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Something to Watch: Discs

The few movies being released this week all appear to be low budget direct-to-video offering, like A Cinderella Story: If the Shoe Fits (done as a musical), RZ-9, and Robot World. OK, one exception, I think The Angry Birds Movie may have been played in a theater somewhere. TV has some serious winners though, with Gotham: Season 2 and Once Upon A Time: The Complete Fifth Season being the two I am most excited about. I am sure I would be more excited about The Vampire Diaries: The Complete Seventh Season if I had made it to the fourth season yet. It seems I have way more things I try to watch than there are hours in the day, so I end up getting behind on some of the shows.

In Anime Punch Line is about a Time Traveler who was evicted from his body, a Hero of Justice and her Fembot sidekick, a Ghost Cat Spiritual Master, an unskilled and alcoholic Exorcist, a competition grade Gamer Girl and her alien pet, and an Extinction Level Event on a collision course to wipe out the human race. Which it does, several times; good thing the time traveler refuses to give up, working hard to recover his body and join with his friends to save the planet! Assassination Classroom: Season 1 Part 2 continues the tale of the alien teacher and the students trying their best to kill him; he has promised that if they succeed, he will not destroy the Earth the way he did the Moon. I am sure no one needs any explanation about what Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon Crystal: Set 1 is about.

In Trinity Seven: Complete Collection Arata’s town was destroyed, his beloved cousin removed, and he was transported to another world where his new magical powers hold the only key to his return to Earth. Provided, that is, that he can keep the seven deadly girls alive through the trans-dimensional attacks that plague his new world. Blood Blockade Battlefront has denizens of the netherworld teaming up with Superheroes to defend both realms from an evil plot to take over their worlds. Finally, Charlotte Volume 1 contains the first 7 episodes of the 12 part story of adolescents who gain special powers, only to lose them a few years later. While it starts out looking like a high school wish fulfillment fantasy, it doesn’t take many episodes at all before they start revealing the much darker under-story, and the secret war being waged across the world.

Wild Cards on TV!

George R.R. Martin announced his shared superhero universe Wild Cards is coming to TV, and I cheered for a good 30 minutes. Melinda M. Snodgrass has been deeply involved with the project from the beginning as both a writer and an editor, and she will be an executive producer for the new TV show. UPC will be bringing it to the small screen, and since they have produced such shows as Mr. Robot, Killjoys, The Magicians, and 12 Monkeys, I have high hopes they will give Wild Cards the treatment it deserves. There are no guarantees, of course; back in 2011 I reported on their announcements about the Wild Card Movie that never got made. But perhaps if the show does as well as I expect it will we might get to see them on the big screen after all some day.

Something to Do: Movies

The live action remake of Pete’s Dragon could be quite amusing. It certainly benefits from the advances in CGI animation and compositing that have been made over the last several decades. If you are in the mood for something less family friendly, the animated film Sausage Party features a sausage trying to discover the truth about his existence, and what he learns is terrifying. I don’t know that I find either of them compelling enough to make me actually part with my money to see them in the theater.

Something to Do: Movies

There are several good choices this time, starting with Suicide Squad, which I have more hope for now that they retooled it somewhat to add more humor. DC saw the box office Deadpool pulled and figured they would give it a shot, I am hoping this makes it a bit more fun than their entirely dark take from the recent Superman/Batman outing. If you are looking for something lighter and more family friendly, the classic tale The Little Prince is brought to life in an animation format for the first time, and it looks excellent. Finally the fantasy Nine Lives is about a business man who gets trapped in the body of his cat. I ordinarily wouldn’t even consider this one, but it has Kevin Spacey and Christopher Walken, so it could be good.

Something to Watch: Discs

Tesla Noir, French Animated Steampunk, and turning people into animals against their will; this is an interesting week for disc releases. April and the Extraordinary World is French animated Steampunk at its finest, and I can’t wait to see it. The Lobster is already coming out on disc, even though it is still in its limited run of theaters. If you don’t partner up and couple down by a certain age, you are transmogrified into an animal and turned loose in the wild to fend for yourself. The American Side has the protagonist drawn into a race to find a secret device designed by Tesla with unknown powers and potential, hidden somewhere near the power plant that Tesla also designed, but which was built by his adversary Edison at Niagara Falls. There is also another DC animated release, Batman: The Killing Joke, which might have been better if they hadn’t brought it to the screen.

In Anime, Gundam Build Fighters: Complete Collection looks like a good choice, as does The Rolling Girls: The Complete Series, kind of a superhero road trip. Plus World Break: Aria of Curse for a Holy Swordsman is the complete series in one box, about reincarnated warriors going to school together, and Jormungand looks at illegal arms dealers out to save the world. For once I haven’t seen a single one of these, so I am going to flip a coin and start streaming the winner.

Something to Do: Movies

We have 5 movies to choose from this time around, 2 of which will be playing everywhere, the last 3 will be more limited. Nerve is not only first out of the gate with a release on Wednesday the 27th, but it also has a Pokemon Go tie in, I guess because the edge-of-your-seat story line just wasn’t enough. Jason Bourne is the other out-everywhere title, and like most spy books/movies it includes science fiction elements in its plot, premise, or gadgets, if you were wondering why I count them as genre.

In more limited release we get Monkey King: Hero Is Back, an animated fantasy starring Jackie Chan as the Monkey King. The last Monkey King movie Jackie Chan was in was the live action Forbidden Kingdom, and Jet Li got to play the famous demigod in that one. Both movies include the Monkey King’s release after 500 years from his prison of ice, a rather pivotal moment in his legend. League of Gods is based on the 16th-century Chinese novel Feng Shen Yan Yi, in which King Zhou becomes evil after a spirit disguised as one of his concubines twists his mind around. And finally the description of Dishoom sounds like a fantasy adventure premise to me: John and Varun go on a suicidal mission to rescue Jaqcueline, the princess, from her evil fiancé. Everybody’s already seen the trailers for the first two movies, here are the ones for the other three.

Monkey King: Hero Is Back – Official Trailer from Viva Pictures Distribution, LLC on Vimeo.