I just finished the first episode of Shiki, and I enjoyed it. I really love the character designs; they're vibrant, their eyes look crazy, and they have a lot of pointy features, such as their chins and whatnot. Megumi seems like a great female lead, and after the end of the episode, I'm definitely interested in how the show is going to progress. This might turn out to be my favorite show of this summer season. I'd recommend at least checking out the first episode on Funimation's website.
I watched the first Gurren Lagann movie, Childhood's End, yesterday, and I can't recommend it. It does have about 25 minutes of new footage, but it's not really worth it. Instead of actually making a proper movie they just cut the show up and stitched it together. There are some awkward transitions, and there's a part during the show where they basically fast forward through parts of the TV show, such as when the Simon and friends meet The Black Siblings. In the end, they've created a movie that's really only for the people that have already seen the TV show, but there's not enough new and interesting material here to satisfy those people either.
Also, I finally finished watching Nodame Cantabile. I loved it despite its flaws. Nodame Cantabile's biggest flaw is that there are too many still scenes; I guess J.C. Staff didn't have a good enough budget when they were making this show. The best part about the show is its characters; they're realistic, they have depth, and they're very interesting. The two lead characters, Chiaki and Nodame, were my favorites. I definitely recommend people check it out, especially if you like classical music, romances, and a good bit of comedy. Hopefully Animax picks up the two sequels, since I loved the English dub. Some of the background characters had recurring voices, which always annoys me, but the rest of the voice cast does a fantastic job, especially Doug Erholtz as Chiaki and Kate Higgins as Nodame. There are some parts of the show where Kate Higgins sings and it's amazing.
Apparently Youtube can already tell Nodame Cantabile is owned by Sony, so this clip will probably disappear soon. You should watch it as soon as possible.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8WJscIwujtQ