The latest season of one of my favorite TV shows gets released this Tuesday: Chuck, season 2. If you thought season one was somewhat amusing, brace yourself for the next great sequence! Here is a hint; watch for some world class actors reprising their best roles here, including such masterpieces as Die Hard and The Whole 9 Yards.
In the American Animation collection for the 5th, the prime choice is Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs, yet another exquisitely silly cartoon! For Japanese anime, Night Head Genesis the complete collection tells a story of psychic power and rebellion.
Then there is a Japanese Live Action film, called Akiballion: Battlemaids of Akihabara. Hard though it may be to believe, these three women battle the very Forces of Nature to protect the Geek part of town!
Which should get everyone ready for Wake Up Callz, where an evil orbital device does its best to steal Earths dreams.
These came along just a hair too late to take advantage of the holiday gift giving season, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t some wonderful selections available.
From the world of Live Action, A Princess of Mars goes into public release. This is a Hi-Jack Movie example, starring Tracie Lords, not to be confused with John Carter of Mars coming out in 2012, even though the first story in ERB’s Mars series was The Princess of Mars.
Also in Live Action, Lesbian Vampire Killers is being released in the US under the shortened name Vampire Killers. The cast includes a former Doctor, Paul McGann, and if you were wondering they kill lesbian vampires, rather than being lesbians who kill vampires (that’s a different movie).
The dark animation of the film 9 puts Shane Acker onto a playground dominated by Tim Burton stories, with rag dolls out to save the world after the apocolyps strikes.
From the Anime choices, the one I have been waiting for is Genshiken 2 volume 3, which completes the third series of The Society For The Study Of Modern Visual Culture. This is the true Otaku Anime series, as the fact that each volume includes an episode of the story the characters are watching on TV tends to tell you. And yes, that means on the Genshiken series disks they had the Kujibiki Unbalance OVA episodes built in as extras to the disks. When they followed that up with the second series, Kujibiki Unbalance (official page HERE, in case you want to grab any extra videos or radio play goodies), the Genshiken OVA was embedded in the extras. I assume the Kujibiki OVA 2 files are embedded in the Gensiken 2 disks (I don’t know, since I haven’t bought them yet), but I was sad to learn there would be no boxed set of the third series.
Season 1, part two of Dragonaut comes out this week. To avoid Earth’s impending destruction from an extinction level event (an asteroid impact from a rock many kilometers along each axis), a Dragon’s Egg has been cloned and grown, the resulting DRAGONs paired up with human pilot astronAUTs. But as with any good plot line, there are complications (it would be boring otherwise), and as I really liked what they did in the first half of the season, I look forward to seeing how this works out.
And then there is Baccano, the Copmplete Series, a truely unique anime with almost as many primary charactors as there are episodes. While it starts out a bit confusing, the various story lines all come together by the end of the series as long as you pay attention. This one is worth the price of admission, and very much worth getting all at once, since you have no time to forget various subplot details while waiting for the next disk to be released.
There is also season 2 of Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle coming out with this Tuesdays collect of Anime TV series. This one is the companion series for XxxHolic.
FYI, there are a few leaning-to-documentary programs I should mention here, like Time Warp 2, for the Science crowd (of which I am a member). But I won’t.
Last chance to release disks and have them available for Xmas. So who waited this late before moving? Top movie released this week has to be District 9; it is an incredible and surprising movie, and it is hard to believe it was made on a tiny budget. Top documentary out this week is definitely It Might Get Loud, which brings three amazing guitar players together. From TV, Kyle XY Season 3 hit the shelves Tuesday.
For Anime TV, Spice & Wolf: Complete First Season arrives, the story of a traveling trader and a wolf goddess. If you want to watch a bit of it to see if you like it, visit the official Funimation site. A single volume finishes up the first season of Ah My Buddha volume 6, kind of the Monk’s spirit power strip club version of Ah My Goddess. In live-action the movie Maid-Droid is also being released in the U.S.
Avatar delivered on its promise of game-changing technology to tell its story, and it had quite a story to tell. Which pretty much everybody already knows, but sometimes the urge to play Master of the Obvious quite overcomes me. And if the trailer is any indication, the next Iron Man movie should be a monster. M.C.Frontalot found this Enhance! gem on youtube…
Anime South runs from the 18th to the 20th in Destin, FL. Besides the usual Cosplay, Panels, Viewing Rooms, and Maid Cafe, they have some unusual events, like Anime Speed Dating and the Anime Tractor Pull. Musical guest Eyeshine seems to be touring the Anime and Sci-Fi Con circuit this winter, so they may be playing near you sometime soon.
Also this weekend, Tsunami 16 2009 happens in Merida, Yucatan Mexico. Unfortunately the homepage, while one of the most visually stunning images I have seen for an Anime con, is just that: a JPG image. A bit difficult to click on anything and get more information.
