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Something to Watch: DVDs, 21Jan14

After Death brings together four siblings who gather for their inventor father’s funeral, who then discover their father and deceased brother (killed years ago in another of dad’s experiments) may not be as dead as they all supposed. I know it sounds like a plot for a horror film, but this 2012 UK feature film is actually a quirky comedy in the British style. I mention the year and country because there is a 2014 American movie by the same name that is a horror film. The superhero movie this time is Iron Girl, in Japanese with English Subtitles. The actress playing the lead role is famous in Asia for her genre work, but it is not the same genre I mean when I use the word, so put this one in the NSFW category, just in case. In Japan it is listed as 12Up (pretty much our PG13), in Korea it is listed as 18 (somewhere near our R), the US release is flagged as Not Rated, and the trailer looks like a PG13 Action film. So I certainly have no clue, you can decide for yourself whether to check it out.

While there aren’t any TV shows as such this week, The Doors: R-Evolution is a music performance compilation that includes their early TV appearances and highlights the evolution of their image presentation as they gained more control over how they were displayed on the small screen. It includes early music films (video did not yet exist) through later professional cinematic productions, and is as interesting for the evolution of the artistic style it promoted for other bands to follow, as for the music it showcases.

In Anime we have one new release this week: Medaka Box Abnormal: The Complete Collection. In season 2 of the series, Medaka Kurokami has to use every hidden resource of the Student Council in her possession, including the super power wielding Abnormals, in order to defeat the dark plans of their enemies. Her War God Mode will not be enough to save the day by itself this time.

Something to Watch: DVDs, 14Jan14

In Movies Riddick hits the shelves this week, both as a stand-alone and as part of the Riddick: The Complete Collection 4 film package. For those scratching their heads, this includes an animated story called Dark Fury that was released direct to DVD just after the first film came out. The remake of the cult film Carrie is also out this week.

I haven’t found any genre TV coming out this week, but Top Gear: Season 20 is being released, and they are always a lot of fun.

In western animation, Marvel Knights: Wolverine versus Sabretooth is being billed as the final battle between these two long-time foes. The Marvel Knights brand is for showcase stories that allow the best writers and illustrators to push the bounds of cannon, if not ignore them entirely, so anything is possible. I should also mention that this is a motion comic, rather than a true animation, a media style that Marvel excels at.

In Anime, Magi: The Labyrinth of Magic is your basic dungeon quest, merging and changing the stories of Alibaba and Aladdin. This set is season 1, giving you the first 13 episodes of the series. The show is also streaming on a number of services, including Crunchyroll and Hulu. The release of Naruto: Shippuden Box Set 17 brings us episodes 206 through 218 of the ongoing story of the 9 Tailed Fox. The current episode streaming on their site is 344, if you were wondering. Also beginning to catch up, One Piece Season 5 Part 5 brings the tail of Luffy and the Straw Hat Pirates to episodes 313 to 324. Of course, the currently streaming episode from Tokyo is 627.

Manga 2.5

Somewhere between Manga and Anime, Manga 2.5 is following in the footsteps of Marvel and others, producing Motion Comics of popular Manga. They start by getting a contract to produce a popular Manga, then scan the whole thing in. They remove the dialog balloons and replace them with Japanese voice actors and English subtitles. Since they are embedding audio they also add sound effects as appropriate. The panels or frames are broken apart and colored, and limited animation in the style known as Motion Comics are added. The end result is something that you watch happen rather than read, for a lot less money then it takes to create a real animation or anime.

It is an interesting art form, and I do like the stuff produced by Marvel a lot. So far all I have seen of this group are a few trailers, but it has the potential to be quite good. If you were interested in trying your hand at this kind of thing, Smith Micro has an excellent software suite for a reasonable price with Motion Artist. It has a bit of a learning curve, but the software lets you be creative while automating a lot of the tasks; for instance you can set up the key frames and it automatically generates all the tween frames that get you from one key frame to the next. Trust me when I say having to animate each and every frame yourself gets tedious real fast, whether at 24 frames/second (fps) for film or 29 fps for TV, whereas you might have 4 to 6 key frames per second. Another very useful function is having the mouth layers pre-built for speech with a module that automates building the phonem map out of your imported MP3 file. Lip sync is about the hardest kind of animation to do, from my perspective, all that fiddly stuff should really be done by the computer anyways.

Upcoming Movies, 2014

Hello, and welcome to the future! There are a ton of films coming out in the New Year, I am just going to touch on a few of the better known ones that I am excited about. From Marvel, we are getting Captain America: The Winter Soldier on April 14th, Amazing Spider-Man 2 on May 2nd, X-Men: Days of Future Past on May 23, and Guardians of the Galaxy on August 1st. The dates are best guesses, since production or contract realities may shift them about, as always.

We get 2 from Michael Bey this year, Transformers: Age of Extinction on June 27, and for some reason he is also doing Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles with Megan Fox on August 8.

Besides the ones already mentioned there are several other sequels and/or reboots, with Godzilla on May 16th, Sin City: A Dame to Kill For on August 22, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes on July 18th, The Hunger Games Mockingjay (Part 1) on November 21st, and The Hobbit: There and Back Again on December 17th.

There are also a number of unique properties that have not previously been movies that I am eager to check out, most of which are smaller independent films which I will be mentioning down the road. A few of the larger productions include The Lego Movie on February 7th (that one looks like a serious hoot), The Edge of Tomorrow on June 6th, Jupiter Ascending on July 23rd, and Interstellar on November 7th.

Yes, it should be a hell of a year for movies, and I am looking forward to it.

Something to Watch: DVDs, 17Dec13

Looks like some excellent selections were held back for last minute shopping opportunities. In movies, Elysium would stand out on its own merits anyways, but it has to be about the only time Jodi Foster got to be the bad guy, at least that I have seen. And even though it doesn’t stand up to District 9, his previous work, for originality (that’s what happens when they hand you a corporate run big budget; too many folks have a vote in what you can and can’t do), Neill Blomkamp still did a quality job within the constraints they saddled him with. Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters was a great YA book, and I am pleased to see they didn’t just stop with the first Percy Jackson story; with any luck, they will continue to go through converting all of the books to feature films. The comic-book-to-movie installment of Kick-Ass 2 continued the franchise’s tradition of having over-the-top actors in the adult superhero role, with the underage superheroes being the sane ones. Scary thought, that, but it definitely seems to work for them.

While I only believed The Lone Ranger to be genre within a certain narrow range before this movie came out, Johnny Depp completely changed the dialog for the story. I consider this the best Lone Ranger tale ever, quite the fitting reboot for what has always been an American classic series. And for those wondering why I considered it genre at all, it is twofold. First, you have the whole ghost who walks thing of the Spirit Warrior who can not be killed (not to be confused with The Phantom, that is a whole different Ghost Who Walks). The second reason is the Lone Ranger had a nephew named Dan Reid, who grew up to be a captain of industry, and had a son named Britt Reid, also known as the Green Hornet. The same authors created both series, I always liked the fact that they linked them together that way. Ghost Team One is a comedy horror movie, but after I have said that, I have nothing to add. Except that this one will not be following me home.

We don’t have anything directly genre in TV, but Burn Notice: Season Seven is coming out, as is Burn Notice: The Complete Series. For western animation, Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2 is good silly fun (and it comes with a 3D version).

In Anime, Aesthetica of a Rogue Hero is a cautionary tale of what Happily Ever After might devolve into. Akatsuki has saved the fairy tale kingdom and escaped home with his prize, Miu (daughter of the Demon King); and that’s where their real problems begin. In what one would think would almost be a related series (but isn’t), Blue Exorcist: The Movie has the son of Satan out to eradicate demonic forces the world over. Dad wouldn’t be proud.

Vividred Operation: Complete Collection shows what kind of world will result from a peaceful use of technology to solve the Earth’s energy problems, when that solution is attacked from space, and only a team of 14 year old girls can protect our planet. Like so many other shows, you can watch it on Crunchyroll if you prefer. The Pet Girl of Sakurasou is a twisty little story that leaves us wondering who will wind up on who’s leash, but finding that out is a fun ride. It is hard to describe Di Gi Charat beyond the fact that she is an alien who came to Earth to break into the music industry, but trust me when I say she gets in lots of trouble. Hopefully you will find something interesting in this collection; enjoy!

Amazing Spider Man 2 Trailer

Yep, Sony finally released it today, and it looks amazing, as befits a movie with the name The Amazing Spider-Man 2. I can’t wait for the new episode for the franchise, I like the reboot of the films a lot (although I still like the original trilogy, which had its own set of good points). I love all things Marvel, and still wish my mom hadn’t thrown out my comic book collection in the 70’s. It would be worth a fortune now, including as it did the first hundred or so episodes of Spider Man, Fantastic Four, X-Men, Thor, Avengers, and more, all of them bought new starting at issue #1.

Looking back, I realize I never collected Iron Man, Captain America, or Doctor Strange because I didn’t care for the artwork, but the same style of artwork was OK for Spider Man and a few others, because I related to the character so well. I guess you could say I loved styles like those Jim Steranko created over those like Steve Ditko made, as a general rule, and if you compare those two artists styles you can extrapolate the rest of my preferences easily enough. But the STORIES from all those universes were riveting, both for their sci-fi wonderfulness and their depth of character development with the accompanying interpersonal relationships. To this day, I want more excellent graphics with killer story lines and dramatic emotional development, and I suspect that combination is why the Marvel Movie universe has been such a delight for me. Yes, I will be in the theater for this one. Hopefully in I-MAX 3D for probably two showings in a row.