New Tom Cruise Movie "Edge of Tomorrow" Headed for Bookshelves

VIZ MEDIA’S HAIKASORU IMPRINT ANNOUNCES EDGE OF TOMORROW OFFICIAL MOVIE TIE-IN NOVEL AND ALL YOU NEED IS KILL ORIGINAL GRAPHIC NOVEL RELEASE

Two New Science Fiction Action Titles Timed To Release With The Summer Blockbuster Movie EDGE OF TOMORROW Starring Tom Cruise And Emily Blunt

VIZ Media’s Haikasoru literary imprint supports the upcoming release of the gripping sci-fi action film, Edge of Tomorrow with the release of an official movie tie-in novel on April 29th. The new EDGE OF TOMORROW paperback release will carry an MSRP of $7.99 U.S. / $9.99 CAN. The book features a cover with the official movie poster featuring Tom Cruise and Emily Blunt in their title roles from the film. The EDGE OF TOMORROW novel was written by Japanese author Hiroshi Sakurazaka, and was previously published as ALL YOU NEED IS KILL.

The Haikasoru imprint has also announced the May 6th release of the ALL YOU NEED IS KILL official graphic novel adaptation. Written by Haikasoru editor and noted sci-fi author, Nick Mamatas, and featuring full-color artwork by popular comic book artist Lee Ferguson (Green Arrow, Miranda Mercury), the new graphic novel offers a single-volume retelling of the original ALL YOU NEED IS KILL novel that inspired the EDGE OF TOMORROW movie. The graphic novel carries an MSRP of $14.99 U.S. / $17.99 CAN, and features an oversized North American graphic novel trim size of 6 5/8" x 10 ¼”. An eBook edition will also be available worldwide for $8.99 (U.S. / CAN) for the Amazon Kindle, Apple’s iBooks Store, Barnes & Noble’s Nook Book Store, and the Kobo eBooks Store. North American fans can also access the graphic novel digitally on the VIZ Manga App as well as through VIZManga.com.

The Edge of Tomorrow feature film is slated for U.S. release from Warner Bros. Pictures on June 6th, and will be presented in 3D and 2D in select theaters, and 3D IMAX. The movie is directed by Doug Liman and stars Tom Cruise, Emily Blunt and Bill Paxton.

The story is set in the future when aliens called Mimics invade. Keiji Kiriya is just one of many recruits shoved into a suit of battle armor called a Jacket and sent out to kill. But he dies on the battlefield after only a few minutes, only to be reborn each morning to fight and die again and again. On his 158th iteration, he gets a message from a mysterious ally – the female soldier known as the Full Metal Bitch. Is she the key to Keiji's escape or his final death?

In 2009, ALL YOU NEED IS KILL served as the launch title for Haikasoru, a unique imprint developed by VIZ Media dedicated to publishing the most compelling contemporary Japanese science fiction and fantasy for English-speaking audiences. New York Times best-selling author John Scalzi declared ALL YOU NEED IS KILL to be a novel that, "reads fast, kicks ass, and keeps on coming," and it has proven to be one of Haikasoru's most popular titles. Sakurazaka's other novels include Characters (co-written with Hiroki Azuma) and SLUM ONLINE, which was published in English by Haikasoru in 2010.

“Live…die…repeat. ALL YOU NEED IS KILL / EDGE OF TOMORROW delivers a nightmarish, action-packed spin on reliving one’s own triumphs, and failures,” says Nick Mamatas, Editor, Haikasoru. “Catch the original story that inspired the gripping movie with the official movie tie-in edition and in the Western comic book mode with the ALL YOU NEED IS KILL official graphic novel. Both of these debuts are perfect reads leading up to the highly anticipated theatrical debut of Edge of Tomorrow this summer!”

"The ALL YOU NEED TO KILL graphic novel stays very true to the original source novel," says Joel Enos, editor for the new comic. "We made a conscious effort to create something unique that could stand on it's own away from both the original novel, the film and the upcoming manga, but would nicely complement and pay respects to all three! Lee's retro-futuristic art style especially puts ALL YOU NEED TO KILL as a comic into it's own orbit!"

Author Hiroshi Sakurazaka was born in Tokyo in 1970 and published his first novel, Modern Magic Made Simple, in 2003 with Super Dash Bunko, a popular young adult light novel imprint. There are now seven volumes in the series, and it was adapted as a manga in 2008 and became a television anime series in 2009. His 2004 short story, "Saitama Chainsaw Massacre," also won the 16th SF Magazine Reader's Award. Sakurazaka published All You Need Is Kill with Super Dash Bunko in 2004 and earned his first Seiun Award nomination for best of the year honors in Japanese science fiction. In 2010, Sakurazaka started an experimental digital magazine AiR with fellow author Junji Hotta. He remains one of Japan's most energetic writers of both light novels and adult science fiction.

Haikasoru’s Nick Mamatas is the author of several novels, including The Damned Highway (with Brian Keene) and Love is the Law. His short fiction has appeared in Asimov's Science Fiction, Tor.com, Weird Tales, and numerous other venues. He's also written comics for Media Blasters and the Squid Works! Collective and has been nominated for the Hugo, World Fantasy, Bram Stoker, and Shirley Jackson awards.

Artist Lee Ferguson has worked in comics since 2001, when he broke in at Marvel on the 9/11 Heroes tribute book, followed by work on the company's X-Men titles. Since then, he's worked at DC, IDW, and Dynamite, while also putting out Freak, his creator-owned project from Image Comics. His newest book is The Many Adventures of Miranda Mercury, co-created with Brandon Thomas and published through Archaia Comics. In 2012, Miranda Mercury was on YALSA’s Best Graphic Novels for Teens list and was also nominated for four Glyph Awards, including Best Artist.

For more information on EDGE OF TOMORROW / ALL YOU NEED IS KILL and the Haikasoru imprint, please visit www.haikasoru.com.

For more information on other titles available from VIZ Media, please visit www.VIZ.com.

About VIZ Media, LLC
Headquartered in San Francisco, California, VIZ Media distributes, markets and licenses the best anime and manga titles direct from Japan.  Owned by three of Japan's largest manga and animation companies, Shueisha Inc., Shogakukan Inc., and Shogakukan-Shueisha Productions, Co., Ltd., VIZ Media has the most extensive library of anime and manga for English speaking audiences in North America, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa. With its popular digital manga anthology WEEKLY SHONEN JUMP and blockbuster properties like NARUTO, BLEACH and INUYASHA, VIZ Media offers cutting-edge action, romance and family friendly properties for anime, manga, science fiction and fantasy fans of all ages.  VIZ Media properties are available as graphic novels, DVDs, animated television series, feature films, downloadable and streaming video and a variety of consumer products.  Learn more about VIZ Media, anime and manga at www.VIZ.com.

Review: "The Music Lovers" Loves Tchaikovsky (In Memoriam: Ken Russell)

TRASH IN MY EYE No. 26 (of 2003) by Leroy Douresseaux

The Music Lovers (1970)
COUNTRY OF ORIGIN: UK
Running time: 123 minutes (2 hours, 3 minutes)
DIRECTOR: Ken Russell
WRITER: Melvyn Bragg (based upon the books by Catherine Drinker and Barbara von Meck)
PRODUCER: Ken Russell
CINEMATOGRAPHER: Roger Slocombe
EDITOR: Michael Bradsell

BIOPIC/DRAMA/MUSIC

Starring: Richard Chamberlain, Glenda Jackson, Max Adrian, Christopher Gable, Kenneth Colley, Isabella Telezynska, and Maureen Pryor

Must genius suffer for the sake of his art? That’s just one of the themes of Ken Russell’s wild and fanciful, The Music Lovers, the 1970 biographical film about the life and career of Romantic-era Russian composer, Peter Ilich Tchaikovsky. The film covers the rise of his star at the Moscow Conservatory to his death in 1893 and focuses on the sweeping beauty of his music, as well as the tragedies of his personal life as they influenced his musical output.

As the film begins, Peter Ilich Tchaikovsky (Richard Chamberlain) teaches harmony at the Moscow Conservatory. He is composing his early music, but it meets with disfavor from his mentor Nicholas Rubinstein (Max Adrian), who got him the position at the Conservatory. At this point, the film becomes what we might now consider a music video. Russell uses Tchaikovsky’s music to illustrate the young musician’s personal moods and his confidence in himself as a composer. Of course, Tchaikovsky’s music is beautiful, but when Russell combines the music with powerful visuals, he makes us feel the composer’s joy for life and for his art. It’s a heady, emotional rush; personally, my eyes were literally glued to the screen and my spirits soared with sublime beauty of Tchaikovsky’s jams. I simply couldn’t escape the impressionistic sensations that literally bleed from the film. The music soars and the visuals rush by in a stream of surrealistic landscapes, so you can’t help but be caught up with and in Tchaikovsky.

The film does take some liberties with history as many films of this type do. The composer gains a patron, a wealthy widow, Madam Nadezhda von Meck (Isabella Telezynska), who provides him with a annual allowance which helps him to find more time to compose. Around that same time, he meets and marries Antonina Milyukova (Glenda Jackson), a student at the conservatory who sends him a love letter. The film severely compresses the time between Madam von Meck’s endowment and the composer’s marriage to his admirer, which is historically inaccurate. However Russell plays the effect of these two relationships on the composer off each other.

In Russell’s film the marriage stunts Tchaikovsky’s development as a composer much to the chagrin of his patron, his teachers, his friends, and his brother Modeste (Kenneth Colley). The marriage is unhappy from the onset and is not helped by the arrival of his mother-in-law (Maureen Pryor). Instead, Russell creates an idealized romantic love between Tchaikovsky and Madam von Meck that contrasts with his troubled marriage to Nina. The burdens of maintaining these two vastly different romances move the film forward to its tragic resolutions.

That’s probably the most powerful thing about this film, the juxtaposition of the sublime beauty of Tchaikovsky’s music and the debilitating traumas of his personal relationships. Usually, such extreme misery would be a turnoff, but Russell frames everything in the context of Tchaikovsky’s beloved compositions. Everything that happens to the composer in his film is understood in the context of the music. In a sense, you have to wonder what came first. On one hand, I can realize that the music came from his life experiences, but in the framework of the movie, I got the feeling that the music, whether through the influence of his patrons, admirers, friends, or family, was the master controller. Russell beautifully presents this conflict of creativity: the music or the life, which comes first? He takes full advantage of the visual possibilities of film, while opening up the senses to what the addition of sound can do for the movie viewing experience.

The performances are brilliant, but I especially give kudos to Ms. Jackson as Nina. Her transformation from a beautiful young thing to pitiable mental case is astonishing. She essentially plays two people, and she reinforces that by undergoing an almost total physical transformation from romantic heroine to tragic, broken woman.

For those who love Tchaikovsky, The Music Lovers is an interesting take on the famed composer’s life, and fans of his will certainly love the music. For lovers of films, this is a peak work by one of the great visual stylists, a man whose work is an eye-popping blend of the grandiose, the bizarre, and the beautiful.

8 of 10
A

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