I wanted to mention a movie you may have overlooked, a quirky combination of science fiction, punk rock, generational legacies, and living your life with true heart. Fish Story is all of that and more, a wonderful visual outing from Japan that is difficult to describe but surprisingly enjoyable. And yes, this is one of those movies that will have you cheering at the end (OK, I might have even jumped up and down a few times while cheering). I don’t know if it ever got any screen time in a movie theater in North America, but it has been released on DVD, so you can pick it up at places like Amazon, or watch it streaming online at places like Netflix. There are other things out there with the same title, so you are looking for the 2009 release from Japan.
There is only one real choice this weekend: Dark Shadows, the campy remake of the best soap opera out of the ’60s. This Taiwan trailer has some new footage, and there is no doubt they are playing this one for laughs.
Underworld: Awakening is the movie out this week, and while it is the fourth from that franchise it is far from the best of the bunch according to the reviews I have read.
Much more promising, Chuck: The Complete Fifth and Final Season was a great send off for a wonderful show. If you haven’t added anything from this series to your collection yet, they are also coming out with Chuck: The Complete Series this week. The other TV release is The Twilight Zone: More Fan Favorites, another collection of 20 great episodes from the original series.
In Anime, Occult Academy: The Complete Series is a real gem, involving a school researching the paranormal which has a time traveler arrive from the future to try to stop invading aliens from destroying the world, an event which is in his personal past. It includes one of the best examples of character growth I have seen in an Anime, in part I suspect because the character started out as a complete asshole, and had no interest in improving himself; he evolved almost against his will. I watched this every week an hour after it aired in Tokyo on Crunchyroll streaming, which is unusual for me. Normally I will catch up with whatever Japanese and Korean shows I am watching that season over the weekend, but I just could not wait to find out what happened next on that show.
Also new this week, Queen’s Blade 2: The Evil Eye is the conclusion of the battle to become Queen, with the survivors of the previous rounds squaring off against one another. Besides containing episodes 1 through 12 of the second season, it includes episodes 7 through 12 of the OVA series (the first 6 OVA episodes were on the season 1 collection). If this was a live action series, I might make a comment here on how they saved production costs by reducing the wardrobe department to a single employee, who was only given enough of a budget to buy one square yard of cloth, from which everyone’s outfits had to be made. Since this is an animated program, they didn’t even have budgeting problems to use as an excuse for the skimpy outfits, although I suspect no male fans of the series will complain.
The remaining entries are not completely new, but are worth noting. Guin Saga: The Complete Collection, is in a more cost effective package than the two individual season box sets previously released.
Finally, Kanokon: The Girl Who Cried Fox includes both the series and the shorter OVA series (only 4 15 minute long episodes) in a single box set. I find this last kind of annoying since they released the first DVD volume of the series, but never the second and third; if you had the first one, you had to re-buy it again as part of the Complete Collection when that came out. Then they released the OVA series, totaling 60 minutes of video, for the same price as if it was an entire season of full episodes. Now that they have combined the two, it is for the same price as the original complete collection, which means if you already own the complete collection you are again paying for a full season series to get a single hour of new video. I can only recommend this for folks who have never bought any part of the previously released DVDs. And maybe not then, not because they are not fun Anime to watch and enjoy, but simply because they have ticked me off by releasing this in a haphazard manner designed to squeeze maximum bucks for minimum footage out of any potential customers. As a potential customer in a brutal economy, this does not endear them to my heart, and I will not be buying it myself. Media Blasters generally is quite good with its releases and has a lot of great titles. I am not sure what happened this time, but I hope it is not the start of a trend.
The 11th annual Sci-Fi London Festival of Science Fiction and Fantastic Film kicks off on Tuesday, the 1st, with a ton of great stuff going on. They will be doing 6 world premieres including the Steampunkish Death, the claustrophobic True Love, and the rather impressive Memory Lane, said to be made for $300.
The maniacs at Robot Chicken have a new special coming out, and the target this time is the superheroes of DC Comics. I think the fun part is going to be the cast, which includes Nathan Fillion (Green Lantern); Megan Fox (Lois Lane); Seth Green (Aquaman, Batman, Robin); Neil Patrick Harris (Two-Face); Breckin Meyer (Superman); Alfred Molina (Lex Luthor); and Paul Reubens (The Riddler). It should be hitting the small screen some time this fall; thanks to Deadline for the heads up on this one.
It is finally time to go see Pirates! Band Of Misfits in all its silly animated glory, and I am ready! If you are in the mood for something a bit more serious, John Cusack plays Edgar Allen Poe working with a Baltimore detective trying to catch the killer reenacting all of Poe’s most horrible scenes in The Raven. Right now the link to the film’s web page takes you to IMDB instead, I think their DNS entry is hosed. If you are in an area that gets limited release films, 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. Quite a range to choose from this week.