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Something to do: Movies

This weekend has three films coming out, two of them pretty much everywhere. They kick off on the 14th, with The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, a film by the National Treasure franchise team. It takes a stab at reproducing that magic with real magic as part of the premise, and yes, that team includes Nick Cage. This is particularly anticipated because it is not a remake of another film, which seems a bit rare these days.

Two more films roll out on the 16th, with Inception in wide release, telling an original tale of dream theft and the thought police that I have been waiting about a year to see. With an all star cast and deep pockets production money, as well as a concept that has NOT been done to death by Hollywood copycat studios, this makes the second original work in a single weekend. While I am looking forwards to Sorcerer’s Apprentice as a feel-good film, Inception bodes well to becoming a movie with a permanent impact on the genre. I have already started to consider the best films to group it with for a marathon of twisted flicks, with Dark City and Blade Runner leading the pack.

The other film on the 16th is in limited release, The Wild Hunt, originally scheduled for release in May. A man looses his girlfriend to a bunch of guys in a medieval re-enactment game, but it isn’t a game to everyone. In fact, some get downright intense about how they wish to proceed.

Something to Watch: DVDs

There is very little of interest being released on DVD this week, although there is one true masterpiece: Saving Grace: The Final Season. This program has been nominated for many awards although it only won once that I know of, but it is an absolutely amazing drama that goes places you would never expect. The four seasons tell one complete story, and while each episode is a self contained police procedural, the core story arc is something else entirely. With the all-star cast and quality production values, this one gets my vote as the best release for this week.

For Movies, Parasomnia is the only real option, and not much of one in my book.

There are a few new Anime collections being released, including Golgo 13, season 1 of the story of an assassin. But the most important Anime release this week has to be Romeo × Juliet, telling the classic tale of love, class war, and tragedy taking place in the city floating in the sky, Neo Verona.

There are also a few re-releases in a more affordable package, including 009-1 – Complete Collection [S.A.V.E] edition, a tasty Bond-style sexy spy story in a parallel universe, Black Cat, another assassin who learns the error of his ways, and my personal favorite for the week, Magikano, about a magical boy bludgeoned into unawareness by his equally magical sisters.

On the American animation front, the Superhero Squad is a kids-friendly version of The Avengers, and is also released on Tuesday. Not something I will be adding, but worth noting. In a related Marvel project, here is the Shadowland Music Video…

Hopefully, next week will have a lot more choices for us, but a few of this weeks limited selections are quite worth the effort.

New Resident Trailer

The new Resident Evil trailer is out, and looks quite good. I am not a horror movie fan, or a fan of movies based on games, but the Resident franchise is done very well, and looks more like an Aliens-style action adventure to me. The Elvis on Black Velvet speed painting video may not be genre, but William Gibson sent out the link, and it was too much fun sad to share.

Something to Do: Movies

There are a number of tasty films coming out in July, with two good ones this weekend. Despicable Me is the feature length animation to see. The villain played by Steve Carrol is out to steal the moon, but three little girls may just end up reforming him. I got an extra grin out of the fact that the villain’s name is Gru; how many here have played that game? If action/adventure is more to your taste, Predators also hits the big screen on Friday. In this next installment on the franchise, a handful of the worlds best killers have been kidnapped to another planet to be prey in a hunt. I am thinking I may have to see both of these.

The following weekend has three films coming out, two of them pretty much everywhere. On the 14th, The Sorcerer’s Apprentice by the National Treasure franchise team takes a stab at reproducing that magic with real magic as part of the premise, and yes, that team includes Nick Cage. Two more on the 16th, with Inception in wide release, telling an original tale of dream theft and the thought police that I have been waiting about a year to see. The other film on the 16th is in limited release, The Wild Hunt, originally scheduled for release in May. A man looses his girlfriend to a bunch of guys in a medieval re-enactment game, but it isn’t a game to everyone.

Two more films the week after that, where Valhalla Rising follows a viking with supernatural strength to a mysterious and violent place. There is some discrepancy between various sources on whether Rising will be released the 16th or the 23rd, but it will be both in theaters and on Video On Demand, so it should be accessable to just about everyone. I might not have included Salt as a genre film, except it is vary obviously every Philip K. Dick book ever written, even if he didn’t write this one, so how could I leave it out?

Something to Watch: DVD’s

Hands down, this weeks best DVD release has to be Life On Mars (UK): The Complete Collection. If you are only familiar with the US remake, which was unwatchable, you have my condolences, and trust me when I say the UK original was wonderful. If you are a fan of the original, but have been holding off on buying it because each 8-episode season ran around $45, now might be the time to make your move. While the SRP is $79 for the full set, I have found it at a few online sites available for pre-order for around $54, just over half of the original separate season costs. This is one of those Time Travel/Cop Show/Psychotic Break programs any thinking person can’t help but watch over and over (again, unlike the American TV remake), particularly because of the interaction between actors Philip Glenister and John Simm. Did I mention I recommend it?

For the rest of the TV choices, three Sci-Fi selections from classic Doctor Who and two documentaries round out the collection. The first Who release would be the William Hartnell episodes The Space Museum / The Chase. It is worth noting the Space Museum includes the actor who would later become Boba Fett as leader of the Xerons. Next of the Doctor Who releases is The Time Monster, starring Jon Pertwee and Katy Manning. The bit that makes this episode memorable is its redundancy inside a recursion; the Doctor hides his Tardis inside the Master’s Tardis, while the Master’s Tardis is inside the Doctor’s. This is a true Tesseract moment in the history of Dimensional Displacement. The final Who disk is The Horns of Nimon, a Tom Baker/Lalla Ward series episode. The Nimon were the first TV series examples I know of for the Sci-Fi trope of the intelligent interstellar locust species used to such good effect in Independence Day.

The documentaries are comprised of Douglas Adams final book, Last Chance to See, and the NASA/UA behind the scenes look at the Phoenix Mars Mission: Onto The Ice. The Adams film is hosted by Steven Fry, but even with that powerful combination of funny men this one is dead serious about all the species on the edge of extinction.

On the movie front nothing really spectacular leaps out, but a few potential hidden gems are lurking about the edges. Bitten looks like an interesting Vampire horror comedy (the Zombies have gotten too much of that field recently). I am thinking that looks at least worth a Netflix viewing, so I can decide if it needs to be part of the permanent collection. Eyeborgs has been making the Film Fest circuit for a while, and again looks real interesting. With all the reviews I have read about this one, there will not be a wait before I purchase.

For foreign live action this week Battle League Horumo stands out as a humorous (perhaps even downright silly) action adventure. The Battle League games consist of 10 players, each of which controls 100 Oni or small demons, fighting to be the last player standing. Kyoto is the playing field.

Anime gives some good options this time around. D.Gray-man comes out this week with a season 1 box set, as does Ghost Slayers Ayashi. Another full season collection is Gurren Lagann, which is a very warped little program using retro-70s animation styles (even though it was made around 2005 to 2007) to tell a twisted little story about the nature of existence and humanity’s place in it. And season 1 of the Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya is also being released; no word yet on when the ONA, the movie, or the second season of the show might be available. All of these programs were previously released as individual volumes, but this marks their first time available as box sets.

Harry Trailer

The new Harry Potter trailer is just a bit dark, and the last book is broken into two different films, but it still looks like fun to me. So even though we all saw it this weekend in the Theater, here it is again.

In the land of Authors, I have to endorse this review of Ken MacLeod’s Restoration Game, and encourage anyone who hasn’t read MacLeod to get off their ass and buy and read a copy of everything he has ever written. He comes at the world from directions most of us cannot imagine. I would also like to recommend this weeks favorite Steampunk Romance author, Gail Carriger, who managed to create a wonderful milieu and the characters to populate it. If you can’t afford to buy them, hit your local library and read Soulless, Changeless, and Blameless, and see how the stories and series began.