With an amazing cast, the Disney film Into The Woods twists together some of the Brothers Grimm tales in ways the original authors never envisioned. It will be hitting the big screen December 25th, and I intend to be in the theater for it on opening day.
The best movie coming out this week is definitely Maleficent, which includes the best performance I have ever seen Angelina Jolie deliver. The special effects were also quite good, and it really put Sleeping Beauty into perspective as quite a different story than the one Disney told in 1959. Also this week is Hercules as played by Dwayne Johnson, and the family-friendly Planes: Fire and Rescue.
I didn’t see any genre TV coming out this week, but we do have White Collar: The Complete Fifth Season, which is always a fun show. Season 6 begins Thursday, and will be their final season.
Anime gets a couple of choices. Nyaruko: Crawling with Love!: Season 2 continues the rather strange and amusing tale of the guy being protected by three of the Old Ones of C’Thulhu, who shape shift into cute girls to blend in. Yes, it is a romantic comedy. Ben-To is also a comedy, about the food fights that take place when Bento boxes are marked down to half price.
Ths weekend we get Dracula Untold, a story about the ruler and hero Vlad Tepes sacrificing much to save his family and his subjects from the invading armies. In some ways this is a lot closer to the historic facts of his life and times than most Dracula movies, and includes his Impaler tendencies, although with those scenes adjusted to retain the PG-13 rating. Except for that whole Vampire thing they could have passed this as a historical epic, but that just helps spice up the story. I will be in the theaters for this one.
In movies we get The Signal, but the description just tells you about the setup, not the plot, and the trailer is just as vague. So the only thing I can really tell you about it is it includes Laurence Fishburne, and lot of reviewers thought it was a unique movie experience. From Australia, The Rover is the sequel to Animal Planet, and is another modern western done as a Mad Max wannabe. The one that sounds most amusing to me is Danger Dolls from Japan, about 4 assassins from one universe who need to impersonate 4 Pop Idols from another universe, so they can stop the evil cult that created the portal between their universes before both are taken over. Finally, if your in the mood for youthful rebellion and music without the genre aspects, the Swedish film We are the Best! is about 3 girls from Stockholm who form a punk band in the 1980s.
In TV, Defiance: Season Two continues the groundbreaking series which takes place as much in an MMORPG as it does on the small screen. Each episode has some references to things that happened that week in the game, as the various Alien races try to peacefully coexist in the wreckage of St. Louis. Why would I mention Reign: The Complete First Season, which appears to be a historical drama? Because it has Nostradamus handing out prophecies, which pushes it into the historical fantasy realm in my book. Plus it is on CW, which has really become a home for a lot of genre shows, and so deserves support.
In Anime, Attack on Titan: Part 2 continues the story of the defense of humanity from the giant killers (or perhaps killer giants would be more accurate) who’s only purpose seems to be to wipe us out. For those who found the ending of season 1, part 2 unsatisfying, fear not, because season 2 should hit the small screen in August of 2015. Ultimate Girl are three high school girls who morph to 20 times their normal size in order to battle giant monsters rampaging across Tokyo. But they can only sustain that size for 3 minutes, so they have to win their fights fast. Kampfer: Complete Collection can be a little confusing, what with the lady killer male protagonist being turned into a Kampfer, a lady who is supposed to enter mortal combat with other ladies and kill them. Since he is only female during the actual combat he rapidly becomes the center of a whole series of rumors, including the one where he is supposed to be dating himself. As lethal as the fighting is, he probably won’t live long enough to have to worry about the rumor mill.
While not genre, I should mention that K-ON!: Season 1 Complete Collection also comes out this week, for the moe music fans. Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt: Complete Series is coming out in an Anime Classics edition, which means if you shop around you can pick the whole thing up for around $25 or so. Finally, the groundbreaking Ghost in the Shell: 25th Anniversary Special Edition will be available in Blu-Ray this Tuesday. I should mention that if you have the Blu-ay version of GitS 2.0, it included a Blu-Ray version of the original 1995 masterpiece as well as the cleaned-up video with the extra 3D modeling 2.0 version, and I don’t see a lot of extras with the new one. I tend to lean to recommending you grab GitS 2.0 Blu-Ray for $11 over the new one, but be careful not to confuse it with GitS 2: Innocence, which was the sequel to the original film.
You can jump over to Nickelodeon if you want to watch the next episode of the new animated version of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles before it airs on Friday on their cable channel. I don’t know if they plan on doing this on a regular basis, or if it is just the A Chinatown Ghost Story episode that gets to be seen early on their site. Thanks to the folks at Comic Book Movies for the heads up on this one.
There are a couple of choices, but I don’t know how many screens they are going to be on as neither film is spending a lot of money on publicity. Alas Shrugged: Who Is John Galt? is the third film in the series and finishes the story with the romantic bits. The Ayn Rand book was too big to do as just one movie, it seems. Bird People is a French fantasy romantic drama/comedy that looks pretty interesting, but it may not get a lot of screens because many audience members don’t like to read subtitles.