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Something to Do: Movies

Cowboys & Aliens is the major release this weekend, and you can believe I will be there to see it on the big screen. Not since the days of the Radio Ranch (1935, Gene Autry versus the aliens living underground and hiding from the cowboys) have we seen a story like this. If you are not already familiar with it, check out the Phantom Empire series, which you can watch online. It is nice to see these classic stories coming around again to entertain us all.

Tekken: Blood Vengeance 3D is an animated movie built from the Machinema underpinnings of a world class game, much as Final Fantasy was. You get one shot at seeing it on the big screen, on Tuesday, the 26th of July (yes, that would be tomorrow) at 7:30PM local time. It is being presented as a one time movie event, part of the Fathom Events package, where a live presentation happens in one location, and gets broadcast via satellite to movie theaters across North America. They also use this for Opera, Sporting Competitions, Business Meetings, and church services, so it is nice to know they are using it for something worth the bandwidth.

Kamisama Dolls

We are only abut 3 episodes in to Kamisama Dolls, which you can watch online on Crunchyroll either an hour or a week after it airs in Tokyo, depending on your account type (the free accounts wait a week, the paid an hour). The opening song is sung by Chiaki Ishikawa, and her record label Flying Dog has released the full length song for streaming on their YouTube channel, so I am posting it here. God Dolls (yes, Kamisama means “God”) battle at the behest of their Noble Shrine Doll User, some of which have more of a clue than others. The animation is a bit old school, but not that old; maybe 8 to 12 years ago stylistically. A few of the characters I care about and the plot has been interesting so far, so I will be watching this one for at least a few more episodes.

Watch Nozomi Online

The folks at Right Stuff/Nozomi have a serious online presence at YouTube, where you can watch their anime online to give you a taste of what their various shows are offering. One of the better series is The Third: The Girl With the Blue Eye, where one girl and her tank show you how good the world could be; the first episode is Sword Dancer, if you want to start at the beginning. Another quality selection is Shingu: Secret of the Stellar Wars, and Rental Magica is another silly fun selection. While I would dearly love to embed a few of them here, they have embedding disabled due to licensing details, so enjoy them from the source.

Something to Watch: DVDs

In movies, Limitless is a driving story of artificially boosted intelligence, and what the implications might be. I loved this one in the theaters, and ordinarily it would get my vote for top pick, but also out this week is the live action version of Tekken.

In TV, the choice release is Doctor Who: Series Six, Part One. I am not in favor of the new trend of releasing half a season of a program at a time because they try to use it to raise the prices, but sometimes you can find some good deals on these, and this is one of those times. Plus, it’s Doctor Who, so I would be picking it up regardless. Also out this week, Torchwood: The Complete Original UK Series, packaging up the first two seasons with the miniseries Children of Earth into a single box set. If you bought the seasons separately, there doesn’t seem to be a lot new here; while they mention 10 hours of bonus features, that was about what you had on the original single season DVDs when you added them up, and no where does the BBC say if they are new features or the old ones recycled.

In Anime, Queens Blade 2: Evil Eye Series Part 2 continues the battle royal to determine the new ruler, as well as the practice of selling series in half-season chunks. And in classic re-releases, Gungrave – The Complete Series makes Gungrave affordable in a single box set; around $26 with a little shopping around.

Haruhi Apps

Haruhi Suzumiya has had an assortment of Manga and two seasons of Anime created for and about her, and now she finally has her own Apps. They are simple Apps that allow you some dialog access, a clock, and an alarm function, at least as far as I can tell. While I currently have a small Nihongo (Japanese) vocabulary, I haven’t learned how to read Kanji yet, so I may be missing some functions because I can’t read the instructions. At the moment Haruhi’s AniPoke is free, and until the end of August Mikuru’s AniPoke and Nagato’s AniPoke will each run at $0.99. Once we hit September the other two go back up to their normal $3.99 each. I could not find any difference between the paid and free variations, beyond who the character you were poking was (and no, this series isn’t ANYTHING like Pokeman; shame on you for not knowing that!). The alarm function gives you the voice of the character telling you to pay attention, over and over; it doesn’t stop until you tell it to. Thanks to the folks at Crunchyroll for the heads up on this one.

Arrietty trailer

Studio Ghibli is releasing their version of the children’s classic The Borrowers under the title Arrietty, the name of the 14 year old protagonist. That’s the DVD release, the movie was on the big screen last year in Japan, and this past January for the rest of Asia. They are actually releasing it in three versions, the original Japanese with subtitles, a US English dub being released here on February 17th, 2012, and a UK English dub coming out on the 29th (yes, later this month). The trailer is from the UK dub, thanks to io9 for the heads up.