The actress Cara Delevingne sings the song I Feel Everything from the Luc Besson masterpiece Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets. Sadly we probably won’t be getting anything additional from that comic book universe any time soon, because the movie cost around $150,000,000 to make, but they only pulled in just over $115,000,000 in its 4 week run. If you were one of the luck few who got to see it (they put it in the tiniest theater in each of the various megaplexes with a low number of screenings, while Dunkirk had half the screens, including 100% of all IMAX showings, and started every 45 minutes) you know what how good it was. They should get funding for the second one in about 25 years, when this film is a Cult Classic.
The genre entry is Dave Made a Maze, and indie fantasy which has been quietly winning awards at film festivals for a while now. I suspect it won’t be getting a lot of screens across the country, so you may have to hunt for it if you want to see it. The Hitman’s Bodyguard isn’t genre (beyond the fact that it looks like it is straight out of a comic book), but it does look like it will be silly fun. Decisions, decisions…
This week brings the latest in the long running franchise with Alien: Covenant. By the time this one hit the theaters I had seen everything I needed to see of that universe, so I haven’t seen it yet, and feel no compulsion to do so now. I do love every one of the films that has Sigourney Weaver in it, though. I am going to have to include the TV series Riverdale: Season 1 this time, because it is so different from the comic books I remember reading that it seems like something from another world to me. I did enjoy it quite a bit, and am happy that Season 2 will be on the air in October.
Anime has the continuation of two long-running favorites with Fairy Tail: Collection Nine, and One Piece – Season Nine, Voyage Two. We also get Food Wars! Complete Collection in both a regular and limited box sets.
The latest Daoko song, just posted today, is called Big Fireworks, and is the theme song for the new animated motion picture Fireworks, Should We See It from the Side or the Bottom?. The film opens in Japan on the 18th of this month, and is a remake of a 1993 live action drama of the same name. This one is a slice of life Anime with a side order of time travel, I can’t wait to see it! The animation work itself looks excellent, I hope they don’t wait a whole year before bringing it to the big screen in North America. Oh, yeah, the last trak is Daoko’s Good bye Goodbye from the J-WAVE SONAR MUSIC SPECIAL SHOW CASE about 3 months ago.
The animated choice this time is The Nut Job 2: Nutty by Nature which is good silly fun, as you would expect. But the live action option has to be Once Upon a Time, the Chinese epic fantasy about love across the incarnations and across time. It looks like the live action version of Tokyo Ghoul is being released as well, but not in this country.
King Arthur: Legend of the Sword is the epic fantasy option in Western film releases this week, and I didn’t find anything genre-like in Anime. This might be a good weekend to start watching something new on a streaming service; I think I’ll begin Restaurant to Another World.