There are two animated full length feature films worth checking out this week, with The Pirates! Band of Misfits being another excellent comedy from the folks who brought you Chicken Run, Wallace and Gromit, and Shaun The Sheep. The trailer alone had me in stitches, the movie itself is a hoot. On the more action/adventure side of life Starship Troopers: Invasion is the fourth story in the film sequence, with Casper Van Diem as the executive producer. Which may be a bit confusing since it is an animated presentation rather than live action; but it is part of the feature film series, and not the Roughnecks TV show animations. And with Shinji Aramaki as the director (his work on the Appleseed movies, Halo, and Gasaraki among others prove his skill set in producing adult oriented mecha power suit combat films) this will definitely end up being a production Robert A. Heinlein would have been proud to see.
The live action movie this time is Battleship, which still makes me scratch my head; I consider this the strangest choice for a computer game you would want to turn into a movie, perhaps exceeded only by Solitaire. Unlike the two animated feature films this week, I will catch this one on streaming when it hits that market rather than add it to the permanent collection.
In TV, Once Upon A Time was one of my two favorite shows on broadcast TV (Grimm being the other) last fall, and with the new season kicking off at the end of September the timing is perfect for this DVD release. A big chunk of why I think that is I normally DVR broadcast TV shows and watch them from the hard drive, but with this series and Grimm I decided to try out a strictly streaming approach. Unfortunately between my workload from the office and some capacity issues with the streaming servers during peak usage times I missed some episodes of each series before they were replaced by the following weeks offering. So now I have a chance to catch up with everything that happened before the new season starts, and yes, I did grab the $10 off coupon the ABC Once site has posted, good for this week only.
The other TV show this go round is The Walking Dead: The Complete Second Season. I am not a horror fan generally, but my friends who are seem to love this show. I may get around to checking it out soon if they keep up the positive comments.
For western animation I am a bit torn on whether to give a recommendation or not. I absolutely love Dreamworks and all their masterpieces of whatever length, but this week is just confusing. The DVD is Dreamwork’s Spooky Stories, which is made from Shrek’s Thrilling Tales, as well as Scared Shrekless and Mutant Pumpkins From Outer Space. I already own the latter two discs which were released months ago, and I own another Shrek short DVD which may or may not be the third story under a different title. But if you don’t own any Mutant Vs. Alien or Shrek short presentations than I can definitely recommend it, as the stories are hysterical. I just wish they would have been a little less ambiguous about the included titles, so I would know if I already owned them all, or at least had a search function of the Dreamworks home page so I could find more information.
In Anime, Freezing is a tale of genetically enhanced schoolgirls called Pandora’s out to kill alien invaders with the aid of their male partners, known as Limiters. And yes, you may assume the males job does not involve any actual combat, this series being more fan service oriented than anything else. One particular newly forged battle couple (Satellizer el Brigette as the Pandora, Kazuya as the Limiter) seems to be under attack by their classmates as well as the aliens, and must work twice as hard to annihilate their opponents. This one is a bit pricey, running around $42 for 12 episodes.
Pretty much the opposite of that series is Koihime MusÅ – Ultimate Collection, about a woman warrior from historical times who becomes a role model for other oppressed women, who all take up arms and flock to her banner. This boxed set is comprised of 3 full series each of which is 12 to 13 episodes, plus a few OVAs, so even though the asking price starts at $52 for the set (lowest price, it ranges up to $80), you get 975 minutes of program for your money, which works out to $1.30 per episode for this series.
Finally, K-ON! Season 2 – Collection 2 becomes available. I know it isn’t genre, but it is about rock music, and that is good enough for me.