I am happy to report my local cable system just added MNet America to the channel lineup. They were already running two Korean channels, two Japanese channels, over 10 Chinese channels, 6 Indian channels (4 in Hindi, one in Punjabi, one in a language I didn’t recognize), 3 Filipino channels, a Vietnamese channel, and a few more I have not been able to identify. I do not count the New Zealand channel, because they are A) an English language country, and B) all Cricket matches, nothing there very oriental even though they come from the same part of the pacific rim. MNet is short for Music Network and it has a ton of music, mostly Pop in nature. It is based out of South Korea, but they do carry more than music and more than just Korean programing. The show I am excited about having weekly access to now on that network is Danny Choo’s Culture Japan, where I can see footage of events and interviews with creators of all the Japanese stuff that will become a major part of life here in 6 months to a year. And yes, by Stuff I mean Manga, Anime, Live Action, Games, Cosplay, collectables, Music, and everything else that you might see in Akihabara. Also a lot of convention coverage, as Danny is very popular as an Anime Con guest.
Caroline John was the name of the actress who played Elizabeth Shaw on Doctor Who, and we lost her this month. She was an active actress, with 50 titles to her credit, some of which had her sharing the screen with Jon Pertwee’s Doctor. Here are just a few of the tribute videos to remember her by…
I have a hard time imagining how they could do this justice, unless it was shown on an HBO-equivalent premium channel where running a hard-R program was a good thing. The are looking at making Barbarella as a TV Show according to that article from /Film. Both of the recent attempts to resurrect and re-imagine the original film for the big screen crashed and burned before they began filming. I have no real confidence that the TV version will be created either, but perhaps it might make it to the screen this time. The original report came from Deadline, and the closest anyone has ever come to creating a remake was 2001’s CQ, a very nicely layered film within a film which succeeded on many levels and which I recommend for everyone’s permanent collection.
We have three interesting movies this week, two of them silly. The serious one is Wrath of the Titans, which I didn’t see in theaters because the first one took itself too seriously, and I didn’t need any more of that. I still don’t. I also didn’t see Mirror, Mirror, not so much because it looked too silly (you can never have too much silly in my book) but because I had to work that weekend. Before I decide whether to add it to the permanent collection I will catch it on streamy or HBO or somewhere equivalent. The third one isn’t genre: David Tennant’s The Decoy Bride was made for two and a half million pounds and earned $524 its opening weekend in the US. In part this was because it only showed up on a single screen that weekend, but even later on it wasn’t in that many theaters. Let’s face it, the only reason I will be watching it is because David is in it, and he made a wonderful Doctor. OK, and the trailer looked like silly fun, too.
Notice how I didn’t even mention Sector 7? Even the Korean audiences didn’t go to that one, a bit of a surprise as his earlier work The Host won such critical acclaim around the world.
No genre TV shows this week, but I will mention Casablanca: The Complete Series if only because it has Scatman Crothers as Sam, and one of the tracks he sings is the theme for the show. And yes, the original 1942 movie is where the phrase Play It Again, Sam came from.
Anime has a brand new release this week. Towanoquon: the Complete Collection tells the story of gifted mutant children born with special powers. Government cyborgs are hunting them down to kill them, while a rebel group with their own powers are saving them to train them to use their gifts to defend themselves. Don’t let the fact that the complete series is only 6 episodes fool you, because each episode is 50 minutes long, giving them a full 300 minutes to tell the story.
A few of the monsters escaped from the Doctor Who Experience, recently relocated to Cardiff, and were wandering the streets harassing the passers by. I got to visit the exhibition in London this past October, I can’t wait to go back and learn what new goodies they deployed for the new installation. Obviously I will have to wait at least a little bit, since it doesn’t open there until July 20th…
Sadly there are no memorable movie selections this time. We do have Witchslayer Gretl is another one of those Syfy TV Movies that you wish they had meant to be that silly. Exit Humanity is a Civil War Zombie film hoping to cash in on Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter. Alien Origin is Blair Witch meets Predator ripoff. And Awakened is a lot like Alien origin except I recognized a few of the actors, and felt sorry they were stuck in such a movie. All in all, not a very good week for live action feature length films; there will not be a single one of these coming home with me. Let’s face it, the only feature film at all interesting this week is Radio Rebel, which is a Disney flic that is not even a little bit genre.
In TV we also crash and burn, with pretty much nothing to report.
We do a bit better in Anime, with Golgo 13: Collection 4 bringing us the fourth installment of the assassins story, with more dangerous assignments than ever before. Also out is K-ON! Season 2, Collection 1, and it may not be genre, but any band club with a faculty adviser who is also a secret former Death Metal singer/guitarist has to be having fun and taking us along for the ride. Finally Dragonaut: The Resonance is coming out with the complete series in a S.A.V.E. edition, which means you can now pick it up for around $18.