Earlier this week it was confirmed that Torchwood Season 4 is a go, and it will include John Barrowman and Eve Myles to head the cast, with Russell T Davies heading up the creative team. New episodes will be airing on Starz in the US starting in the summer of 2011, appropriate since this is a joint venture with that channel. While it is totally unrelated, I find it amusing that Wil Wheaton received a Tardis birthday cake this week.
The pick of the week for mixed media films (combining live action with animation) is the Tim Burton Alice in Wonderland. This twisted little tail continues a long film making tradition of using the Lewis Carrol source material to tell a morality tale; what the moral of the story is changes with each director, of course. I am not a fan of Burton’s visual style and found Depp’s character in particular somewhat grotesque, but I still consider this version a must-have addition to the collection. The other film of note this week is the recent remake of The Wolfman, with Anthony Hopkins and Benicio Del Toro. Despite the star power this one fell just a little flat for me, but fans of the Gothic may have a better opinion of it.
My pick for number one imported live action film this week absolutely has to be 20th Century Boys 3: Redemption. While there is enough exposition at the front of the film to catch you up on the story so far, I am setting this one aside for Saturday, so I can watch all three films back to back. This has a very original story, and great characters that you follow through most of their lives, watching them grow and develop.
New in the live action TV category this week is Burn Notice, Season 3. Yes, I know it’s not science fiction, but I think everyone would agree that it is a bit of a fantasy. Plus it is just too much fun to miss. As usual, they have the previous season DVD release just before the new season starts; in this case two days before, as season 4 kicks off Thursday night.
In the world of animation, he’s Baa-aa-aack! Shaun the Sheep: One Giant Leap for Lambkind is another half dozen episodes from the team that brought us Wallace and Grommet. Very few language skills are needed to enjoy these, as dialog is not a core component of the tales they tell.
For anime proper, Brighter than the Dawning Blue: Complete Collection is a story of diplomatic fence mending between the Earth and the Moon, with the Lunar Princess exchange student running into some romantic complications along the way. Also out this week, Slayers Evolution-R season 5. As usual when the Slayers are involved, they nearly destroy the world in the process of saving it, and magical mayhem abounds. Also out this week another S.A.V.E. edition re-release of a complete series, this time Beck.
After watching how brutally American TV trashed and tanked the brilliant British Life on Mars, not to mention how the US version of Red Dwarf was made into pilots twice, both times so bad they were never optioned into a series, I am a bit concerned about the coming rebuild of Being Human. The folks at Broadcast Magazine have the basic details, but SFX has the questions about how this might turn out. The good news is it is a Syfy Channel TV series, with a solid budget, and with TV shows like the various Stargate series, Eureka, Sanctuary, and Warehouse 13, as well as miniseries like Alice and Riverworld, they have shown a solid level of production quality (sadly not shared by their made for TV movies). So this one could go either way; here’s hoping they get it right.
If you haven’t had a chance to see the new Doctor yet, tomorrow night BBC America is running a Doctor Who Marathon. They will be playing all 6 of the so-far released Matt Smith/Karen Gillian episodes in order starting at 8/7C.
I love fan made music videos, and one of the world-wide iconic focus points for them these days is Doctor Who, the new series. So here are just a few that tickled my interest that I felt the need to pass on. A few of these will probably evaporate but more will come to take their place; and doesn’t that Killers quote sum him up so well; He Doesn’t look a thing like Jesus, but he talks like a gentleman, like you imagined when you were young. The scope of the musical styles alone tells you just how wide the appeal of the program ranges, and I selected a few of my favorite tunes for this collection, because selecting tunes I didn’t like would have been both silly and counterproductive. Enjoy!
In the theaters this weekend the best new film looks to be Robin Hood, the gazillionth time someone has converted the story to a video format. With folks like Russell Crowe, Cate Blanchett and Ridley Scott involved, this version might just be something special.
If you are anywhere near Oregon, you might want to make some time to see Wild Space A Go Go, a rather silly sounding retro 60s multidimensional outer space musical comedy and sex farce. While not actually a movie what with the live human beings on the stage and all, it certainly sounds like a lot of fun.
This has been a week for multiple Doctors. We just had the wonderful rollout of Matt Smith as The 11th Doctor on BBC America in The Eleventh Hour, and I had already commented on how BBC7 was running Tom Baker reading classic 4th Doctor stories. Starting yesterday, just before the Tom Baker reading BBC7 started running Wally K Daly’s Before the Screaming Begins, which has as one of the voice actors Patrick Troughton; the 2nd Doctor. If some of the older incarnations are unknown to you, io9 just put together a great article called Everything you need to know about Doctor Who. And while it is not very Doctor-like, I should also mention that Smith and Jones signed up to come back for one more Men in Black movie, this one in 3D.