ken burns – Trekking with Dennis

Spoiler Warning: Minor spoilers may be present for some of the titles on this list.

It’s the last day of June, and by my reckoning that makes it the halfway point of the year! As we bid farewell to the first half of 2023, it’s a good excuse to take a look ahead to some of the entertainment experiences that we’ll hopefully enjoy between now and Christmas! Is it too early to think about Christmas yet?

The first half of 2023 has been blighted by buggy games and crappy PC ports, but there have been some fun experiences along the way, too. When the year’s over I’ll be sure to pick out some of the highlights in my annual “end-of-year awards,” so check back for that if you want to see me handing out some imaginary trophies and statuettes! But for now, I promised you a look ahead!

I’ve picked five films, five television shows, and five games that I’m looking forward to in the second half of 2023. Maybe I’ll inspire you to find something to watch or play – or maybe you’ll hate all of my suggestions! Either way, I hope it will be a bit of fun to take a brief look ahead.

Film #1:
Ladybug and Cat Noir: The Movie
3rd August

If you aren’t familiar with Miraculous: Tales of Ladybug and Cat Noir… what have you been doing? The kids’ show is a blast, and has a lot to offer to an older audience, too, as superheroes Ladybug and Cat Noir battle to save the city of Paris! Miraculous is making its first appearance on the big screen this summer with a film adaptation that might just take the series back to its roots. I’m looking forward to seeing what the bigger budget of a cinematic adaptation could do for what is already a well-written and entertaining story.

Film #2:
Red One
November/December 2023

Red One is an action-adventure film set at Christmas – and features a star-studded cast. JK Simmons takes on the role of Santa Claus, with Dwayne Johnson, Chris Evans, and Lucy Liu also headlining. Details of the story are thin on the ground, but Amazon Studios apparently intends for Red One to be the first part of an expanded cinematic franchise. Christmas films can become classics – but they can also be naff, overly-sentimental fluff. I’m hoping for some excitement and entertainment from Red One.

Film #3:
The Last Voyage of the Demeter
11th August

Based on a single chapter of the original Dracula novel, The Last Voyage of the Demeter will focus on the crew of a doomed ship who are being stalked by the infamous vampire. The horror film could be a fun one to watch around Halloween! Horror usually isn’t my cup of tea, but a combination of the nautical setting and the connection to a classic work of literature has piqued my curiosity. As the horror genre swarms with zombies, ghosts, demons, and monsters, vampire flicks are relatively few and far between – which is another point in the film’s favour.

Film #4:
Wish
24th November

Wish looks fantastic! The film has been created especially for Disney’s centenary, and aims to be a celebration of everything the studio stands for. Focusing on the magical star that many characters have made their wishes upon, the film looks set to be another modern-day Disney classic. The animation style used for Wish is a blend of hand-drawn and digital, and the film will star Academy Award-winner Ariana DeBose. The trailer looked fantastic, with an amazing song to boot, and I can’t wait to see Wish for myself!

Film #5:
Rebel Moon
23rd December

There’s always room for more sci-fi, and Rebel Moon could be the kind of epic that spawns a brand-new franchise! Though I haven’t always been impressed with director Zack Snyder’s films, Rebel Moon seems to have a lot of potential. The film will star Star Trek Beyond’s Sofia Boutella, and looks to pitch a group of heroes against a corrupt imperial government. One to watch, for sure!

Video Game #1:
Star Trek Infinite
TBC 2023

Although I’m still not entirely sure what Star Trek Infinite will be like to play, the game is bringing the Star Trek franchise back to the strategy genre on PC (and Mac) for the first time in a long time – and I’m definitely on board with that idea! Publisher Paradox Interactive has a good reputation, and Star Trek Infinite is being constructed atop a streamlined version of the popular sci-fi strategy title Stellaris. There’s potential here, and I shall be checking out the game when it’s ready.

Video Game #2:
Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty
26th September

Although I’ve argued that we need to be careful about Phantom Liberty given what happened when Cyberpunk 2077 was released, I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t at least curious about the expansion pack. Described as a “spy thriller,” Phantom Liberty will add a new storyline to Cyberpunk 2077, a new area of the map, and also promises to connect with the base game’s main story, too. There will also be new weapons, new vehicles, and several new characters to engage with. Definitely one to put in the “wait for the reviews” category… but if it launches in good condition, Phantom Liberty could be a blast.

Video Game #3:
Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora
7th December

Frontiers of Pandora is an open-world action game set in the world of Avatar. It will tell a story independent of the main Avatar films, focusing on a Na’vi character who was trained by humans. This premise sounds genuinely interesting, and could elevate Frontiers of Pandora to something a bit more interesting than just a typical tie-in game. Gameplay was recently shown off as part of Ubisoft’s summer presentation, and the game looks to be in good shape.

Video Game #4:
Mario Kart 8 Deluxe – Booster Course Pass Waves 5 & 6
Summer/Holiday 2023

Last week’s Nintendo Direct broadcast showed off two new characters and one new racetrack that will be coming in Wave 5 of the Booster Course Pass this summer. After that there’s only one more wave to come – which will probably be toward the end of the year. The Booster Course Pass has reignited my interest in Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, and having new racetracks to jump into has given the game a shot in the arm. I’m hoping that Nintendo will put a lot of effort into the final two additions to the game.

Video Game #5:
Starfield
6th September

Given Bethesda’s reputation and the appalling condition of Fallout 76 in 2018, Starfield is another game that must remain in the “wait for the reviews” column! But if you’re a regular reader here on the website, you’ll know it’s my most-anticipated game right now. I cannot wait to get stuck into this open-galaxy sci-fi role-playing game, customising my character, my spaceship, and my colony, and getting lost in the world that Bethesda has created. I’m just crossing my fingers and hoping that Starfield will launch in a polished state – and that it can live up to the sky-high expectations that Bethesda and Microsoft have set.

Television Series #1:
Futurama
24th July

Futurama is coming back… again! Although the series came to a pretty definitive end in 2013 – following two cancellations and resurrections – Disney and Hulu have opted to bring it back once more. I’m on board with that idea – and I’ll be curious to see what a revived Futurama can bring to the table in 2023. The show was great fun in its earlier iterations, with an intriguing blend of sci-fi wackiness and topical humour, and I have high hopes for more of the same when Fry and the Planet Express crew return.

Television Series #2:
The American Buffalo
16th October

This two-part miniseries by Ken Burns will tell the remarkable tale of the near-extinction and resurrection of the American bison, looking at the history of hunting, what the species meant to native peoples, and how it was saved from extinction in the 20th Century. Ken Burns is one of the world’s leading documentary filmmakers, and I’ve long enjoyed his work.

Television Series #3:
Star Wars: Skeleton Crew
Late 2023

The premise of Skeleton Crew is giving me Star Trek: Prodigy vibes, as a group of youngsters will find themselves lost in a galaxy far, far away. Jude Law is taking on the lead role of a Jedi, and may serve as a kind of mentor to the group. Story details are still thin on the ground, but there’s enough to think that Skeleton Crew might be something a bit different from a franchise that has struggled to break away from its illustrious past. The series may also connect in some way with The Mandalorian, as it’s set in the same time period.

Television Series #4:
Good Omens Season 2
28th July

Although it’s been a while since the first season of this adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s story, Season 2 is finally upon us! David Tennant and Michael Sheen are returning as the demon Crowley and the angel Aziraphale respectively, and the continuation looks set to be a ton of fun. After Crowley and Aziraphale managed to prevent the end of the world last time around… what will they get up to this time?

Television Series #5:
Foundation Season 2
14th July

The first season of Foundation was outstanding, successfully adapting a very dense work of hard sci-fi in an understandable way. I’m very interested to see what Season 2 might have to offer, and how it might bring together some of the different story threads that the series has in play. Apple has done a great job so far, but Foundation has room to grow. Its complex premise and large cast of characters doesn’t make it the easiest show to follow, but it’s absolutely worth sticking with Foundation.

So that’s it!

We’ve taken a look at a handful of films, video games, and television shows that I hope will be enjoyable between now and the end of the year. In late December I’ll be dishing out some of my annual end-of-year awards to the best of the best, so check back then to see which of the entertainment experiences above made the cut!

What am I most excited about right now? It’s hard to pick just one thing, but I’m very curious to see if Starfield truly lives up to the high expectations that have been set. I’m also really looking forward to Futurama’s return, as well as seeing if Rebel Moon will be “the next big thing” in sci-fi!

I’ll be here throughout the summer, reviewing episodes of Strange New Worlds, sharing my thoughts on new and upcoming projects, and much more! I don’t promise reviews of everything listed above, but I’ll try to share my thoughts and impressions on at least some of these titles. I hope the first half of 2023 has gone well for you, and that you’re looking forward to some fun and exciting entertainment experiences as we pass the halfway point of the year.

All properties discussed above are the copyright of their respective owner(s). Some images used above courtesy of IGDB and IMDB. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.

Today marks the 75th anniversary of VE Day – that’s Victory in Europe day, when Germany officially surrendered at the end of World War II. British, Canadian, Australian, and American soldiers would continue fighting Japan until August, so this wasn’t the final end of the war, but for the nations of Europe, the USSR, and American armies fighting in the European theatre of war it was. History is one of my big passions, though it’s not something I talk about often here on the website. But today is a great opportunity to look at a couple of great documentaries about the war as we celebrate this poignant anniversary.

Cameras had been present in every conflict since the Crimean War in the 1850s, so photography was not really new by the time of World War II. The American Civil War is often cited as the conflict that invented the idea of a “war correspondent”, reporting the facts and taking pictures for newspapers back home. And during the First World War a generation earlier, video footage was routinely captured to be used in newsreels – and propaganda.

But the Second World War saw photographs and video captured on a much bigger scale – almost every army detachment would be assigned an official photographer, and many soldiers would take their own cameras from home with them when they went off to war. I have several family photographs in my collection from my grandfather and great-uncle, both of whom fought in the war and, by a very strange coincidence as they were assigned different roles in different units, both saw action during the Battle of Crete.

I’m going to look at two documentaries in this article, one British and one American. They both look at the same conflict from the same side, but with very different perspectives. The American documentary I’ve chosen in Ken Burns’ The War, which was released in 2007.

*The War* was released in 2007 and looked at the conflict from an American point of view.

The War is, by the standards of other works looking at the conflict, narrower in scope. It has a focus on individuals from a select number of smaller towns across the United States, and while it does of course deal with the conflict’s major events, it often does so through that lens. It also begins not with the events of 1939, the widely-accepted beginning of the Second World War, but with the attack on Pearl Harbor in late 1941, which marked America’s entry into a war that had already been raging for more than two years.

The decision to begin the documentary in 1941, while at the same time providing only minimal background to the United States’ declaration of war, is a limiting factor because it means the whole story of the conflict isn’t told. However, The War doesn’t aim to be a comprehensive look at the entire conflict. As with Ken Burns’ other works, it is a uniquely American film looking at how the war affected the United States and how Americans participated in it. Whether you consider this limitation to be problematic or not may depend on where you come from – from my own point of view with my family history tied to the conflict, the Battle of Crete, which saw my grandfather captured and interred by German forces, had already occurred several months before The War begins its coverage. It is, in that sense, an incomplete picture.

Nevertheless, The War is an interesting and well-done television series, drawing on a vast amount of historical data and documents to tell the story of the later two-thirds of the conflict very well. It also covers the Pacific Theatre of the war in far more detail than many other works do, as Europe is often the focus of Second World War documentaries. Keith David, who’s a well-known voice actor and has appeared in many films and video games, even voicing the role of Admiral Anderson in the Mass Effect series, is The War’s narrator.

The second documentary I’ve chosen to highlight is The World at War, a British series made in 1973. Don’t be put off by when it was made, because this documentary is about as comprehensive as it’s possible to be.

There’s something of a “sweet spot” when it comes to studying certain past events. Too close to the event in question and people can be reluctant to talk openly and honestly about what happened, but wait too long and too many of the principal players have died or are not available to participate. The World at War lands right in the middle, and as such is able to interview many senior and prominent people who were involved in the decision-making process during World War II.

Such important figures as Anthony Eden, who had been the UK’s Foreign Secretary for almost all of the conflict, Karl Donitz and Albert Speer, who were senior German cabinet ministers under Hitler – Donitz would even be named Hitler’s successor and formed a short-lived government, Traudl Junge, who was Hitler’s secretary and on whose memoir the 2004 film Downfall was based, Lord Mountbatten, actor James Stewart, and many others were all interviewed for The World at War. Getting the perspectives of such important figures makes the series such incredibly riveting viewing. Hearing people like Speer in particular discuss what it was like working with Hitler is absolutely fascinating, and brings to life a period of history that we only really think of as being in black-and-white.

Former Nazi government official Albert Speer was among the many significant interviewees for *The World At War*.

With 26 episodes and clocking in at a massive 22 hours, The World at War is a huge time commitment, but well worth it. No other documentary series has tried so hard to cover World War II in such comprehensive detail, looking at every aspect and every major front in the conflict – even the pre-war conflicts between Japan and China, and the rise of Hitler’s Germany from 1933-39, both of which can be overlooked by other studies of the conflict.

Award-winning actor Lawrence Olivier provides The World at War’s narration, and the series is definitely the better for his involvement. At the time it was made, The World at War was the most expensive documentary ever produced, and its use of archive footage from the time, as well as its extensive interviews with veterans and prominent wartime figures makes it incredible for anyone with an interest in the conflict.

So it was a bit of a different article this time, taking a break from the world of fantasy and sci fi to look at the real world for a short time.

The 8th of May 2020 marks the 75th anniversary of VE Day. The War may be found on DVD and Blu-Ray and is the copyright of PBS. The World at War is also available on DVD and Blu-Ray and is the copyright of Thames Television and ITV. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.

Tag: ken burns

We’re halfway through 2023!

VE Day – marking the 75th anniversary with documentaries