This week the 2014 remake of the French film classic La Belle et la Bête, AKA Beauty and the Beast will be available in American theaters. It has English subtitles for those who don’t speak the language although if you know the story you probably won’t need them. Also this week The Girl with All the Gifts is being released in the UK and at Fantastic Fest, going to wide release on October 11th.
The only Western genre title I could find this week was Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows, a franchise I generally like better in comic/manga form. But I haven’t seen this one yet, I am hoping they finally live up to the promise of their original format.
Anime has Asterisk War Volume 1 which is sadly only the first half of season one of this series. I will be waiting until they release at least a full season, and preferably two, to a single box set before I pick it up. But it is an excellent story you should be watching online while waiting for a real release. Den-noh Coil 2 is the second season about the hidden secrets in the digitally augmented world beyond their VR headsets. With one of their number dead and virtual creatures that act as if they are alive, they only have so much time to unlock the mysteries surrounding them. Rozen Maiden: Zurückspulen has the Jun’s from two separate universes getting together to explore how having/not having the combat dolls in their lives changed how it all worked out. Finally, One Piece – Season 8 Voyage 3 brings episodes 481 through 492 of pirate goodness home.
Movies bring us The Huntsman: Winter’s War, part two of the story begun in Snow White and the Huntsman. This series is nicely done Fantasy which has already been nominated for a number of awards. Game based Ratchet and Clank has our heroes fighting to save every planet in the Galaxy, with more than a little humor along the way. While not genre, The Man Who Knew Infinity is the true story of mathematical genius Srinivasa Ramanujan’s time at Trinity College. TV has Ash vs. Evil Dead: The Complete First Season and The Walking Dead: The Complete Sixth Season, which seems slightly redundant somehow.
In Anime, Hakuoki: Warrior Spirit of the Blue Sky is finally getting a North American release for those in need of more Samurai vs. Demon/Vampire action. Cross Ange Collection 2 contains the next dozen episodes about the princess who’s throne was stolen, and the fight to get it back puts the fate of two worlds in alternate timelines at risk. The final battle between man, dragons, and machines will decide it all. The Heroic Legend of Arslan also has an heir to the throne fighting to get it back, but don’t think this is a copy cat. This one is crafted by the team who did Full Metal Alchemist, and is full of the same kind of complex politics, situations, and characters as you know from their earlier works. Finally, two of the Ikki Tousen story lines are being released in S.A.V.E editions; Great Guardians and Xtreme Xectuor. If you have been waiting to pick them up when the price came down, now is the time!
The best so far, yesterday the Star Wars: Rogue One Olympic Trailer aired and was posted on line, so for the 27 people world wide who have not seen it yet, here you go! Enjoy.
Alderamin on the Sky is told as a history of a legendary tactician and general, who became great because he was lazy and had no interest in fighting. It is set in a very steampunk universe, with compressed air rifles and airships, and a technology base from around 1820 or so. It opens with our protagonist traveling with a childhood friend he is escorting on her journey to a military academy. They meet new friends on the ship they are sailing on, which runs into trouble leaving them stranded behind enemy lines. I was hooked by the end of the first episode, and every episode since has been better than the one before. We are up to the 4th episode, with a new episode popping up every Friday.
We have 5 movies to choose from this time around, 2 of which will be playing everywhere, the last 3 will be more limited. Nerve is not only first out of the gate with a release on Wednesday the 27th, but it also has a Pokemon Go tie in, I guess because the edge-of-your-seat story line just wasn’t enough. Jason Bourne is the other out-everywhere title, and like most spy books/movies it includes science fiction elements in its plot, premise, or gadgets, if you were wondering why I count them as genre.
In more limited release we get Monkey King: Hero Is Back, an animated fantasy starring Jackie Chan as the Monkey King. The last Monkey King movie Jackie Chan was in was the live action Forbidden Kingdom, and Jet Li got to play the famous demigod in that one. Both movies include the Monkey King’s release after 500 years from his prison of ice, a rather pivotal moment in his legend. League of Gods is based on the 16th-century Chinese novel Feng Shen Yan Yi, in which King Zhou becomes evil after a spirit disguised as one of his concubines twists his mind around. And finally the description of Dishoom sounds like a fantasy adventure premise to me: John and Varun go on a suicidal mission to rescue Jaqcueline, the princess, from her evil fiancé. Everybody’s already seen the trailers for the first two movies, here are the ones for the other three.
Monkey King: Hero Is Back – Official Trailer from Viva Pictures Distribution, LLC on Vimeo.