I find these characters looking a bit strange in 3D, but I am looking forward to this blast from the past being reborn on the big screen. Mr. Peabody & Sherman was a part of the whole Rocky and Bullwinkle experience, along with Dudley Doright and Fracture Fairy Tales, and will be hitting theaters on March 7th.
More than a trailer, a bit less than a featurette, it looks like they are doing a first class job of relaunching the Robocop franchise. And for the easily confused, no, this was not filmed at CES the other week. Looks like it could have been, though.
If Astronomy and Space excite you, there is some good news. It seems Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson has teamed up with Ann Druyan and Seth MacFarlane to create a new show, Cosmos: A Space-Time Odyssey, very much in the tradition of Carl Sagan’s original Cosmos. Ann Druyan is the widow of Carl Sagan and one of the co-producers of the original Cosmos series, while animator Seth MacFarlane helped pull in the network funding. The two of them will share the Executive Producer duties for the new show, which will be running on Fox and National Geographic on the same night. Word of this project was first announced back in 2012, but now we are getting close: the first episode airs on March 9th.
We get animated silliness this week in the form of The Nut Job, a comedy about some overly ambitious squirrels who destroy their home while trying to stock up for winter. Also out this week is Collider, which looks pretty interesting. The official site is a bit unclear as to what country it is coming out in; it might just be Ireland. I hope it includes the US, since this one appears to have an original plot line, something that is getting hard to find out of Hollywood.
In Movies Riddick hits the shelves this week, both as a stand-alone and as part of the Riddick: The Complete Collection 4 film package. For those scratching their heads, this includes an animated story called Dark Fury that was released direct to DVD just after the first film came out. The remake of the cult film Carrie is also out this week.
I haven’t found any genre TV coming out this week, but Top Gear: Season 20 is being released, and they are always a lot of fun.
In western animation, Marvel Knights: Wolverine versus Sabretooth is being billed as the final battle between these two long-time foes. The Marvel Knights brand is for showcase stories that allow the best writers and illustrators to push the bounds of cannon, if not ignore them entirely, so anything is possible. I should also mention that this is a motion comic, rather than a true animation, a media style that Marvel excels at.
In Anime, Magi: The Labyrinth of Magic is your basic dungeon quest, merging and changing the stories of Alibaba and Aladdin. This set is season 1, giving you the first 13 episodes of the series. The show is also streaming on a number of services, including Crunchyroll and Hulu. The release of Naruto: Shippuden Box Set 17 brings us episodes 206 through 218 of the ongoing story of the 9 Tailed Fox. The current episode streaming on their site is 344, if you were wondering. Also beginning to catch up, One Piece Season 5 Part 5 brings the tail of Luffy and the Straw Hat Pirates to episodes 313 to 324. Of course, the currently streaming episode from Tokyo is 627.
Another great alt rock band out of Japan is Owarikara, their new single came out in October. I can’t tell you what the names of these tracks are, but I really like them a lot, especially the way they use rhythm and the instrumental melodies. The lead singer definitely adds an edge that wraps the whole package up; now if only I could understand more than one word in three of the lyrics. Of course, I have that same problem with a lot of rock songs sung in English, too.