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.