FUTURE DIARY (2012) was an anime adaptation of the same-name manga (cover left, all rights with current holder). The protagonist, Yuki, is a 14-year-old chosen by the time-god Deus ex Machina as one of the contenders to replace the aging deity. Each contender has a cellphone diary that now predicts some aspect of the future; the 12 candidates must now attempt to kill each other until only one is left. I watched this mostly for entertainment (predicting the future doesn’t make the cut for my book) but some time-travel elements did creep in later. In any case, very entertaining. “I shall fight hard enough to create a miracle!”
The new season of DOCTOR WHO has the new Doctor (Peter Capaldi) and Clara encounter a Mummy on the Orient Express, two-dimensional monsters and Robin Hood before battling a malevolent old adversary. Capaldi comes off closest to Baker, crotchety and extremely quirky. A good season overall; “Listen” was disappointing (like a bad knockoff of “Blink”) but I really liked “Flatline.” I also like Clara working at Coal Hill School, where it all started back in the first serial, “An Unearthly Child.” Thumbs up. “Didn’t all those beautiful speeches just disappear in the face of a tactical advantage, sir?”
BRICK BRADFORD (1947) was a popular adventure comic strip back in the day, here transformed into a sub-par movie serial. Kane Richmond plays the two-fisted adventurer trying to keep a scientist’s anti-missile ray from falling into the hands of gangsters (surprisingly working for themselves rather than puppets of a Sinister Foreign Power as they usually were in those days). This turns out to require trips to the moon (this is the kind of show where the moon having an atmosphere doesn’t even require explanation) and to the past via “Time Top” (a gadget taken from the original strip, but the time-travel element is brief enough I can consign this to the appendix. “I alone will possess the power to destroy a world!”
