Comedy – Page 65 – Strider’s Web

Something to Watch: DVDs, 26Nov13

My favorite movie this time around just might be Red 2, the amazing sequel to the first film they created out of this graphic novel. Scratch that, nothing “might be” about it; this one is world class! Also out, Jobs is a BioPic with a proper attitude.

In TV, I count Murdoch Mysteries: Season 6 as genre because of its near Steampunk goodness, mixing the 1890s super science cutting edge of forensics, air flight, electronic communications, and so much more with some well thought out mysteries and a bunch of characters you will thoroughly enjoy. The protagonist himself most reminds me of the Mounty from the TV series Due South, another excellent police procedural.

In Anime, Accel World: Set 1 is abut an unpopular boy who spends all his time in online gaming. He is surprised one day when a popular girl approaches him and invites him to combat in a new virtual world as her knight. As usual, all is not as it appears at first glance, and when they neurolink into the game he learns about Brain Bursting, which accelerates your mind when you go into combat mode. La Storia Della Arcana Famiglia is the complete collection, the tale of what happens when and organization leader retires and puts his position up for grabs to whoever wins the fight for it. Each member of the organization has a power granted by a tarot card, as well as the usual guns and knives, so the competition will be fierce. But when he throws in his daughter as part of the prize, she gets ticked and enters the competition herself, with the goal of winning her own hand. Her card gives her telepathy to spy out the plans of her would be suitors and rivals, but she is aware every one of them also holds a card.

Super Robot Wars OG: Divine Wars is the full 2006 series, while Super Robot Wars Original Generation is the 2005 3 episode OVA that got the ball rolling. Alien invasion, giant mecha, the fate of the world at stake, you know the drill. The link I gave actually goes to Super Robot Wars OG The Inspector, a different series (the usage is different in Japan, I would have said season to mean the same thing in the US), but it will give you the idea.

The anime gem this time is the multi-award winning Wolf Children, a feature film by Mamoru Hosoda, the internationally-acclaimed director of Summer Wars. It has won dozens of awards around the world, one of the prizes it won was the Japan Academy Prize for Best Animation of the Year, 2013.

The 2nd Doctor Psudo Paintings

The same thing again some more; taking black and white photographs from some VERY early Doctor Who stories, convert them, colorize them, and create my own version of the colorize portraits. This time around it it the 2nd Doctor, Patrick Troughton, and a companion or two of his.

Doctor Who 50th Radio Plays this week!

BBC4 Extra is pulling out all the stops this week in honor of the Doctor Who 50th Anniversary, and running a complete Radio Play story every day. Not that you can tell if you look at the episodes at 6PM and 6:30PM each day, since that is only the first two episodes of each story. But if you start at the following Midnight you will see every episode of that story listed, starting with Doctor Who and the Daleks this past Sunday morning, the 17th, which ran 8 or 10 episodes long. I should probably also mention that that one, along with a lot of the rest of them, are brand new, never before available Doctor Who stories, or at least not available from the BBC Radio service. They are only online for a single week, so start listening to them now, so you can hear them before they evaporate. They also have some serious original programming coming up that is only available in Radio format for the celebration, including Who Made Who, a three hour documentary on the anniversary itself next Saturday. Be sure to check the Doctor Who 50th web site, and absolutely hit the Guide to Doctor Who Specials across the BBC, which lists out every program on every channel.

Something to Watch: DVDs, 19Nov13

Top spot this week goes to The World’s End, another excellent collaboration between Edgar Wright, Simon Pegg, and Nick Frost. Not only will it be released as a stand-alone, but they will also bring out the box set with the entire Cornetto Trilogy; Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz, and The World’s End. There is a rather unusual Vampire film coming out called Sanguivorous, with no spoken dialog and an acting style based on Noh or Butoh, a form of Japanese story telling through dance. It only played in a handful of theaters across the US, in part because a live band (composed of Japanese percussionist Tatsuya Nakatani and Chicago saxophonist Edward Wilkerson, Jr.) toured with it to play the soundtrack for this silent film. The 3rd interesting film this go round is Mars, a 2010 animated comedy romance about space exploration that has been on the Film Festival circuit for the last several years, and is finally getting a DVD release.

In TV, Doctor Who: The Tenth Planet is story number 29 with William Hartnell as the Doctor, and companions Ben and Polly. This was Hartnell’s final tale as the Doctor, and the first time we got to meet the Cybermen. It was also the first time a Regeneration happened on screen as the role was passed on to Patrick Troughton. Star Trek The Next Generation: Season Five makes its Blu-Ray debut this week as well, and they are also extracting a two-part story to roll out separately, Star Trek The Next Generation: Unification.

In Anime, Sword Art Online: Fairy Dance Part 2 delivers the final 6 episode of this excellent little series. I think they should have packaged them up in season 1 and season 2 boxed and sold them for the same price that they have been selling the half seasons, so I will be waiting for a more cost effective packag before I buy my copy. One Piece Movie 10: Strong World continues that series, with a new film. I mention that because sometimes the feature length presentations are retellings of the TV show stories.

Good Luck Girl is about a rich, beautiful, and very lucky girl who has everything going her way. That is because she is siphoning off the good luck of everyone around her, and a minor god notices and decides to follow her around and give the luck back. A lot like spiritual wack-a-mole, really, with all the fun and silliness the situation can deliver. This is from the folks who did Bleach and Gintama, I recommend you check it out. Finally, Little Busters!: Collection 1 is about 5 childhood friends who have grown up, letting their dreams of becoming defenders of justice fade over the years. But now cats are bringing two of them messages about a secret world that needs their help, and their dreams might not be as far in the past as they had thought.

Something to Watch: DVDs, 12Nov13

In movies, Man of Steel leads off, with the latest retelling of the Superman legend. This one snuck past me in the movie theaters, so I am looking forward to this additional opportunity to check it out. The martial arts offering this time is Ip Man: The Final Fight, also known as Ip Man 4. This pretty much completes his life story, and it is appropriate that it is filmed in Hong Kong, since that is where he lived out his later days. I believe this is the first one that actually talks about his most famous student, Bruce Lee. I missed this one because it was only in my local movie theater for a single week before it was gone, but before China bought the AMC movie chain a few years ago, these kinds of movies were a lot harder to find on the big screen at all. If you are an H.P. Lovecraft fan and looking for some good comedy, you will want to watch Grabbers. This is basically what happens when the Deep Ones invade Ireland, but are terminally allergic to alcohol; the populace rallies at the pub, pitchforks and torches in hand! I missed this one because it would have involved a drive to NYC, or one of the 5 other major cities in the US it played in. And for animated silliness, Dreamworks Animation’s Turbo is also coming out to disc. I missed this one because the trailers and plot line just didn’t grab me, but now that it will be on one of the cable channels or available to stream on one of my services at no additional cost to me, I will check it out.

In TV, Stan Lee’s Superhumans: Season Two continues to be the only comic book based superhero reality show I know of. Plus, it runs on the History Channel 2, which is the part of the whole A&E family of cable stations that gives you some great Sci-Fi/Fantasy based programming. I am not sure if I can count the other two TV releases as being on TV, since they were only available on various streaming services such as Crunchyroll, but both RWBY: Volume 1 and Red vs. Blue: Season 11 will be on disc this week. They are both the products of the fertile minds over at Rooster Teeth, who keep cranking out some of the most innovating animations using products that pretty much anyone with a computer can pick up for under a hundred dollars.

In Anime I normally don’t talk about re-releases unless something truly good has become rare, and this one missed the rare part but is dead center for the truly good. Akira: 25th Anniversary Edition is the definitive release of the Anime that made North America, and most of the rest of the world, realize that they needed to take this art form seriously. This digitally restored HD version of the movie includes both the 1988 and 2001 English audio dubs as well as a Japanese soundtrack with subtitles, and a ton of other extras. Since my own copy is SD, that alone means I need to upgrade. If you haven’t seen this feature length film before, you can watch it online at Funimation for free, and you really ought to do so; this is the production that changed everything about how North America viewed Japanese Science Fiction and Pop Culture.

Maken-Ki! Battling Venus is the complete series (at least until someone decides to finance another season) in a single box set. It is the story of a combat school where the you train with a magic object that gives you powers, called a Maken, and where the women outnumber the men 3 to 1, because they are three times as deadly. Our protagonist is a boy who can’t figure out how to get his Maken to work, and it is a race between getting kicked out of school with failing grades or getting killed by his pretty schoolmates. Being made by the team that did Ikki Tousen, you can expect a lot of fan service, predominately during the combat sequences.

Her Trailer

This one should be fun, in an Indie kind of way. Her is about a specially designed artificial intelligence, custom built for the end user, and the poor schmuck who has to spend the rest of his life with her. Sometimes our Evil Robot Overlords are also our better half.