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Something to Watch: DVDs

In genre movies we have the Japanese Mutant Girls Squad and the American Evil Dead Inbred Rednecks, but I won’t be recommending either one of those. The only movie I can recommend this time around isn’t genre at all, but a spy based romantic comedy: This Means War.

Top TV selection this time is Sherlock: Season Two, the amazing re-imagining of the Holmes saga in another Steven Moffat project. If you haven’t seen these yet, you are in for a serious treat. The other choices in TV this week includes MTV’s Teen Wolf: The Complete Season One, which is apparently their attempt to pull in some of the money from the Twilight audience. My Babysitter’s a Vampire: The First Season is targeting the children’s fantasy market.

Some folks no doubt think The Secret World of Arrietty is a Disney animation feature film based on The Borrowers. They would be right except for the minor detail that this one is Anime, produced by Studio Ghibli, although it did use Disney as its North American distribution partner. They are using this opportunity to re-release a couple of other Studio Ghibli classics: Whisper of the Heart and Castle in the Sky, both as combo Blue-Ray/DVD sets. If you are missing those titles now is your chance to correct that, and if you haven’t seen them yet I really recommend you do so..

Other new Anime this week includes Planzet, a story about Earth’s battle with Aliens a few decades from now. Humans have raised a defensive shield around the planet, but are trapped behind it; the time has come to drop the shield for an all or nothing counterattack, to try to win their freedom. This one, like Arrietty, is a stand alone story, but at 53 minutes long I don’t think I can actually call it a feature length film. More like a 2 episode OVA.

Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood releases it’s OVA collection this week, which clocks in right at 60 minutes. Bakuman: Season One Part One brings the Blue Ray formatted first 13 episodes of a story of two young men trying to break into the Manga publishing industry. It has an account of both the good and the bad, as reported by industry insiders.

New Doctor Who this week

Not one, but two programs, one on each side of the Atlantic! In the UK, at the beginning of the year Blue Peter went looking for script ideas for a new Doctor Who episode, and it got them. So they made the mini episode based on a story put together by grade school children, and The Doctor, Amy, and Rory will be doing it for us this Thursday the 24th as part of the next Blue Peter program. On the US side, BBC America is running the Matt Smith Top Gear episode this Monday evening, as the Doctor drives a Reasonably Priced Car.

Something to Watch: DVDs

In movies, the one this week that tells a story worth watching is not genre; Norwegian Wood is an amazing wake-up call straight to the heart, based on the 1987 novel by Haruki Murakami. I can think of a very few movies from the 1960s and 70s that had a touch of this same spirit, like Harold and Maude, King of Hearts, and Butterflies are Free. But the story this one tells is unique, and deserves a place in your awareness. The book has been translated into at least 33 languages so far, the director was nominated for an Academy Award, and the film has won awards at Venice, Toronto, and Dubai.

In genre, Chronicle is the tale of teens with superpowers who fall into the trap you would expect of anyone thinking with their hormones instead of their brains. Descendents tells the story of a virus that turns people into zombies. I don’t see anything here we haven’t already seen done to death many times over, so I will be passing on adding these to the collection. The other title available this time is Dirty Blondes from Beyond, which may at least be silly and sexy, but again shows no promise of anything actually new and interesting.

There is a TV classic becoming available for the very first time: Ghost Story: The Complete Series was William Castle’s attempt to follow his role model Alfred Hitchcock into TV. It only lasted one season, but the actors involved included Sebastian Cabot, Jason Robards, Helen Hayes, Jodie Foster, Angie Dickinson, Geraldine Page, Martin Sheen, Stella Stevens, Karen Black, Rip Torn, Mariette Hartley, and many more. Just as impressive, the writers included Richard Matheson, D.C. Fontana, Robert Bloch and Harlan Ellison. I approve of the fact that this series is being released in a MOD (manufacture on demand ) production model, meaning they don’t burn the disk until you order it. While it may not work in every player or computer (you have to be able to do DVD-R disc format, which most but not all do), it is wonderful to see any RIAA/MPAA organization facing the inevitable and embracing the decades-old changes in the media distribution system. The fact that it also means there is no waste, no warehouse full of discs no one ordered, no pile of money spent on things they can not sell, no resources turned into a finished product that might end up gracing landfills, is nothing but bonus points all the way as far as I can see. Of course, the flip side of that probably means you will be hard pressed to find it on sale anywhere, since there will be no overstocked stores looking to dump it cheap to minimize their loss; but such is the nature of change.

The other TV programs of note this week are much less fictional, but just as entertaining. Mythbusters: Buster’s Biggest Crashes is silly fun for the science/adventure geek from beginning to end, and I probably need to pick up a Buster T-Shirt by now. The Universe: The Complete Season Six is another wonderful History Channel production telling you more about the world you live in, with some high quality simulations to give you visual examples of the various processes driving the stars and galaxies. And the Smithsonian Channel: Air & Space Collection is a DVD version of their online website which I for one want in my permanent collection. If you have any doubts, go to each web site and play the videos; these ARE the Droids you’re looking for!

In Anime, The Book of Bantorra – Collection 1 is about a world where when you die, your soul becomes a book, with all of your secrets there to be read by anyone. It is the job of the Armed Librarians to keep those books out of the hands of evildoers, and they definitely have their work cut out for them. Also new this week, Cat Planet Cuties: Complete Series has sexy alien cat-girl Eris setting up her planet’s embassy in Kio’s house, with various secret agencies and enemy dog-aliens all circling round, looking for an opening. I watched this when it streamed from Japan on Crunchyroll last year and it was silly fun all the way, but see if the dog’s laugh doesn’t remind you of another famous cartoon canine.

Finally, D.Gray-man – The Complete Second Season has been released in a S.A.V.E. edition, so you can now pick up all 26 episodes for around $20 or less.

I Just Want To Exterminate

This is a real contestant entered into the Britain’s Got Talent competition with his opening salvo song, which he hopes is going to propel him into the contest. Whether he got in or not, I absolutely love the concept, and I will be practicing my Dalek voice so I can sing this at parties. In fact, I loved it twice as much when Simon hit the FAIL buzzer and the audience BOOed Simon, not the singer! You are going to have to watch the video to see how it all worked out.

Something to Watch: DVDs

Underworld: Awakening is the movie out this week, and while it is the fourth from that franchise it is far from the best of the bunch according to the reviews I have read.

Much more promising, Chuck: The Complete Fifth and Final Season was a great send off for a wonderful show. If you haven’t added anything from this series to your collection yet, they are also coming out with Chuck: The Complete Series this week. The other TV release is The Twilight Zone: More Fan Favorites, another collection of 20 great episodes from the original series.

In Anime, Occult Academy: The Complete Series is a real gem, involving a school researching the paranormal which has a time traveler arrive from the future to try to stop invading aliens from destroying the world, an event which is in his personal past. It includes one of the best examples of character growth I have seen in an Anime, in part I suspect because the character started out as a complete asshole, and had no interest in improving himself; he evolved almost against his will. I watched this every week an hour after it aired in Tokyo on Crunchyroll streaming, which is unusual for me. Normally I will catch up with whatever Japanese and Korean shows I am watching that season over the weekend, but I just could not wait to find out what happened next on that show.

Also new this week, Queen’s Blade 2: The Evil Eye is the conclusion of the battle to become Queen, with the survivors of the previous rounds squaring off against one another. Besides containing episodes 1 through 12 of the second season, it includes episodes 7 through 12 of the OVA series (the first 6 OVA episodes were on the season 1 collection). If this was a live action series, I might make a comment here on how they saved production costs by reducing the wardrobe department to a single employee, who was only given enough of a budget to buy one square yard of cloth, from which everyone’s outfits had to be made. Since this is an animated program, they didn’t even have budgeting problems to use as an excuse for the skimpy outfits, although I suspect no male fans of the series will complain.

The remaining entries are not completely new, but are worth noting. Guin Saga: The Complete Collection, is in a more cost effective package than the two individual season box sets previously released.

Finally, Kanokon: The Girl Who Cried Fox includes both the series and the shorter OVA series (only 4 15 minute long episodes) in a single box set. I find this last kind of annoying since they released the first DVD volume of the series, but never the second and third; if you had the first one, you had to re-buy it again as part of the Complete Collection when that came out. Then they released the OVA series, totaling 60 minutes of video, for the same price as if it was an entire season of full episodes. Now that they have combined the two, it is for the same price as the original complete collection, which means if you already own the complete collection you are again paying for a full season series to get a single hour of new video. I can only recommend this for folks who have never bought any part of the previously released DVDs. And maybe not then, not because they are not fun Anime to watch and enjoy, but simply because they have ticked me off by releasing this in a haphazard manner designed to squeeze maximum bucks for minimum footage out of any potential customers. As a potential customer in a brutal economy, this does not endear them to my heart, and I will not be buying it myself. Media Blasters generally is quite good with its releases and has a lot of great titles. I am not sure what happened this time, but I hope it is not the start of a trend.

Something to Watch: DVDs

Not exactly a top week for movies on DVD, the only genre flic I could find was Thunderstorm: Return of Thor, based on a comic book version of the god published by Fox Comics back in the 1940s. While I found the concept interesting, I am underwhelmed by its execution, and would sooner recommend the non-genre Haywire, which is at least a fun action romp. Or if you are interested in a documentary, Films Of Fury: The Kung Fu Movie Movie is a lot of fun, giving some background and history along with some interviews to tell you how we got here.

In TV The Invisible Man: The Complete Series is the 1975 David McCallum version, which took place between his Man from Uncle and his VR.5 series. Also out this week, Curiosity with Stephen Hawkings has a first rate mind looking at the creation of the universe.

Story Corps: Animated Shorts is an animated subset of one of the biggest oral history projects ever attempted, put together by the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress. If you have been following their broadcasts on NPR or listening to their podcasts, you will probably want to check this one out.

In Anime the new release is Psychic Squad: Collection 1, a story of 3 young psychic girls and the guy who has to try to keep them on mission in the field. His survival, and the planet’s, are both in question. There streaming service is not available in my part of the world, depending on where you are you may have better luck (it is all a matter of licensing).

Finally, Dirty Pair: Features DVD Collection is being re-released by Right Stuff, becoming available for the first time in the US since ADV went out of business. If you already have ADV’s Dirty Pair Movie Collection this is the same set, but if you don’t it will bring you closer to completing your collection.