Outlander is the story of Claire Randall, a girl from 1945 who suddenly jumps to 1743, not exactly what she was expecting. She is forced to marry Jamie, a young Scottish warrior, but she is an already married combat nurse in 1945, which she may or may not be able to go back to. The show is based on Diana Gabaldon’s best-selling books, and put together by Executive Producer Ronald D. Moore. It kicks of on Starz on August 9th. If you’re going to be at the San Diego Comic Con you can enter a drawing at the Starz site to attend the world premiere screening there to take place on July 25th.
The latest live action version of Lupin The 3rd is going to be hitting the big screen in Tokyo on August 30th, and I can’t wait to see it released in the US. The mastermind who created most of the original season was Hayao Miyazaki of Studio Ghibli, and the rest of season 1 was built by Masaaki Ōsumi. But they were building on strong foundations, taking the original 1905 character Arsène Lupin created by the brilliant French author Maurice Leblanc. Maurice’s Lupin was a perfect match for Doyle’s Sherlock, and the two contemporaries shared a rather large audience between them. When the 1971 TV series kicked off it was his grandson Lupin 3rd who incorporated all the James Bond elements and dragged the show into modern times. If you are not already a fan of this program, now is the time to learn all about it.
Put together by the folks who created the Coraline and ParaNorman animations, The Boxtrolls looks like it will be a lot of fun. The film stars Ben Kingsley, Elle Fanning, Simon Pegg, and Nick Frost, which all by itself is enough to put it on my must see list. It is based on the book Here Be Monsters by Alan Snow, purportedly a children’s book but a fine example of Fantasy as well. Since it is volume 1 of The Ratbridge Chronicles (the fictional town it takes place in, based on the real town Trowbridge in Wiltshire), perhaps there will be more of these down the road. It should be hitting the big screen in September.
There are several interesting choices this week, with Transformers: Age of Extinction topping the list. Let’s face it, I would watch any Michael Bay Transformers movie, even though I never cared for the original Japanese animation series trying to promote toy sales. As the series evolved, Beast Wars came out, a story line built on evolution itself. It looks like Michael is finally incorporating that aspect of the franchise into his movies, and I can’t wait to see where he takes it.
Also this week, the truly twisted and paranoid Philip K. Dick masterpiece Radio Free Albemuth goes into general distribution! This gem has been going around the film fest circuit for a handful of years, it is nice to see it finally going into theatrical release. If you are in the mood for an After the Apocalypse kind of film, then Snowpiercer will give you major class warfare trapped on the Orient Express, with an international cast of favorite actors. If you are hoping for something a bit more light-hearted than any of these, there is a limited release of the 2004 animated classic The Incredibles, finally available in 3D.
In movies, 300: Rise of an Empire is the latest Frank Miller production driven by his graphic novels. A bit more violent than I would prefer, they are still high quality stories about human nature. I do like the cinematic style they share with that other Frank Miller project, Sin City. Speaking of style, the 2011 version of Faust by director Alexander Sokurov finishes up a tetralogy of films who’s other protagonists were not fictional: Hitler, Stalin, and Hirohito. Finally, The Chef, the Actor and the Scoundrel might be the most interesting movie released to disc this week. It is definitely an action/comedy, treating the Second Sino-Japanese War (those of us in North America lumped it in as part of WWII) as a complex backdrop into which all of the characters and plot elements fit with precision.
In TV, the Witches of East End: The Complete First Season has a supernatural mother keeping a secret from her daughters so they can lead a normal life. But that doesn’t turn out to be an option when something evil comes to destroy them all, and their only chance for survival means they must all know who they really are. This show is from Lifetime, so it will get a different treatment than other networks would grant this premise, and I look forward to seeing where they go from here. The new season begins July 6th.
In Anime, Code:Breaker: Complete Series is about a super-powered assassin employed by a secret government organization to keep everyone else in line. Then his classmate Sakura steps in to keep HIM under control, and everything cascades from there. In Leviathan: The Last Defense, Complete Collection the fairy Syrup recruits three Dragon Clan girls to form the base of the Aquafall Defense Force, and defeat the alien invaders. Meteors impacting the earth of Aquafall are sprouting monsters bent on conquering the world.
Still another Guardians of the Galaxy extended trailer, telling us a bit more about the film. Not that I needed any more encouragement; I will be in the theater when this opens on August 1st.