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I hope everyone’s previous year ended well, and you are now ready for the new one! For myself, I just spent a little while trying to figure out a new animation program in my collection, and used it to create this primitive but well meant Seasons Greetings video just for you. And since I made my own, it does belong in the Build Your Own category.

When Nintendo rolls out a new product, usually it has a smattering of in-house titles for it, with half of them playable, and half vaporware, depending on third party products to take up the slack. Not so this time, acording to Japanator; there will be 32 in-house games on display for the Nintendo 3DS, their portable 3D gaming platform. You won’t need special glasses to get the 3D effects, although as with most new optical systems there will be a brief learning curve while your eyes figure out the trick to viewing it. The percentages will be about normal though, with 15 playable games and another 17 game trailers. They are taking over Chiba City’s Makuhari Messe Hall 9, the same town featured in so many early William Gibson stories, and the same venue used for the Tokyo Game Show each September. I am not much of a gamer, but this is one system I am looking forward to. For a full list of which games are real and to see coverage of the actual event, go to Nintendo World 2011. The event will run January 8th, 9th, and 10th.

Those of you who watched the BBC America presentation on Christmas Day of Doctor Who: A Christmas Carol probably noticed an add for Where’s The Tardis. If you didn’t follow up on it, you should have, because it is a contest with prizes that include a private Doctor Who screening event in September and over 100 Doctor Who DVDs. Whether you win or not though the fun bit for me is stated right in the rules where it says you have full permission to build your own anatomically correct Tardis and display it in public. In fact, it is a requirement, since you have to submit pictures or video of your Tardis located in interesting but legal public places. They also want at least three videos of you creating your Tardis, and the contest will be judged on four points:

1) Most Original Design of the Tardis
2) Most Creative use of Materials
3) Most Creative Placement in a Public Location
4) Most Facebook Likes on wheresthetardis.com

I am obviously not going to win, since I don’t have a Facebook account, but that will not stop me from entering. You should do the same; the contest is now open (it started when the Christmas Doctor Who episode aired), and they will be accepting entries until May 15th 2011 at 11:59PM ET. Good luck to all of us, and if you win, I am willing to travel to be in the audience for the private screening event!

BTW, do you suppose the private screening event in the US has anything to do with the fact that some of the new Who season, not to mention some new Torchwood episodes, will take place in America?

The Alice Files is the first performance I know of that combines smart phone apps with musical instruments and video processing and display in real time for stage presence, all from only hand held devices. For the example included here, Lewis Carrol’s Alice in Wonderland was the narrative starting point, and I managed to locate both of the parts. And then there was the Doctor Who theme song…

A project with a reasonable budget hits the broadcast TV screens on January 9th: The Cape. This one looks like it will be a lot of fun, as you can probably tell by looking at the trailer. And it has Summer Glau in it, always a draw for me, and I think this time she even gets to play a normal human… sort of. Also, on the first BBC America kicks off season 4 of Primeval: Back from Extinction. This is their second attempt to turn the series in a whole new direction, and the tag line is in part a play on words both from the plot line (since two of the characters, Abby and Connor, return from the prehistoric to rejoin the rest of the cast) and the fact that they had been canceled at the end of season 3. With season four, they also bring Alexander Siddig to the party.

This months major hits have already hit the big screen, but you would think there would be one left for the final weekend. As it turns out, there is: No Sanctuary is the tale of a group of strangers pinned down in a church, trying to protect a girl with incredible powers from an army of the undead. I don’t hold out much hope or even interest in this one; you would probably do better to catch up with a movie you had previously missed this week.

In the movie selection section we have Resident Evil: Afterlife; the theatrical version was in 3D, but very few DVDs have been released in that format so far (my local Best Buy just set up a display with 16 titles last week for the first time ever, even though they have been selling the TVs and DVD players for months and months). Which has to be kind of rough on the sales people who are depending on a commission for selling you an entertainment system that has very little actual entertainment you can play on it. Cable 3D offerings so far are one sports channel, and the Discovery Channel which also pioneered Hi-Def over a decade ago and currently has the largest HD title library of any cable channel.

The other movie worth noting this week is Legendary Assassin, about a female cop and a martial arts drifter she befriends. Shortly after they encounter one another, all hell breaks loose as the town starts to come apart around their ears. The final film I should mention is Chrome Angels: Cyborg Conquest, a cyborg sexploitation flic that appears to have an actual logical sci-fi plot line to it that leads to a fully realized conclusion, somewhat rare for the program category it exists within.

For live action TV this week, there is a mention that Dr. Who: The Complete Davros Collection will be re-released (originally issued in 2008) several places around the web, but the only site I could find that mentioned having disks in stock or coming anytime soon was in Australia, so that is probably just a rumor as near as I can tell.

Gintama – Collection 3 starts off this week’s set of new anime releases, with the continuing story of alien invasion and takeover in 17th century Japan. Disarming the samurai and turning the majority of the population into slave labor for their factories, while distracting them from their fate by introducing health care, graphic novels, and TV, is a ploy we have seen in this world as well. Sakata Gintoki, or Gin, is a vagrant samurai addicted to Shonen Jump and Anime, who is getting by with his odd-jobs company. Animation is good but not spectacular, audio bed is good, but the main draw here is the combination of historical events in our parallel universe (you may have noticed we didn’t get the alien invasion) with the make-you-think aspects of two radically different cultures colliding who were also not even close on technology levels.

Dragonaut: The Resonance- The Complete Series compiles the two previously released seasons into the entire package for the first time. The premise is that the Earth is about to be destroyed by an incoming asteroid, and the teams of Dragons and Dragon Riders are our best hope of survival. But as usual, it isn’t really that simple. Animation is excellent even if the character designers are of the Barbie School (not even close to anatomically reasonable for the female form), music is good, and the story is about the conflict between two totally different evolutionary tracts (with life forms from each side trying to determine if they can co-exist, and working together to survive). This one is surprisingly better than you were probably expecting.

There are several titles being re-released in more economical sets this week. Baccano! – The Complete Collection is one of the better animes released in the US this year (2007 and 2009 in Asia), about immortal mafia, monsters, and alchemists (and several other groups) who hunt each other down across history, with the main body of the tale taking place in the 1920s and 30s in and around NYC. Each episode gives you slivers of stories from various characters perspectives, leaving you to assemble the mosaic in your mind as each new piece of the puzzle is revealed. The animation is excellent, the incidental music does its job to perfection supporting the mood of each scene without pulling attention away from the action, while the primary music is spot on, and most of all, the story being told grabs your attention as it unfolds.

Finally, Ragnarok The Animation is a typical quest type fantasy, and all the usual suspects are involved. The only thing I can find to recommend about this one is the discounted price, although if you prefer this genre it may be worth checking out.