An ambitious South Korean monster movie and an indie space drama with blockbuster-level visual effects make their way to store shelves today. Giant CG dragons attack Los Angeles in Dragon Wars, and astronauts attempt to save the Earth in Sunshine from director Danny Boyle (28 Days Later, Train Spotting).
Directed by Hyung-rae Shim (2001 Yonggary a.k.a. Reptilian), Dragon Wars is based on a Korean legend which holds that dragons will return one day devastate the planet. The plot revolves around a beautiful young woman who possesses the power to transform a legendary giant serpent into a mighty dragon that can only ascend into heaven with her ultimate sacrifice. With forces of darkness out to claim the young woman as their own, her reincarnated lover and his aged mentor must work together to ensure that goodness prevails. The cast includes Jason Behr (Skinwalkers, The Grudge), Robert Forster (Firewall, Jackie Brown) and Aimee Garcia (The George Lopez Show).
Korea’s most expensive movie to date, Dragon Wars was budgeted at $32 million, but the liberal use of CG animation and other visual effects reportedly drove that number up to around $75 million. The English-language pic broke box office records in its native country, where it was released under the title D-War. DVD bonus features include a featurette titled 5,000 Years in the Making, a storyboard-to-screen featurette, and a photo gallery. The Sony release is also available on Blu-ray Disc.
Sunshine takes place 50 years in the future and tells the story of a group of astronauts on a mission to reignite the dying sun with a nuclear device as the Earth is suffering from global freezing. Written by 28 Days Later scribe Alex Garland, the pic boasts an ensemble cast that includes Cillian Murphy (28 Days Later), Chris Evans (Fantastic Four), Michelle Yeoh (Memoirs of a Geisha) and Cliff Curtis (Live Free or Die Hard). The visual effects work was completed by The Moving Picture Company (MPC). The Fox Home Entertainment release is also availbe on Blu-ray Disc and offers deleted scenes, commentary by Boyle, web production diaries and two short films.
If Dragon Wars doesn’t provide enough rampaging monster action to satisfy, you can also pick up Mammoth, a 2006 SCI FI Channel movie that is new on DVD today from Anchor Bay. One of the better entries in SCI FI’s Saturday night original movie franchise, the film stars Vincent Ventresca (The Invisible Man), Summer Glau (Serenity) and Tom Skerritt (Picket Fences) in a comical story that finds a 40,000-year-old woolly mammoth on the loose after being reanimated by a fallen meteor. ‘From the very get-go, I wanted Mammoth to be a live-action Warner Bros. cartoon,’ director Tim Cox tells us.
