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Something to Watch: Discs

I couldn’t find any genre movies or TV shows this week other than re-releases, but there is a TV show that comes close. Ripper Street: Season 3 is close to being a Steampunk police procedural, and so becomes worth mentioning. An actual Steampunk police procedural, and my favorite of the type, is Murdoch Mysteries, complete with guest stars Nikola Tesla, H.G. Wells, Arthur Conan Doyle, Thomas Edison, Mark Twain, and many more. Sadly, that show is not having a new release this week. Another non-genre release worth mentioning is the Rolling Stones From the Vault: The Marquee Club Live in 1971 if you are looking for a taste of classic rock.

In Anime we do noticeably better, starting with Nyaruko: Crawling with Love!: Season 1 in a limited release. By limited I mean only one US store seems to be stocking it for its initial release, in this case RightStuf. The story of the Soul Reapers continues this week with the Bleach: Season 25 Uncut Box Set, bringing episodes 343 through 354 to the shelves. The currently streaming episode is 366, so this release finally puts us right up to date on the disc production.

Hayate the Combat Butler: Season 4 AKA Cuties is also out this week. This fantasy series (how can a Combat Butler be anything but a fantasy?) has a goodly balance of action and comedy, and if you haven’t been following it you can start from the beginning at Crunchyroll and stream your way up to the current season. Finally Origin: Spirits of the Past is coming out in a S.A.V.E. edition, allowing you to pick it up for around $12.

Something to Do: Movies

It will be hard to top this past weekend’s monster film Jurassic World after it blew the doors off of the previous opening weekend record holder, The Avengers. But if you are in need of a mental pick-me-up I recommend Inside Out, the latest animated fun fest from Pixar. I am thinking I will have to be in the theater for this one… although I might follow it up with another round of Dinosaurs.

The Man From U.N.C.L.E. trailer

There is a new trailer from the reboot of The Man From U.N.C.L.E., which looks even better than the first one. I loved the original series, and I will definitely be doing the 3D IMAX screen for this one. I even got ready for it by taking a recent journey to The Spy Museum, which was running a huge exhibit called Exquisitely Evil: 50 Years of Bond Villains. I should see if any of my pictures came out and post a few of them here.

Something to Watch: Discs

In movies this week we get Kingsman: The Secret Service, an action/adventure/comedy based on the Mark Miller Marvel comic book series The Secret Service. In TV we get The Last Ship: The Complete First Season, an end of the world thriller with a lot of action.

In Anime, Hyperdimension Neptunia is one of those recursive anime about gaming on thinly disguised platforms anthropomorphized as (of course) cute girls. Knights of Sidonia: Season 1 takes place a thousand years after the destruction of the Earth by the Gauna, with the remnants of Humanity still fleeing for their lives. This one is a Netflix original, and they have already signed on for season 2, which will be online on July 3rd. Mardock Scramble: The Trilogy puts both the directors cut and the theatrical version of these three movies into a single box set for the first time. Our protagonist is murdered in the first film’s opening sequence, and her memory recording (taken before her human body fully cooled down) spends the rest of the story wearing a cyborg body and attempting to bring her killer to justice. It is just as cyberpunk as Ghost In The Shell, and worth watching.

850 Meters

Joeri Christiaen’s amazing animation 850 meters was produced by Thuristar in coproduction with Lunanime, and it has been screening in festivals as well as airing on CANAL+ in France and Ketnet (VRT) and Ouftivi (RTBF) in Belgium. This particular version is in English, which I can follow a bit easier than the original language (French, obviously). It was made with the support of the Flanders Audiovisual Fund and Provinciebestuur Oost Vlaanderen. To my mind the really good news is that a spin-off TV series called My knight and Me is now in production, with 52 episodes, 12 minutes long each, given the green light. Enjoy, and if you are so inclined also check out the Making Of video to get a sense of who these people are and how they feel about the project.