The number of titles has dropped this week, but there’s some great quality here. This week is also pretty heavy on the “complete series” boxes.
Akira: 25th Anniversary Edition | |||||||||
Amazon | |||||||||
Rightstuf | |||||||||
Comments | Alex: Funimation rescued this movie from the ashes of Geneon USA’s demise, and now it has a new master. I have to admit, I’ve already pre-ordered this. I’ve also previously reviewed this, and this was in the Greatest Science Fiction Film Tournament. The list of bonus features on this edition can be found here. | ||||||||
Alfred Hitchcock Presents: Season Six | |||||||||
Amazon | |||||||||
Comments | Blaine: This Amazon-exclusive title is Manufactured on Demand, and was “released” on Friday, November 8. (Translation: it’s been available for preorder since September 27, but they wait to surpass a minimum threshold of orders before shipping. That threshold has been met or surpassed.) This is a great series, possible subject of a future podcast, and the second last season in the series. I hate having all but one season of a series in my DVD collection, so please, please support this title. | ||||||||
Best of Sesame Street Collection | |||||||||
Amazon | |||||||||
Comments | Blaine: For some obscure meaning of “best,” anyway. There’s a lot of Elmo here. | ||||||||
Blackfish | |||||||||
Amazon | |||||||||
Body Bags | |||||||||
Amazon | |||||||||
Cagney and Lacey: The Complete Collection | |||||||||
Amazon | |||||||||
City Lights (Criterion Collection) | |||||||||
Amazon | |||||||||
Comments | Blaine: Charlie Chaplin was good, but I always preferred Buster Keaton. If you’re interested in this but haven’t seen Buster Keaton’s work, find it ASAP. | ||||||||
Combat!: The Complete Series | |||||||||
Amazon | |||||||||
Dexter: The Complete Final Season | |||||||||
Amazon | |||||||||
Dexter: The Complete Series | |||||||||
Amazon | |||||||||
Diagnosis: Murder: The Complete Collection | |||||||||
Amazon | |||||||||
Comments | Blaine: My “collector” instinct is tearing me apart on this one. On one hand, I never watched the series due to general lack of interest. On the other hand, I’ve since learned it was a spinoff of Matlock, and it has the only appearances of the character I don’t actually own… | ||||||||
Family Ties: The Complete Series | |||||||||
Amazon | |||||||||
Frances Ha (Criterion Collection) | |||||||||
Amazon | |||||||||
Grizzly Adams: The Capture of Grizzly Adams | |||||||||
Amazon | |||||||||
Ip Man: The Final Fight | |||||||||
Amazon | |||||||||
MADtv: Season Four | |||||||||
Amazon | |||||||||
Maken-Ki: Complete Series | |||||||||
Amazon | |||||||||
Rightstuf | |||||||||
Comments | Blaine: Harem comedy. The limited edition comes with an artbox. | ||||||||
Man of Steel | |||||||||
Amazon | |||||||||
Comments | Blaine: I’ll be podcasting about this one on December 14. | ||||||||
The Mod Squad: The Complete Collection | |||||||||
Amazon | |||||||||
My Mother The Car: The Complete Series | |||||||||
Amazon | |||||||||
Nakaimo – Complete Collection | |||||||||
Amazon | |||||||||
Rightstuf | |||||||||
Comments | Blaine: Harem romantic comedy with squicky overtones. | ||||||||
Nosferatu: Deluxe Remastered Edition | |||||||||
Amazon | |||||||||
Comments | Blaine: Kino excels at this type of release. | ||||||||
Power Rangers: Seasons 8-12 | |||||||||
Amazon | |||||||||
Red 2 | |||||||||
Amazon | |||||||||
iTunes | |||||||||
Comments | Available in physical media on November 26. | ||||||||
Shoot the Sun Down: Director’s Cut | |||||||||
Amazon | |||||||||
Comments | Another Kino release. | ||||||||
Stan Lee’s Superhumans: Season Two | |||||||||
Amazon | |||||||||
Thirteen Days | |||||||||
Amazon | |||||||||
Turbo | |||||||||
Amazon | |||||||||
World’s Greatest Super Friends! Season 4 | |||||||||
Amazon | |||||||||
Comments | Blaine: Super Friends lasted 11 seasons, and this is the only one not previously released. I will never understand why they were released in the order they were. | ||||||||
Yumeria – Complete Collection | |||||||||
Amazon | |||||||||
Rightstuf | |||||||||
Comments | Alex: Re-release of another harem romantic comedy. I suspect this is all counter-programming against Akira’s re-release. |
Finally, the picks of the week. Alex says, “I’m going with the 25th Anniversary Edition of Akira.” Blaine says, “even though I haven’t completely made up my mind as to how I feel about the uneven Man of Steel, that’s still my pick.”
Akira is my example of me just not getting Anime. When people say “Oh you never gave it a chance!” and “You need to watch GOOD Anime!” I trot out the Akira Story.
Growing up, I hung out with a group of fellow-nerds. You know. We’d all play D&D and watch Monty Python movies and so forth. One day one of the guys brings out an Akira video casette and claims it’s the best thing ever made. So we watched it. None of us (except him) liked it and he goes “Well that’s cause we watched the English-dubbed version, here let me put the Japanese version on” so we sad through it AGAIN and, well… there, I watched the Best Anime Ever, twice, and I’m still not into it!
Interesting. I’m not a huge fan of anime, but I like Akira.
I give Akira a lot of credit for the technical side of the animation, but I didn’t care for it either. The story felt far too choppy. I later learned that it was choppy because it was compressing an immense source material into its runtime. This explains the problem, but doesn’t excuse it: the plot is still haphazard and poorly structured, because it was created more as a highlight real of the source material than as a complete story in and of itself. It should have been a series, not a film.
I actually feel that way about just about any Anime movie I’ve seen; it always feels like I’ve come in in the middle.
I’ve enjoyed every Miyazaki film I’ve seen, but the rest all left me unsatisfied for the most part. A couple of the Robotech and Macross movies were enjoyable, but they were meant as epilogues, not standalone products, so they skipped all of the character introduction stuff and spent the time on story. For someone like me who has already watched the series, that worked well.
Yeah. Most anime movies are based off of or related to shows or manga that are running in Japan, usually when the film comes out. Consequently, they’re assuming that the audience has access to the source material, which doesn’t always work. It kind of worked for the Cowboy Bebop movie, because that was written as a “Bounty of the week” story. It doesn’t work as well for “compilation movies”, which try to take 6 volumes of manga and turn them into a 2 hour movie (like what was done with Akira & X).
Probably the only time I’d say the compilation thing actually worked was with the Gundam movies, because they turned the show into 3 movies instead of one, so the writers didn’t have to cut as much lean from the films. However, if I go into this further, I’ll probably end up undercutting the Akira podcast, so I’ll save my further thoughts for that. ;-)