Today is the first day of the 17th Annual SCI-FI-LONDON Film Festival, with a host of amazing films, including 7 world film premieres, 13 UK film premieres, and SCI-FIDO, the world’s only cosplay for dogs! It runs for 10 days total and includes goodies like the movie Virtual Revolution and this year’s assortment of Sci-Fi Games. Wish I could be there this time!
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The film that gets my vote this week is The Circle, just 20 minutes into the future and oh so scary.
The next chapter in the Lycan/Vampire Wars comes out this week in the form of Underworld: Blood Wars. The Girl with All the Gifts, based on the book by M. R. Carey will also be on the shelves come Tuesday. Strangely, the one I really want to see this time around isn’t genre: La La Land. In Anime Asterisk War: The Academy City on the Water is an excellent series, but with Part 4 holding only 6 episodes yet running at $55, I will definitely be watching it streaming online rather than adding it to the collection. Snow White with the Red Hair brings out Season 2 of the fairy tale, which at least is realistically priced.
We have to wait until November for this one, but it looks like it is going to be a monster, and I mean that literally.
Everything seems to be animated this week. It is always a treat to get a new title from Studio Ghibli, Ocean Waves is available this week for the first time in the US. It was made in 1993 as a TV anime, but at 152 minutes long rates as a mini-series. In anime, My Hero Academia: Season 1 has a hoard of high school students with superpowers, and a guy who enrolled in the most prestigious school for Heroes with no powers at all. Undefeated Bahamut Chronicle: Complete Collection has mechanical dragons used for aerial combat, with the prince and princess from adjacent kingdoms battling it out to see who gets Top Gun status, at least at first. Aria the Scarlet Ammo AA is another season of those girls with guns getting into more trouble, and in Valkyrie Drive: Mermaid you cannot separate the women from the weapons.
The best movie this time is a true story: Hidden Figures has to be one of the best films of the year, or last year at least. If you haven’t seen it yet, now is your chance! Mars: Season One is a mini-series presented on National Geographic all about the upcoming Mars Colonization project. Monster Trucks is silly fun for the entire family, a very friendly invasion indeed. And then there is Tangled: Before Ever After Volume 1, an animated prequel; the production values on this one are way below the original films (1930s at the most recent, it appears), but they are at least trying to tell a new story.
In Anime, Is the Order a Rabbit?? – Season 2 brings us lots more silly fun, and Toriko: Parts 1-4 contains the first 50 episodes (4 seasons, or one year, depending on how you prefer to count) of the ultimate food porn combat comedy! I think the streaming service is up to episode 148 or so at the moment, to put that in perspective.