The one I will be in the theaters for this week is Mr. Peabody & Sherman, because I always appreciated that Rocky and Bullwinkle sense of humor. Like so many other franchises, they have been absorbed by one of the Disney studios now (Dreamworks, in this instance), most of whom have benefited from the funding and attention to detail. We also get 300: Rise of an Empire for those looking for something noticeably more serious. For those lucky enough to live in the right towns, you may also have a chance to see Journey to the West: Conquering the Demons, a film about a monk who has to fight 3 demons while falling in love with the beautiful demon hunter who helps him repeatedly. Before it is all over, he also has a transformative meeting with the Monkey King. This is another quality story by combat comedian Stephen Chow, and if you don’t live in a town where it will be on the big screen, it will also be available on that date through Video On Demand and iTunes.
In movies, The Hunger Games: Catching Fire brings the second story in the series home, but not on Tuesday as is normal; this one hits the shelves on Friday. Also this week, The Grandmaster is another retelling of the life of Ip Man, who numbered among his students Bruce Lee. This one covers from 1930 to his death, with Tony Leung Chiu-Wai as Ip Man this time, and it was nominated for two Academy Awards this year. The Last Days on Mars is a sci-fi thriller where the discovery of life on the Red Planet might mean the death of us all. While it tanked with the critics, the cast and special effects are both quite good.
In TV, Doctor Who: The Time of the Doctor is the latest Christmas special, and the end of Matt Smith in the roll, as the Doctor regenerates into Peter Capaldi. And while it is not genre, Mr. & Mrs. Murder: Series 1 is a very quirky Australian murder mystery series bubbling over with dark humor and twisted plot lines that I thoroughly enjoy.
In Anime, Aria The Natural: Second Collection continues the girls trials on their way to becoming the top gondoliers on the canals of Mars, renamed Aqua since it’s terraforming. One Piece: Season 5 Part 6 likewise continues the adventures of the Straw Hat Gang as they battle the other pirates in an effort to gain control of the high seas.
Earlier this week the audio/video production powerhouse AV Linux released it’s newest version, 6.0.3. This is a minor update, mostly focused on fixing bugs and updating software packages to the latest and greatest stable versions, but they did make one non-trivial change; they changed the default kernel to the 3.10.27-PAE low-latency build. This gives improved performance for all aspects of media capture and processing, but especially for PCI audio devices or firewire interfaces. Performance on older platforms and hardware is also enhanced by this change. Whatever type of multimedia creation and processing you were thinking of doing, this Live DVD has all the resources you need for every aspect of the production workflow. You can download the Torrent or the Image and burn it to disk to get your own free toolkit. After you have booted it from the DVD and had a chance to see just how complete the software collection included in this OpSys is, you can also install it to your hard drive if you so desire.
Because the world will never have enough Godzilla movies, here is the newest trailer for the latest version. Notice how the monster is bigger, by an order of magnitude, from one film to the next? This one should be in theaters on May 16th.
Topping the list this week is the long awaited Odd Thomas, the Dean Koontz masterwork series now in Movie format (at least the first volume). There are also Webisodes of Odd Thomas you might enjoy. While it opened last week at an extremely limited number of theaters, The Wind Rises goes into wide release this week. The latest creation of Hayao Miyazaki is a biography for once, the story of a real person who designed some of the most innovative airplanes in the world for his time. It is up for an Academy Award for best animated feature film, you have this brief opportunity to see it on the big screen. Even though it is a Japanese production, this is animation, not anime; like all Studio Ghibli works it is very much in the style of Walt Disney. Even though it isn’t genre, Stalingrad looks like a very unusual WWII movie you might want to take note of, and catch if you are in one of the towns it is playing in.
We actually have a decent assortment of programs this week, for the first time in a while. In movies, Thor: The Dark World leads us off with yet another excellent entry into the Avengers Universe franchise. The previous film promised, and this one delivered. Gravity is no slouch itself, up for a boatload of awards, an adventure set against the most amazing background of all. Ice Soldiers is about human genetic engineering by governments gone wild, a Canadian creation that owes a lot to the Cold War mentality some people are still hanging onto. Finally, Mr. Nobody might be the most powerful story of the collection for this week, and is certainly worth exploring. If you never make a choice, anything is possible.
In TV, there really is only one choice this time around: Search was a sci-fi spy cult classic back in 1972, and even though lots of aspects of it are dated now, a ton of its revelations became the future we are still in today.
In Anime, Appleseed XIII: Tartaros & Ouranos pits anti-clone terrorists bent on bombing their post-apocalyptic paradise into oblivion against the cyborgs and biodroids defending civilization. In this series from Sci-Fi mastermind Masamune Shirow, creator of Ghost In The Shell, we once again get an opportunity to explore the range of possible options humanity faces as it grows into everything it might become, and still be called human. Dallos is a tale of the lunar rebellion, when the Helium 3 miners had finally had enough of their economic enslavement and fought for their freedom. This one is a 4 episode OVA, not a full season of a series, and is from Osii Mamoru, another well known science fiction author and creator. A lot of folks credit this as the very first OVA ever made back in 1983, which gives it its own unique place in Anime history. It is also debated whether 1995’s Mighty Space Miners 2 OVA story is a direct descendent of the original series, but it is also being re=released this week.
Blast of Tempest: Complete 2nd Season sees Hakaze jump back in time to find the truth behind Aika’s death, only to hear something unexpected from Aika himself. Is the present meant to turn out this way after all, or is there something more behind events? Meanwhile, in Di Gi Charat: Winter Garden, the most powerful Earth magic hits the alien Princess hard, as she discovers her future is not as set in stone as she thought it was. Finally, in K: Complete Collection, Shiro will have to evade the clans of seven powerful kings and desperately try to prove his innocence before they all manage to kill him.
Even though it isn’t genre, I also have to mention Love, Election & Chocolate as some serious silliness!