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Something to Do: Movies

This is the week when Avengers: Age of Ultron hits the big screen, and I will definitely be in the theater to see it. The word came from Chris Evens (Captain America) earlier today that they have already set up the shooting schedule for Avengers: Infinity War, filming the two part movies back to back over 9 months beginning in the fall of 2016. Part one will be out in May of 2018, part 2 in May 2019. Also they started filming on Captain America: Civil War today as well. That film will be near-Avengers in scope, including the return of Iron Man, Falcon, Black Widow, Hawkeye, and the Winter Solder, and giving us the new characters Black Panther and Scarlet Witch.

If you are up for a marathon, AMC Theaters, Showcase Theaters, Regal Theaters, and Cinemark (and probably others I didn’t find) are running 27 hours worth of Marvel titles back-to-back for the new Avengers premier. You start at 6PM Wednesday give or take a few minutes, and finish with the 7PM showing of the latest one Thursday evening, like so:

6:00pm IRON MAN
8:25pm THE INCREDIBLE HULK
10:35pm IRON MAN 2
1:00am THOR
3:10am CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE FIRST AVENGER
5:30am THE AVENGERS
8:48am IRON MAN 3
11:15am THOR: THE DARK WORLD
1:45pm CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE WINTER SOLDIER
4:20pm GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY
7:00pm AVENGERS: AGE OF ULTRON

Obviously the one that caught my eye was Guardians of the Galaxy, which has not been part of the Avengers filmography. This may be confirmation that there will be a film where the two teams meet, or perhaps it is Marvel/Disney figuring that film was popular enough they can sell out the theaters even though it isn’t new.

Something to Watch: Discs

I didn’t find many genre Movies or TV shows this week, although Paddington is a fantasy as well as a children’s tale, so should be included in this list. Certainly it has some of the best CGI effects playing the part of its title character I have seen in a while. There is a live action Japanese movie that fits the genre criteria coming out this week, in the form of 2013’s Arcana. When you watch the trailer see if you can spot the actor who played the primary villein in the Korean sci-fi TV romantic dramedy My Love From Another Star. While not genre, Inherent Vice is based on the Thomas Pynchon novel of the same name, so should be both darkly funny and appropriately twisty.

We do much better in Anime this time around, starting with D-Frag!, where Kazama’s plan to rule the school using violence is tanked when he runs into the pretty psychopaths of the Game Creation Club. Now he will be lucky just to survive the whacked out games these girls play. In Nobunaga the Fool: Collection 1 the giant mechas were built by Leonardo Da Vinci, and Joan d’Arc needs to convince Nobunaga Oda to use them to unite both planets under a banner of peace. Then there is Hayate the Combat Butler: Can’t Take My Eyes Off You, another 12 episodes forming season 3, continuing the epic fight for Hayates life, and his charge’s freedom and well-being.

World conquest has been a dream of would-be dictators for centuries, but has never actually happened. At least not until one girl pulled it off in World Conquest Zvezda Plot, possibly the strangest tale of world domination ever told. I should also mention a couple of classics being re-released for another generation this time around: Fushigi Yugi (a book transports 4 friends into a parallel universe, giving them 52 episodes of adventures before they can escape) and Saiyuki (4 reluctant heroes are just as concerned about having a good time as they are about saving the world for 50 episodes). My super-short description of the two tales may sound similar, but they are far different than you might suspect. Plus, they are both absolute classics of their kind, and well worth your time to watch and enjoy.

Kung Fu Killer starts today

When I put together this week’s Something to Do: Movies entry, I somehow completely missed the new Hong Kong Martial Arts epic Kung Fu Killer. It isn’t exactly in wide release, but a lot of the Chinese owned AMC Theater Multiplexes will be carrying it. It is put together by the team that did IP Man, and stars Donnie Yen as a killer/Kung Fu expert recruited by police to track down a murderer in return for his release from prison. Check out the trailer, I think this one looks quite entertaining.

Batman v Superman trailer

DC is taking one of their darker Parallel Earth story lines with Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, which will be coming out next year. I thought they might want to do something a bit more positive for their first theatrical presentation of the Justice League, but I would have been wrong. There isn’t a lot to their web site quite yet, since the release date of March 2016 is still quite a ways off. That date has changed twice so far, and may do so again.

Something to Do: Movies

This week finally brings us The Age of Adaline, the story of the woman who had a strange accident and thereafter did not age. Somewhere around the time she turned 110 she fell in love again, and that changed everything. I have been waiting for this movie to get into the theaters for quite a while, and am quite pleased it is finally time. Their movie home page design is really well done, but needs a bit of work to create a proper navigation interface that you can actually find. The one it has is hidden, unless you have a 12 year old guide whose only computer has been their smart phone for all their life. Their Tumblr page is the best use of that resource to promote a movie I have seen, breaking the image set into the decades that span the timeline of the film, and telling its own story.