It looks like Dreamworks is going ahead with their live action production of Ghost In The Shell, since they have now brought in Rupert Sanders to direct it. This classic Masamune Shirow cyberpunk story is an examination of what it means to be human in this increasingly technological age, where the line between man and machine gets ever more blurry day by day. The format was originally a Manga he wrote and drew from 1989 to 1997. In 1995 he turned it into the Anime feature film that redefined cyberpunk around the world, inspiring such later works as The Matrix. A second Anime movie, Innocence, came out in 2004, both films based on story lines from the Manga. The TV series Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex on the other hand had new stories that were spun off of situations and characters in the Manga, but independent from it. It has gone through 2 seasons and a number of compilations of story lines from the series were re-cut into feature length stand alone presentations, between them ranging from 2002 through 2007. The TV series had some of its stories converted into Manga format, and three novels based on the series were also released. Just last year a new series of prequels began to be created as OVAs with Ghost In The Shell: Arise, and that too has manga versions. This universe is rich and complex, and I can’t wait to see what they do with the live action portions of it.
There is not a lot coming out this week, but there are a few things. Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2 is animated silly fun, and the only US movie I can recommend this week. From Korea we get The Cat, a story about a woman murdered on an elevator with her cat being the only witness. Park Min Young takes the cat in at the request of the police, only to have strange visions and mysterious events start to happen to her. And from Italy, France, and Spain, Dario Argento’s Dracula 3D has all the sex and violence they could cram in and still get an R rating, with Rutger Hauer as Van Helsing. That last is an interesting choice, since he played Dracula in 2005’s Dracula III: Legacy. And I am not quite sure why the only web site I could find for this Italian movie was in Japan.
The only TV show worth mentioning is Pinky, Elmyra & the Brain, an award winning animated series about trying to take over the world, which was wiped out by the network that bought it for broadcast.
In Anime, Nura: Rise of the Yokai Clan: Demon Capital: Set 1 is the only new release, continuing the story of the Nura Clan’s fight against the Yokai. One of the most powerful Yokai, which are somewhere along the demon-monster-spirit spectrum, has returned to Earth after his defeat by the Nura several generations ago. They will have to defeat him again to protect their town and family. These 13 episodes are part one of season 2. There is a cyberpunk classic being re-released this week: Serial Experiments Lain – The Complete Collection. The artwork and animation are amazing, the story is a surrealistic mystery that takes place among the Wired, from a time before the world went wireless. If you haven’t seen this one before, you get another chance. You can also watch it online at the Funimation home page linked here.
After Death brings together four siblings who gather for their inventor father’s funeral, who then discover their father and deceased brother (killed years ago in another of dad’s experiments) may not be as dead as they all supposed. I know it sounds like a plot for a horror film, but this 2012 UK feature film is actually a quirky comedy in the British style. I mention the year and country because there is a 2014 American movie by the same name that is a horror film. The superhero movie this time is Iron Girl, in Japanese with English Subtitles. The actress playing the lead role is famous in Asia for her genre work, but it is not the same genre I mean when I use the word, so put this one in the NSFW category, just in case. In Japan it is listed as 12Up (pretty much our PG13), in Korea it is listed as 18 (somewhere near our R), the US release is flagged as Not Rated, and the trailer looks like a PG13 Action film. So I certainly have no clue, you can decide for yourself whether to check it out.
While there aren’t any TV shows as such this week, The Doors: R-Evolution is a music performance compilation that includes their early TV appearances and highlights the evolution of their image presentation as they gained more control over how they were displayed on the small screen. It includes early music films (video did not yet exist) through later professional cinematic productions, and is as interesting for the evolution of the artistic style it promoted for other bands to follow, as for the music it showcases.
In Anime we have one new release this week: Medaka Box Abnormal: The Complete Collection. In season 2 of the series, Medaka Kurokami has to use every hidden resource of the Student Council in her possession, including the super power wielding Abnormals, in order to defeat the dark plans of their enemies. Her War God Mode will not be enough to save the day by itself this time.
If Astronomy and Space excite you, there is some good news. It seems Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson has teamed up with Ann Druyan and Seth MacFarlane to create a new show, Cosmos: A Space-Time Odyssey, very much in the tradition of Carl Sagan’s original Cosmos. Ann Druyan is the widow of Carl Sagan and one of the co-producers of the original Cosmos series, while animator Seth MacFarlane helped pull in the network funding. The two of them will share the Executive Producer duties for the new show, which will be running on Fox and National Geographic on the same night. Word of this project was first announced back in 2012, but now we are getting close: the first episode airs on March 9th.
In Movies Riddick hits the shelves this week, both as a stand-alone and as part of the Riddick: The Complete Collection 4 film package. For those scratching their heads, this includes an animated story called Dark Fury that was released direct to DVD just after the first film came out. The remake of the cult film Carrie is also out this week.
I haven’t found any genre TV coming out this week, but Top Gear: Season 20 is being released, and they are always a lot of fun.
In western animation, Marvel Knights: Wolverine versus Sabretooth is being billed as the final battle between these two long-time foes. The Marvel Knights brand is for showcase stories that allow the best writers and illustrators to push the bounds of cannon, if not ignore them entirely, so anything is possible. I should also mention that this is a motion comic, rather than a true animation, a media style that Marvel excels at.
In Anime, Magi: The Labyrinth of Magic is your basic dungeon quest, merging and changing the stories of Alibaba and Aladdin. This set is season 1, giving you the first 13 episodes of the series. The show is also streaming on a number of services, including Crunchyroll and Hulu. The release of Naruto: Shippuden Box Set 17 brings us episodes 206 through 218 of the ongoing story of the 9 Tailed Fox. The current episode streaming on their site is 344, if you were wondering. Also beginning to catch up, One Piece Season 5 Part 5 brings the tail of Luffy and the Straw Hat Pirates to episodes 313 to 324. Of course, the currently streaming episode from Tokyo is 627.
I was watching the epic fantasy The Gu Family Book, about a nine tailed fox guardian spirit who falls in love with a human and fathers a demi-god with her before tragedy strikes. That tragedy kills her, turns him into a thousand-year demon, and leaves the child to be raised by a human family who have no concept of what he is. I was watching it off of my local independent outlet which included programming from the Korean language channel MBC by having my DVR set to record a two hour block of time Monday through Friday on that channel number. It had to be set that way because the program guide information submitted to TV Guide by the local re-broadcaster bore no resemblance to reality, so timed recording was the only option.
I managed to record and watch the first 22 episodes, then my cable company changed the programming of my set top box to “improve” it’s ability to locate shows by title or actors when running a search. In the process they broke the DVR function so it could no longer do recording by time blocks but only by program names as listed in the TV Guide service or in one of their online streaming affiliates. Not only have I never seen how that show ended, having lost the final two episodes of the series, but I have also lost all the shows they ran after that, as well as shows off of another 7 channels that also are rather slipshod in updating their TV Guide listings. It looks like I am finally getting some relief from this issue from two separate quarters. First off, as you can see from the embedded trailer, NBC/Universal will be releasing the series to DVD in 3 months or so, allowing me to add it to my permanent collection. Of course, since I can not speak or read Korean I am a bit unclear on whether it will be released in the US or only in Asia, but one can hope. I consider this show to be the best epic fantasy out of Korea for 2013 that I have found so far, so I will certainly be picking it up. More immediately, this series and a whole lot of other Korean TV Dramas are available for streaming on the MBC Hulu Plus channel, so I can finally see how the story ended.
Now if only my cable company would fix its broken set top boxes to give me back the ability to record program blocks by time and channel. If they don’t solve it soon, I guess I will have to buy a TIVO box, which does have that ability, and give my cable company back their broken DVR.