The more I see of the new live action version of the classic Disney animation Cinderella, the more I like it. The story was a classic folk tale first published in 1634, with the first movie version by film pioneer Georges Méliès coming out in 1899, but somehow I still think Disney when I hear the name. This is the second official US trailer for the new film, which will be in theaters March 13th. Be sure to take your seat early enough so you don’t miss the new animated short Frozen Fever, which takes place just a few months after the original movie Frozen ended.
This is actually the Outcast trailer, but Nick Cage went so over the top yet again I had to rename the post to his character. This one looks like it will be a lot of fun, and I will be in the theater for it. I would have been in the theater for it 6 months ago, but the release got delayed a bit.
If you are in the mood for action/fantasy then Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is probably just what you are looking for. This particular reboot is my favorite of the TMNT video offerings so far, and a whole lot of fun. On the more serious side, we get The Maze Runner this week as well, based on the YA series of novels by James Dashner.
TV gives us Extant: The First Season, a CBS sci-fi program that has been picked up for a second season. With humans, aliens, and robots, it is at its core a story about the human heart.
In Anime, A Certain Magical Index II: Part Two continues the magical story line from Academy City, a place where ESPers are produced through genetic engineering (as explained in A Certain Scientific Railgun). An encoded grimoire containing catastrophe magic has been stolen, and Index must be protected lest the thieves use her to unlock its secrets. In the Ambition of Oda Nobuna our protagonist is thrown back in time, and on arriving in a Sengoku period timeline noticeably different than our own promptly gets a historical figure killed. He will now have to do the work originally done by Toyotomi Hideyoshi, to help unify feudal Japan.
We also get Bleach: Season 23 with episodes 317 through 329 with the continuing story of the Soul Reapers. The really exciting Anime news for me this week is about a re-release: Cowboy Bebop is finally available in Blue Ray! I am going to have to watch that all over again, from the beginning. If you haven’t already seen it, you have a serious treat in store. Besides buying the discs or watching it at the Funimation site linked above, you can catch it on Toonami as Adult Swim does its Cowboy Bebop Marathon the weekend after Christmas.
Rurouni Kenshin 2: Kyoto Inferno looks to be every bit as intense as the first film, and there is one more to go after this before the series is complete. A former assassin wanders through Japan promising to defend those in need without killing. If the story seems familiar and you haven’t seen the 2012 movie that began the live action film series, you may have read the manga it is based on, or perhaps seen the 1996 through 2008 anime series Rurouni Kenshin: Wandering Samurai. The anime ran 95 episodes, with breaks of several years sometimes between story segments, so it took a while to make. The song you hear playing in the background in the trailer is One OK Rock‘s hit Mighty Long Fall, which I posted here previously if you want to hear the whole thing. They are an amazing band, and you can pick up their songs on iTunes.
The Age of Adaline is a story about a woman who does not age, as the world changes around her. It is an epic romantic drama, her story taking place over the span of 10 decades, and based on the trailer it looks worth checking out. It will be on the bigh screen on April 24th.
In Movies we get Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, the second film in the recent reboot of the classic series. This set of films is probably the best example of the state of the art in computer generated characters I have seen. Also this week, the live action version of Kite, based on the groundbreaking anime classic.
In TV, The Strain: The Complete First Season is a show about viral vampires, as done by Guillermo Del Toro and a few other award winning writers. Also out, The Simpsons: The Complete Seventeenth Season continues the animated silliness for more years than I even dreamed were possible when the show first hit the airwaves.
In Anime, Diabolik Lovers: Complete Collection finds Yui sharing a home with 6 vampires, and keeping them at fangs length is becoming quite stressful. Note that this is the DVD only; the Blue Ray version will be out at the end of February. In the magical combat comedy we get Fairy Tail: Part 14, bringing episodes 154 through 164 to North America. Finally, Queen’s Blade: Beautiful Warriors is a 6 episode OVA series telling the tales of the most recent contestants as they make their way through the world after their competition.