70-year-old Hiroshi Fujioka reprises his role as the original Kamen Rider in a new movie (while also appearing in this year’s big NHK samurai drama, Sanada Maru, which I’ve caught a few episodes of).

Saw the trailer for the new Ghostbusters movie. The nicest thing I can say is that I hope the movie is nothing like it.

Note that the trailer opens with the words “30 years ago, four scientists saved New York”, which suggests that the people responsible never saw the original.

In good news, CloneBD’s most recent update fixes the video problems I had copying the UK Bluray of Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins, so with the region-coding stripped, I can now watch it on my big TV without plugging in my laptop.

In dubious news, they’re making a new Destroyer movie, with the director promising to follow the novels more closely. Fans of the books mostly hated the movie, but the origin story in the novels is pretty awful. In fact, it took 10+ books for the formula to settle down and develop the relationship between Remo and Chiun, and you don’t have time for that in a movie. So if it’s going to reintroduce the character with an origin, it can’t be the origin from the books, and it can’t take a dozen adventures to build up a relationship between the leads.

The fact that the director involved is also doing remakes of Predator and Doc Savage doesn’t increase my confidence at all.

[Update: still doesn’t work on a Playstation 3, so I suspect the video has the PAL framerate; I’ll have to use one of the CloneBD options that reencodes the video if I want it to play on less-capable machines, but meanwhile, it works on my TV. Now to test the rip of Buckaroo Banzai…]

A movie that was more entertaining than its premise promised. Zero rewatch value, and about as quotable as a phone book, but a decent way to pass an evening, and free on Amazon Prime Video.

It really felt like I was watching a loud remake of Highlander. I kept quoting MacLeod and The Kurgan, and was honestly disappointed that the scientist/hostage/babe didn’t get to reenact Brenda’s bit from the final battle. I was so looking forward to Our Hero saying “what kept you?”.

Not the dubious Chinese version, not the unsourced-import versions available on Amazon US, and sadly not an actual US release, but the new UK transfer that was released two days ago, and was waiting on my desk today.

I’ll have to hook my gaming laptop up to my TV, since it’s region B. After that I’ll rip it, as I did the Remo Williams UK Blu-ray, so I can watch key scenes as needed.

First words in the new Star Wars teaser: “Real sets. Practical effects.”

Implied: “A writer. A director.”

It looks like there will be a UK release in July, at least.

I just learned that there is a limited-edition Bluray box set of the complete Columbo series, for the Japanese market. It includes the English audio tracks, though, so the only snag for most people would be navigating the menus.

Well, and coming up with the $275 plus shipping at Amazon Japan. The “plus shipping” is what makes the $375 import pricing at Amazon US not completely outrageous.

It comes in a cigar box.