This week’s Monday Pick is the 1984 multi genre classic The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension. Director/screenwriter W.D. Richter (Dracula (1979), Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978), Big Trouble in Little China) created one of the weirdest and most beloved cult classics of the 1980s.

Peter Weller (Robocop) stars as the multi talented neurosurgeon, physicist, rock musician and comic book hero Buckaroo Banzai who battles aliens know as Red Lectroids from the Planet 10 who plot to take over the Earth. Buckaroo Banzai’s character was influenced by the 1930s pulp novels of Doc Savage, much like Lucas and Spielberg’s Indiana Jones that was influenced after the literary adventure character of Allan Quatermain.

Buckaroo Banzai has always been a favorite of mine since I first saw it in theaters in the summer of 1984. It’s a very interesting/hard film to describe to anyone who has never scene it. The premise is beyond absurd but that’s what makes the film so lovable. Banzai and his team of do-gooders known as The Hong Kong Cavaliers (a version of Doc Savage’s Fabulous Five) battle the evil Red Lectroids under the command of Lord John Whorfin (yes an alien leader named John) played to psychotic perfection by John Lithgow, who is actually an Italian physicist known as Dr. Emilio Lizardo. Yeah, it’s a little confusing but when you watch the film it all comes together.

For all the hit and miss of DC’s theatrical features in the last decade, their animated features have been mostly top-notch. The wealth of quality has evolved from the team that brought us the classic DC animated shows of the ’90s and early 2000’s.

No doubt to capitalize on the recent Batman movie the next direct to DVD animated feature is a two-part adaptation of the seminal Bat-tale, The Dark Knight Returns. There is little doubt that the film will be a visual marvel, Frank Miller’s work translates very well to moving images, but we have yet to see anything real to give us a sense of how it ‘feels’. Until Now.

MTV has debuted the first real trailer for part 1 of the animated epic, and for the uninitiated lets start with the synopsis:

Batman has not been seen for ten years. A new breed of criminal ravages Gotham City, forcing 55-year-old Bruce Wayne back into the cape and cowl. But, does he still have what it takes to fight crime in a new era?

What is interesting is how the trailer seems to emphasis the elements of the story that parallel the recent Christopher Nolan movie, and it kinda reminds us how much Nolan has been pulling from Miller’s work for his whole franchise. Which does kind of put a kibosh on the wild fan-boy theories that Nolan and Bale will return in twenty years to actually make a live action The Dark Knight Returns, it would be treading on some very familiar ground.

Check out the full new trailer after the jump.

The DC animated universe is fantastic. Bruce Timm has been masterminding gold standard animation for nearly two decades, and his crew is finally taking on one of the most important Batman stories ever told, Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns.

This epic two-part animated event has already been officially announced, but The Hollywood Reporter has announced the principle voice cast:

Peter Weller (Robocop) will star as Batman/Bruce Wayne and Modern Family’s middle child Ariel Winter will play Robin… Also in the cast are David Selby, the veteran actor who starred in the original Dark Shadows soap opera as well as the classic 1980s soap Falcon Crest; Wade Williams (Prison Break) as Harvey Dent/Two-Face; and Michael McKean as Dr. Wolper, the psychiatrist who releases the Joker from the insane asylum.

Fan favorite Michael Ironside played the role in a classic episode of Batman: The Animated Series that payed homage to the seminal story. While it would have been nice symmetry to have him back, Peter Weller is an amazing choice for the role.

The story is being split into two animated features, the first of which will be hitting shelves later this year, followed by the second part in early 2013.

After Dark Films, who over the last couple of years have become well known for releasing horror films to theaters and home video,  has partnered with Dark Castle Home Entertainment to bring you a new franchise of films, this time all action based.

Aptly named After Dark Action will present a collection of original action flicks starring a myriad of established and new talent.

Like they did with their horror compilations, After Dark Films does a tremendous job of bringing  films that would otherwise not get distributed to market. Any one familiar with their previous horror films knows that we can expect some of these films to be great and some to be stinkers, but they are all usually worth a viewing.

This week’s Monday Pick is the 1987 Sci-fi action film Robocop, directed by master filmmaker Paul Verhoeven (Total Recall, Starship Troopers, Flesh & Blood, Soldier of Orange, The Black Book). Peter Weller stars as slain police officer Alex Murphy who is brought back to life by corporate scientists to become the ultimate law enforcement weapon in the crime-ridden Detroit of the near future.

Robocop is not only a well made solid blend of sci-fi and action, Verhoeven and writers Ed Neumeier and Michael Miner splendidly poke fun at many institutions in American culture like the media, corporate greed, privatization, capitalism, and even masculinity.

OCP (Omni Consumer Products) is a vast corporation that specializes in space exploration, civilian and Military technology, and government intervention. OCP enters into an agreement to run and finance the Detroit police force in order to serve its needs, one being that OCP plans to turn Detroit into the city of tomorrow known as Delta City due to rampant crime and that the city is on the verge of financial collapse.