The live action movie release to consider this week is The Time Traveler’s Wife, and yes, this is a love story, much in the tradition of Richard Matheson’s Time And Again. This close to Valentines Day, it seems appropriate, and it is a fairly decent treatment of the book.
The animation to be aware of is Dante’s Inferno: An Animated Epic, but be warned this animation is not for children, nor is it work friendly. The structure is the same as Animatrix, with a separate writing, directing, and production team (all leaders in the field who have created Anime classics) for each segment. This has not been released in theaters that I am aware of, although a limited number of lucky viewers got to see it on the big screen at various film festivals around the world. The DVD is being released in parallel with the game (the game company commissioned the film), both of which are based on the original epic poem.
The TV collection to look for this time around is SG-U Stargate Universe: 1.0; they lost the annoying blue vampires and re-invented the franchise as a Battlestar-style lost in space adventure. The Stargates have been relegated to the same role as Trek’s Transporters, and the galaxy spanning communications system introduced near the end of SG1 are used to keep the episodes from being limited to the ship, the landing zone of each planet, and the characters trapped on the ship. I personally loved SG1, and found any episode of SG-Atlantis that had the blue guys in it unwatchable (which did leave them with 20 or 30 good episodes over their 5-year run). So far I find SG-Universe to be about half way between the two, but if they stop trying so hard to be the new BSG (which they are failing at) and go back to the core strengths of SG1 (good mix of humor to go with the OMG moments, excellent dialog, and retain the good ensemble chemistry they have to bolster the dynamic tension), this series has the potential to equal or surpass the original.
On the anime front, Soul Eater Part 1 bears a style resemblance to Dead Leaves, both for the graphics and the audio, and looks like it could be a lot of fun. You can watch Soul Eater episodes online at that link to give you an idea if it should become part of your permanent collection. Gaogaigar Season One Litebox comes from the folks who built Godanner and Betterman, and shows you how that team started out. And while Naruto Shippuden: Volume 6 is also coming out on Tuesday, I will be waiting for the next season-long box set before plunking my money down; there are just too many episodes in the series for me to be able to afford any other choice.
