I am definitely looking forward to Disney/Pixar’s next entry in the scaring franchise Monsters University. It should be hitting the big screen on June 21st, hope to see you there.
This Friday we have The Croods, the cave family working hard to invent civilization as we know it. I enjoyed the various trailers, and think this one should be quite amusing. And let’s face it, I’ll watch anything made by Dreamworks.
There isn’t much this week, but The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey is worth checking out. I was hoping they would have stuck with the one book = one movie format they did with the Ring series, but this one book they are dragging out into 3 movies. They are doing this by showing you a number of complete battles they mentioned in one or two sentences in the book, dragging in filler from some of Tolkien’s other works, and so forth. That’s it for movies, and there do not seem to be any live action TV shows this time around.
We do somewhat better in Anime, with One Piece Season 4 DVD Part 4 bringing us episodes 242 through 252; at this rate, we may catch up with real time episodes in another few years. Toriko: Part 3 continues the gastronomic combat series (it doesn’t deserve to be on the menu if it doesn’t have at least as good a chance of having you for diner when the hunt finishes).
Fate/Stay Night: Complete Collection is all 24 episodes of the Stay Night storyline, but remember there is also a movie called Fate/Stay Night: Unlimited Blade Works, which is an alternate retelling, an OVA collection called Fate: Prototype, and another TV series titled Fate: Zero, so I tend to take exception to the Complete Collection part of the designation.
Vampire Princess Miyu TV is an actual complete collection of the TV series, although there was an OVA set for this show as well. The half human vampire girl is doomed to be a teenager forever, fighting the forces of darkness to save mankind. The series aired in 1997 through 1998, but it was a sequel to the original 1988 show, so this is old school style anime. Another classic being re-released this week is Shin Getter Robo vs. Neo Getter, a Giant Mecha battle drama from 2000. It is an OVA of four 30 minute episodes. Finally, the much more recent Corpse Princess: The Complete Series is being released in a S.A.V.E. edition, which means you can add it to your collection for $20 or so if you shop around. She’ll kill anything that’s dead, to protect the living.
The obvious choice would be The Incredible Burt Wonderstone this week, with some great comedians doing an excellent job of showing us exactly how professional magicians deal with the real world. The cast for this flic is amazing, I can not imagine the creators getting all these excellent actors assembled for the project if they didn’t have a story worth telling. But it is not the only offering this time around; Vanishing Waves is in very limited release, but it has already won a ton of awards on the Film Festival circuit. It is about making neuro-enhansed real time contact with a coma patient, and exploring all the ways that might go in a non-physical environment. And then there is Noise Matters, which I swear reminds me of nothing so much as the comically brilliant indi film from Sweden, The Sound Of Noise. The core of both films center around people who take what most folks hear as noise, and weave them into complex musical presentations of scope and beauty. Where the films go from that starting point is radically different, but they do seem to share a bit of an attitude no matter how much they diverge.
The most interesting movie this week is about a man who made interesting movies; Hitchcock. Anthony Hopkins does an amazing job in the role title role. Someone is releasing the 1962 movie Jack The Giant Killer, probably in the hopes you will confuse it with Jack The Giant Slayer which hit theaters last week and buy it by mistake. Rise of the Guardians is a fun little animated film from Dreamworks you might enjoy, with various mythical characters teaming up together to fight evil.
In TV Ripper Street is a crime drama in Victorian London with a Steampunk edge, as the law enforcement team struggles to keep control of the streets of the city. And always, they keep an eye out for the one that got away… Jack the Ripper.
Anime brings us Bleach: Season 16, with episodes 230 through 242. Of course, we still have a ways to go there; Japan just watched episode 366 last week. Penguindrum: Collection 2 brings us closer to Himari’s appointment with Death by supernatural forces.
There are also a few re-releases worth noting; Shingu: Secret of the Stellar Wars and Trigun: Complete Series each bring their entire stories out in box sets. If you have missed them so far, now is your chance to pick them up.
There is a new trailer for the movie After Earth, the father/son adventure with Will and Jaden Smith. This one will be on the big screen on June 7th, and looks more interesting with each new trailer they release.