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.
This looks like a quality week to make it to the movie theaters! To start, we have two contenders for the Action/Adventure title, the first being Battle: Los Angeles. The next in a series of alien invasion movies that has gradually grown more intense over the last decade or so, given a serious boost with the advent of Battlestar Galactica, and refined by all the recent entrants from District 9, through Skyline, to Monster. For the hard Sci-Fi adrenalin junkys in the audience, this is the film to beat.
For the Fantasy crowd, there is a selection just as compelling: Red Riding Hood takes you through the implications the Twilight series pretended didn’t exist. I am really hoping Red herself turns out every bit as Buffy-like as I imagine her while watching the trailer, and reaks havoc on the innocent monsters.
In Suing the Devil, Luke O’Brien sues the devil for $8 trillion and the devil shows up in court to defend himself. The situation is just a bit unfair, since all of the best lawyers end up in hell when their life is over, and Malcolm McDowell as the Devil brings them with him. Again, a compelling movie with an amazing cast, and a lot to think about before the ending credits roll.
The fourth and possibly final choice for this weekend is the animated Mars Needs Moms! This Disney flic is the silliest of the weekend, but not necessarily the one with the fewest important points to bring to the table. The animation quality is what you would expect from that house: first rate!
There are a couple of interesting choices this weekend, starting with The Adjustment Bureau, written by Philip K. Dick and starring Matt Damon with Emily Blunt. There is a way your life is supposed to go, and if you step outside that path the near supernatural members of the Adjustment Bureau will step in and make corrections to reality to sync your life back to their expectations. As with every other P.K.Dick story turned into a movie, I am guaranteed to be in the audience on opening weekend. Note that the official Dick site is not kept up to date as well as it should be, so it is leaving out several other potential film projects.
Ordinarily a week with one of Phill’s stories coming out on the big screen would be enough to keep me happy, but this time around we get more. Apollo 18 was originally scheduled for this week, but has now been pushed back to April 22nd of this year. With the tag line There’s a reason we’ve never gone back to the moon, it looks quite interesting. But the universe keeps things balanced, and Rango has been moved up from the 18th to the 4th of March. This animated western epic stars Johnny Depp and is directed by Gore Verbinski (they worked together on that Pirates of the Caribbean series of films). So it looks like I have two films I need to see this weekend, and I will do my best to make both.
The SFWA has announced this years Nebula Award Nominees, and a bunch of them are online now for your reading pleasure. The Awards themselves will be handed out at the Nebula Weekend event taking place from the 19th to the 22nd of May at the Washington Hilton in Washington, DC.
One of the other awards given out at the event is The Ray Bradbury Award for Outstanding Dramatic Presentation, and for me this one is an almost impossible choice. There is one TV episode on the list, Doctor Who’s Vincent and the Doctor, two live action movies, Inception and Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, and three animated feature length films, Despicable Me where the Minions owned the movie, How to Train Your Dragon from the Dreamworks team, and Toy Story 3 from Pixar. I don’t have a prayer of choosing the best one; I love them all!
This animation from Patrick Boivin is amazing, and is only one of many he has created. He started out as a graphics novelist, but decided it was faster to get his ideas across with moving images. Before long he had turned into a film maker, and the word is a better place because of it. He claims the Woolf Lapin Agency as his home page, and you can learn more about him there.
Even though it is actually the Millennium Trilogy, apparently in this country it is being released as Stieg Larsson’s Dragon Tattoo Trilogy, and while not science fiction the world-class genius hacker girl at the core of this story gives it all the geek cred I will ever require of any movie series. Accept no substitutes, including the wimpy American remake; this one is the real deal.
Glenn, the Flying Robot is a movie from Belgium that is noticeably different than you think it is. Two old friends share a history and a skill set centered in their concert level piano playing, but as often happens they become rivals from the personal to the professional levels. When one looses the use of his hands due to external damage, Glenn is brought to the problem, applying mechanical digits to replace the flesh. This story goes in directions you were not at first expecting. The live action silly fun imported movie this week is Alien vs. Ninja, which is exactly what you think it is. Some of these titles lend themselves to an obvious progression, and this one fulfills its promise nicely.
This week’s TV series was never actually on TV, but rather only distributed online: The Guild: Season 4. Think about it; a TV show about playing online games together so good that Microsoft actually has sponsored them since season 2 for X-Box Live viewing.
Topping the choices for western animation this time, and in fact weighing in as the only contender, is Megamind. As usual, it is coming out as a DVD, and a Blue Ray/DVD edition. Surprisingly there does not seem to be a Digital Copy or 3D edition for this one, at least not at first. If you go with the DVD/Blue Ray edition, you can also pick it up in a 2-pack with Megamind: The Button of Doom, but be aware this is another non-Tuesday release. This one comes out Friday the 25th, and along with Despicable Me and Tangled made up the best that western animation had to offer for 2010, as far as I am concerned.
Gintama – Collection 4 continues the story of alien invaders in Edo-era Japan who enslave the population to their factories and distract them with TV and Anime, while forbidding any kind of fighting that might threaten their power or risk inciting rebellion. So Samurai and Ninja go disarmed and bored unto tears, while the world gets stranger still. Our Home’s Fox Deity Volume 2 brings the next twelve episodes of this tale of siblings to life; one pair the human brothers, Noboru and Toru, and their spiritual guardians, fox goddesses Kugen and Gyokuyo. And then there are various gods, werewolves, and clans of Oni (Demons) to continue to make life interesting for them!
The Paranormal Disaster Countermeasure Headquarters is the government organization which is supposed to protect Japan from supernatural attack, but one day things don’t go so well and a rival organization is forced to step in. Ga-Rei: Zero tells their tale. Also, becoming available in a single box set edition, the classic anime GunGrave is being re-released
There are a few classics being re-released in the US, including FLCL (pronounced Fooley Cooley), a truly insane little animation series from the folks who made Gurren Lagann and Neon Genesis Evangelion. While only six episodes long, this OVA has enough twists and turns for a full season of most other productions, and a killer soundtrack by The Pillows. The other classic title is Chrono Crusade, the story of a heavily armed nun and her demon sidekick battling the forces of evil in 1928 New York. If you missed getting either of these in your collection the first time around, now is your chance, and at a decent price if you shop around.