When Venturing Into the Wonderwoods, The Dangers Are Real!

Come join Angelo Into the Wonderwoods where imagination and reality intertwines. This coming of age fantasy is certainly different than visiting Wonderland!

Into the Wonderwoods Movie PosterShout! Studios
Coming to Digital This Week

After a long run at various film festivals, Into the Wonderwoods, is headed to streaming and the coming of age story about Angelo (Dario Hardouin Spurio in the original and Kristen McGuire for the dub) is rather wild. After getting “accidentally” left behind at a rest stop, this kid has to find his way to grandmother’s house and I definitely had a certain “Over the River and Through the Woods” song stuck in my head afterwards.

Fortunately, the family is on the last leg of their long road trip, so he can probably find his own way there. However, when they do not notice he’s not in the car, in the real world, to know what the parents are like is very unsettling.

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When A Tooth Fairy Tale Concerns Renegade Teens From Folklore

When A Tooth Fairy Tales stands out in the small list of movies in this subgenre, some folks may well ask why? The thought put behind world-building provides the answer….

A Tooth Fairy Tale Movie PosterShout! Studio & Automatic Entertainment
Available on VOD
Spoiler Alert

Van (Booboo Stewart) isn’t your typical teenage boy, and in A Tooth Fairy Tale, he’s more than just the odd kid out. I like to describe him as a punk-rock version of Hiccup from How to Train Your Dragon. The parallels are certainly there, especially when considering DreamWorks’ adaptation: Van has issues with his father, who expects him to one day take over the family business. And, unsurprisingly, he has to prove himself by being the next in line to retrieve a loose molar from a human child.

When Van discovers that goblins are also on a similar mission, his curiosity about the wider world begins to grow. Each species in this realm—trolls, spiders, goblins—has a specific role to play, and just who counts as friend or foe is largely a matter of perspective. In this story, it’s the arachnoids that pose the real threat. I appreciated how they were portrayed as silent, creeping dangers rather than loud, chaotic villains.

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Aria’s 20th Anniversary Album is a Best Hits!

This year marks Aria’s 20th Anniversary, and this anime franchise has various projects planned for release, including a Best Hits, and we got the track listing!

ARIA The BEST 2005-2025ARIA’s is celebrating 20th glorious years, and this anime’s producers have more than a best hits album planned to acknowledge the fact. This 3-disc album will feature the best songs performed ever since this IP made its way to television and cinema!

This coming of age series focuses Akari Mizunashi as she trains as an apprentice gondolier (known as Undines). Along with Aika and Alice, they face various dangers on a terraformed planet now known as Aqua (formerly Mars). The manga written by Kozue Amano debuted in 2001, and since then, creators have regularly released new material.

From the Press Release:

The five main theme songs featured in the trilogy, ARIA the AVVENIRE, ARIA the CREPUSCOLO, and ARIA the BENEDIZIONE, have been recorded on albums by their respective artists before, but never on an ARIA album until now. The first disc will be a collection of 14 opening and ending themes from the anime, the second disc a compilation of 13 insert songs, and the third disc will feature an original collection of songs on piano by pianist and producer Mina Kubota.

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When Nobody’s Boy Remi Is Heading “Home” In The Warm Month of May!

When 19th-century life was harsh, what options were available? In Nobody’s Boy Remi, this French country boy learns what the true meaning of family is after getting sold off by his mean spirited father…

Nobody's Boy Remi Slipcover Box ArtBack in the 70s, I often tuned into CBC’s French channel to get my daily anime fix. They often featured films and series more often than the other channels, and two such works included Sherlock Hound and Nobody’s Boy Remi. As for The Mysterious Cities of Gold, that did not arrive until the early 80s, and together they defined a part of my childhood. ‘

Flash forward to the present, I’m thrilled to see that anime distributor AnimEigo and parent company MediaOCD have announced the home media Blu-ray release of Nobody’s Boy Remi. This series will become available for purchase on May 11th.

Before advances in technology reinvented the three-dimensional effect for modern day televisions, some production houses used a built-in illusion without having to change anything. The Pulfrich Effect (more information below) created the sense that objects appear closer than they are. This technique preserves the visual image, allowing viewers to see both flat and pronounced images with or without glasses.

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In the Movie Trapezium, Not Every Idol Singer Will Have Another’s Back

Although Trapezium is not a true look at the Japanese idol industry, what’s presented certainly scratches the surface.

Trapezium Movie PosterAvailable to view on Crunchyroll

Another star is born and whether the anime movie Trapezium truly explores what goes on in creating an idol singer depends. This tale is allegedly based on a story by Kazumi Takayama, a former member of Nogizaka 46. If true, the insights are not that many. I believe this film is more of a satire than anything else.

When this character drama is atypical, there’s none of that hyper intensity from Pompo the Cinephile (movie review) here. Here, the much slower story focuses on Azuma Yuu (Asaki Yuikawa), whose desire to be famous requires her to be something worse. While she’s almost like Ally Campana from the aforementioned film, her charming attitude isn’t immediate. Ranko (Reina Ueda), Kurumi (Hina Yomiya) and Mika (Haruka Aikawa) are her friends. Together, they are training to be Japan’s next top talent.

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Thoughts, Concerns and Praise for Star Wars: Skeleton Crew.

After giving Star Wars: Skeleton Crew a full watch, I have new hope for what may be offered going forward. Not every series has to be unique. It just has to honour what fans love about this franchise back when George Lucas was in charge.

Star Wars Skeleton Crew PosterThe latest entry to Disney’s Star Wars, curiously titled Skeleton Crew is boldly offering a concept that has been done before. It’s too similar to Star Trek Prodigy. In the world of literature, some fans have compared it to Treasure Island and I agree. Although the circumstances are different, Wym (Ravi Cabot-Conyers) is a kid who likes to dream big and wants to explore the galaxy. After discovering a spaceship buried underground, the group he brought together to investigate goes in, and it blasts off into outer space! Pretty soon, this lad, Fern (Ryan Kiera Armstrong), KB (Kyriana Kratter) and Neel (Robert Timothy Smith) are lost in space.

Afterwards, they encounter space pirates. Although they figure out they’re at least not jettsoned to the opposite side of the galaxy, all is not well. They want to go home, but nobody knows where the planet of At Attin is located. All viewers know is that it’s hidden in a sector known as the Unknown Regions. Everyone from this world seems to be involved in some grande experiment, and I have to wonder if the scientists are working on deconstructing the atom? It’d be a terrible pun should that be the case, but there’s a meme to be made with the name of this planet.

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