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Something to Watch: DVDs

The top choice for this week is the UK hit Being Human: Season 1, seen on this side of the Atlantic on BBC America. The premise sounds like the set up for a bad joke; A Ghost, A Werewolf, and a Vampire get an apartment together. Do not be fooled, this is not a comedy, but a very well done drama exploring some serious questions. Season 2 starts next Saturday in the US, while the UK is gearing up for season 3.

There aren’t any genre movies of note this week unless something snuck by me, but The Runaways film will do nicely to take up the slack. Put another dime in the jukebox, baby.

There are a couple of new releases in the world of Anime, starting with Kurokami: The Animation Part 2. In the second half of the series the Tara Guardian Kuro and the Human Keita form a pact, and go to Okinawa to discover who murdered his mother. You can also watch this on Crunchyroll where they seem to be up to episode 10. The other new program worth noting is My Bride Is A Mermaid: Season 1 Part 1 in which a beautiful mermaid saves the life of the son of a visiting family. But the Mermaid’s dad is a yakuza who give the boy two choices; marry his daughter or sleep with the fishes, and the boys parents are just as dysfunctional if less homicidal. You can watch episodes on Hulu to get an idea of what this series is like.

Blastr, Filmclub

Blastr is not a new web site. It is part of the Sci-Fi Channel stable of online properties, and has been known for years as Sci-Fi Wire, an old and honorable internet name going back to the early ’90s when it was owned by a couple of independent Sci-Fi fans. They made a ton of money selling it to the Sci-Fi Channel before the Dot Com crash, and the site has mostly held to their initial format ever since, right up until its renaming and re-imaging. The look and feel of it does fit more with their other corporate offerings now, like DVice and Fidgit, and they have carried over at least some portion of the decades long archive of great articles. But what got a grin out of me was their celebratory story in honor of their rebranding: The 10 most gorgeous blasters and ray guns in science fiction. What a hoot!

According to this story at Female First, the kids taking place in the Film Club in the UK will be building their own science fiction films over the next month or two. Where was this kind of organization when I was in school, besides England; I would have loved it! Particularly things like their Close Encounters initiative.

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.

Zimm is coming

A new TV series will start going out on the internet soon, Zimm is about an alien invasion. This looks like it could be real good, with a cast that includes Armin Shimerman, Robyn Hyden of Blood and Roses, Alimi Ballard of Numb3rs and Dark Angel, Michele Boyd of Flash Forward, and Zadi Diaz of Epic Fu. Armin at one time had two full time acting jobs as the principle on Buffy and the bartender on Deep Space Nine, while simultaneously serving as the president of the Screen Actors Guild. The program itself is listed as being 24 with aliens and a Die Hard attitude, and will roll out in Sanctuary style on the web only, at least to begin. Thanks to TrekMovie for the heads up on this one.

SETICon

How could I avoid mentioning it? It is not quite a Sci-Fi con, but some of the same people will be there. SETI Con is a convention centered around the question of where everybody is… everybody that didn’t evolve on this planet, that is. It is coming up August 13th through the 15th in Santa Clara, CA., and will be running four tracks: Main, Science, Education, and Q&A. The panelists and speakers lean heavily to the sciences (with a whole subsection just for the astronauts), but includes Sci-Fi Authors, some of whom are scientists, and Sci-Fi actors, one of whom is also an astronomer. And if it wasn’t already obvious to you, this party is put together by the SETI Institute, and yes, SETI does stand for the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence. Thanks to the bloggers at Discovery for the heads up on this one.