they will be integral to the sequel as well. This trailer is extra funny in 3D, so if you have the chance to catch it in theaters (like at the Brave showing playing near you) be sure to do so.