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.

Robocop is finally getting an upgrade. After months of rumors,  it looks like MGM has finally found their leading man for the upcoming Robocop remake. With potential stars ranging from Michael Fassbender to Russell Crowe, they finally decided on Swedish actor Joel Kinnaman to play the cyborg police officer.

According to Deadline.com, MGM has made an official offer to Kinnaman, who is best known for his roles in AMC’s The Killing and in the Denzel Washington/Ryan Reynolds thriller Safe House.

In the ultra-violent 1987 original, Peter Weller played officer Alex J. Murphy, who is brutally gunned down in the line of duty. In this futuristic version of Detroit, crime has gotten out of control and the normal police can’t stop the criminals. After the privatized police department resurrects him as a half-man, half-machine cop, Murphy is haunted by his human memories while facing both a sadistic criminal syndicate, as well as a corrupt corporate board.

In what could be called a bit of sci-fi synergy, original Robocop actor Peter Weller is reportedly joining the cast of J.J. Abrams upcoming sequel to Star Trek. While no other details are available at the moment as to what type or size of role Weller will be taking on in the film, you can be assured it will probably not be that of a robot or cyborg.

Of course, now that Weller is being cast in the film, speculation as to his role can begin in earnest, even without any “official” word. That’s just part of the fun. In addition to him most likely not being any sort of robot, bad or otherwise, It’s likely Weller will not play Kahn Noonian Singh — even if that role also doesn’t go to Benicio del Toro.

Weller will more likely take on a smaller yet pivotal role as a Starfleet officer or recognizable alien species who helps (or hinders) Kirk and company’s fight to destroy the greater evil threatening them and Earth. We have nothing to base that on of course, just spitballing here and trying to fill some column inches. That’s just how we roll. Who do you think Weller should play?

Paramount will release the Star Trek sequel May 17, 2013. Weller joins recently announced new cast members Alice Eve and del Toro and the returning Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, Zoe Saldana, Karl Urban, Anton Yelchin, John Cho and Simon Pegg.

Though it was upsetting to see Darren Aronofsky to walk away from helming a reboot of the classic 1980’s sci-fi franchise Robocop, we knew that him working on a sequel to X-Men Origins: Wolverine may be a better fit. Also, we were sure MGM would find someone to take on the half-cop, half-machine.

It looks like that creative team is finally coming together. MGM already announced that foreign action director Jose Padilha will be taking on the role of director for the upcoming film, and now news is coming in that the studio has hired Josh Zetumer to pen the script.

Who exactly is Josh Zetumer? Well from what Deadline has been able to dig up, he looks to be Hollywood’s next big thing, if we ever get to see one of his films.

Zetumer first got on the radar when he wrote the script Infiltrator, which made the Black List. That spy thriller script is set at Warner Bros as a potential starring vehicle for Leonardo DiCaprio.

He also wrote drafts of Dune when Peter Berg was going to direct that remake at Paramount, and he scripted a fourth installment of The Bourne Identity before Universal instead developed a spinoff with Tony Gilroy. Zetumer just turned in Vale, a supernatural action thriller script at Warner Bros.

So while Detroit is still battling with getting their real-life RoboCop statue to kick off, we could be seeing more of this celluloid version very soon. The next question then becomes: who will they get to play protagonist Alex Murphy aka RoboCop? We’re sure to get an answer soon enough.

For those who may not be in the know, the great city of Detroit is currently lobbying to have a statue of one of their greatest film heroes erected in the middle of town as a symbol to rebuild the once great city. So who better to stand behind their plan than the man who played the half-cop, half-machine himself, Peter Weller.

Thanks to Funny or Die, Weller has sent out a message to those who are fighting for this statue to become a real thing, and had some words of wisdom on exactly what how he feels about being immortalized as a statue.

A bit disheartening to see Weller return to his Alex Murphy role after he’s made a name for himself as a great TV baddie in such films like 24, Dexter, and Psych, but he’s back, and he’s wearing a cardboard box on his head.

For those who want to help out the cause, be sure to like the official Facebook page at the Detroit Deserves RoboCop fan page. Check out Weller’s message after the jump.

In a time when it sounds like a good idea to studio executives to rerelease classic films in 3D, it’s nice to see a simple gesture done to a classic set of films like upgrading them to 1080p that really makes you appreciate the times we live in.

That’s exactly what 20th Century Fox’s Home Entertainment brand did when they released the original Robocop trilogy in Blu-Ray. And you can believe that these classic sci-fi films still hold up to this day.

There isn’t much to the discs except for the film. There are very little special features, with the exception of some great old trailers. Though if you’re going to shell out money on films like these, you’ve got to do it purely for the fact that you can now add the Robocop films to your fancy new Blu-Ray collection.

For those who were in a cave from 1987 to 19992, the films are about the murder of Officer Alex Murphy by a group of drugged up thugs. The officer is brutally gunned down, with only part of his brain and chest still intact. Scientists from the ubiquitous company OCP rebuild Murphy into a state of the art crime fighting cyborg called Robocop who is built to clean up the town, avenging his death along the way.

If seeing Peter Weller blow stuff up and walk through fire in 1080p isn’t enough, consider how the storytelling of acclaimed directors Paul Verhoeven, Irvin Kershner, and Fred Dekker will look in these cleaned up prints and digitally remastered audio.