Reasons to Survive for Week of December 5th – Hitchcock! Battlefield 3 DLC! And Glee!?!
Oh boy… has Geekscape’s time run out? As we get closer to the holidays, the early week of December seems like the lightest in terms of releases. No big Hollywood movies. Not a ton of home video releases. Last week Jonathan spent only $15 in new comics and the video game releases from here on out seem completely anemic.
So what do we have left to live for? Let us help you out as we count the days on what seems like borrowed time…
Monday the 5th
William Bibbiani – Time Thief
Mary Pops In: The Magical Nanny on DVD. As a fan of the original P.L. Travers books, I was never satisfied by the Disney version of Mary Poppins, which never treated her like the stern mistress she’s supposed to be. But now, at least, and at last, there’s another version to compare it to. This time, Roxanne Hall stars as a magical nanny who… Wait a minute, this box cover is kinda… Are those boobs? Oh, I think Mary Pops In is going to satisfy me just fine…
Tuesday the 6th
Shane O’Hare – Living on Borrowed Time
Trine 2 hits the street for PC. Trine 2 is the sequel to the amazing PSN/XBLA and STEAM game. Resurrecting old school gameplay from one of the BEST games ever, The Lost Vikings, players control one of three characters individually at certain times to solve puzzles. Toss in multiplayer with 2 other friends and you have a pretty damn fun weekend on your hands.
William Bibbiani – Thinks Youth Is Wasted on the Young
The Lady Vanishes on Blu-Ray. Yes, just three months after I finally bought the Criterion Collection version of Alfred Hitchcock’s The Lady Vanishes, it’s coming out in high definition. But I choose in not to kill myself, as I had originally intended, because this hilarious thriller is worth the upgrade. One of the master’s last films before going Hollywood, the film stars Margaret Lockwood (rawr) as a spunky debutante en route to England so she can marry… some dude because… Yeah. But on the way she meets a nice old lady who disappears on a moving train, and none of the other passengers will admit to having seen her. Michael Redgrave is at his hilarious best as the one guy who thinks she isn’t crazy, or at least is willing to play along long enough to get in her pants. It’s like Flightplan but really, really, really good.
Noel Nocciolo – Lives From Note to Note
Words I Never Thought I Would Say: “I CANNOT WAIT FOR GLEE.”
fun.’s single, “We Are Young” will be featured on this week’s episode. Preview the Glee version here:
It is refreshing, bizarre and awesome that a band as under-the-radar-of-the-main-mainstream as fun. ends up with a song on a Fox network show that really only features top 40 and classic songs. With their second album due February 21, 2012, and a sufficient amount of “industry chatter” around them & the sought-after Throne-watching hip-hop producer who produced the album, it really feels like the “mainstream” is about to swell to include fun.
Josh Jackson – Keeps The Beat Alive (One DDR Move at a Time)
YuGiOh Hidden Arsenal 5: Steelswarm Invasion – Jeez, Konami is really cranking these out. Not even a month since the last major release, we’re getting a née booster set. Hidden Arsenal 5 is bringing out many new monsters to support old archetypes, and some of their abilities need to be seen to be believed. Not to mention it’s bringing at least one new ritual monster! What is this, 2001?
Thursday the 8th
Shane O’Hare – Running Out of Options
Playstation owners get access to the Battlefield 3: Back to Karkand expansion pack A WEEK EARLY! Due to a snafu where PS3 players didn’t receive gratis copies of Battlefield:1943 for PSN on release night DICE wanted to make amends. So they are pumping out their expansion pack a week early for you guys! Featuring upgraded building destruction, new vehicles and the return of the best god damned jet there ever was (F-35B) which all can be pulled back over to BF3 vanilla. New weapons, and return of the classic “7 Flag Domination Mode” there is no reason to NOT buy this if you have BF3. PLUS! If you own the Limited Edition (if you preordered the game, you have it) you get this expansion FOR FREE BABY!
Friday the 9th
William Bibbiani – Lives In The Spaces Between Seconds
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy in Theaters. Tomas Alfredson’s follow-up to Let the Right One In, the most critically acclaimed vampire movie ever, is this adaptation of John Le Carre’s classic spy novel about a retired espionage agent (Gary Oldman) who’s called in from the cold in order to weed out a mole in British intelligence during the Cold War. With an all-star cast that includes Colin Firth, John Hurt, Toby Jones and Sherlock’s Benedict Cumberbatch and a smooth 1960s vibe, it promises to be the best thing to happen to the spy genre since The Quiller Memorandum, which you haven’t even seen, have you?
Dev Ashby – Lives In The Spaces Between Heartbeats
THE WRIGHT STUFF III: MOVIES EDGAR HAS NEVER SEEN (Begins Friday and runs through December 16th) – New Beverly Cinema, here in Los Angeles, continues their grand tradition this week of temporarily handing over programming responsibilities to director Edgar Wright, that weird British dude who made Hot Fuzz, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, and Shaun of the Dead. Edgar is maybe starting to run out of favorite movies to screen, because the theme this year is “Movies Edgar Has NEVER Seen,” and they will be screening movies as crazily different from each other as Claude Chabrol’s twee French musical Umbrellas of Cherbourg, Akira Kurasawa’s Shakespeare-inspired Throne of Blood, and goofy Space Opera parody The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension. The program begins this Friday, and will continue through December 16.
We Need to Talk About Kevin – It’s getting a wider theatrical release in January, but this movie is opening next week for a limited run at the Cinefamily on Fairfax. The movie stars Tilda Swinton and John C. Reilly as a married couple whose teenage son goes on a shooting spree at his high school. This kind of subject matter could be lurid and embarrassing if a shitty director handled it, but I trust Lynn Ramsay to do a good job. I’m totally amped to see it and have pretty much been sitting in front of my computer intermittently re-watching the IMDB trailer over and over again all day today since I woke up.
