You have to ID your age to watch this one, but it is the best trailer for Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter I have seen so far. Not because of the Red rating, but because it gives better visual background for the movie than the other trailers, which are mostly axe wielding sequences.
It will be a few months yet before the Amazing Spiderman reboot comes out, but a third trailer has now been released. I really liked what they did when they rebooted X-Men, because it took you right back to the core of the question facing each of our characters. It made each one a bit more human, showing what went into turning them in to the person they became, so even when you disagreed with their decisions you understood why they made the ones they did. I can only hope they do half as good a job with this one.
The third trailer in the build up to the July 20th release of The Dark Knight Rises, the movie that will conclude the trilogy.
The first blockbuster of the summer is finally here: The Avengers, with Joss Whedon at the helm and all the actors you would expect in their various rolls. If you have been going to the movies for the past handful of years you have been watching them build up to this one, movie by movie. If you haven’t, no need to panic, because you can do them ALL AT ONCE!!!! Two different theater chains are running marathons of all 6 of the movies (yes, I know there are way more than 6 Marvel movies, but in this instance we are only talking about the 6 leading up to the Avengers, and even at that they are only including the second Hulk movie, where I think they should have started with Hulk 1), select Cinemark theaters will let you watch them all for $20 for the set, assuming you are close enough to one of the theaters with the deal and they haven’t already sold out, while AMC has the same deal going for the same set of movies at twice the price. In order, the films for the marathons are: Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk, Iron Man 2, Thor 3D, Captain America 3D, and The Avengers 3D.
There are no well known movies coming out this week, which is how we end up with Thor at the Bus Stop and Planet of the Vampire Women sharing the first mention, because they are at least sort of genre. I really can’t recommend either of them to anyone, even a little. I can, however, recommend Let The Bullets Fly, a nice little action comedy that takes place in 1920s China. A bandit arrives in a small town in the middle of nowhere claiming to be its new mayor and then has to go head-to-head with a tyrannical petty noble, and the results are a lot of fun to watch.
The 1933 version of The Perils of Pauline serial is also coming out this week. This one has a bit of history, as it was one of the original movie theater serials done in 1914 based on the Charles Goddard Book. It has been redone several times since, including a 1947 version where Betty Hutton played Pearl White, which is kind of interesting since in the 1914 version Pearl White played Pauline. Serials were of course what lead to episodic TV series in later years, so it seemed fitting to mention this one in the TV section of this entry.
In western animation we have Iron Man – Complete Series and X-Men Complete Series, which are actually part of Marvel Anime, western characters re-imagined for the Japanese anime fans. So while not exactly western, close enough to mention here.
In anime proper, the exciting release this time is Fullmetal Alchemist: The Sacred Star of Milos, a new feature length film in the ongoing saga of the Elric brothers. This is one of my favorite steampunk anime series, so I should also note they are releasing another repackaged box set of Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood – Collection 1 containing the first 33 episodes in a single collection.
Finally, Jyu-Oh-Sei: The Complete Series has been released in a S.A.V.E. edition, which means you can now pick up the entire series for around $20.
Yes, you can also get the printed version of these two, but they look real good online and you can read them there for free. The old favorite Steampunk Comic that you have seen mentioned here many times before is Girl Genius, a graphic novel series so good it has won some serious awards. I have been reading it for years and did order the print version (I think I have through volume 8 so far) just because I wanted to read it the old fashion way. On the other hand, I only heard about Lady Sabre & The Pirates of the Ineffable Aether within the past week or so from the folks over at SF Signal, and am enjoying it immensely so far. Check them out, and let me know what you think!