And it is driving me nutz! Continuum is a Sci-Fi time travel cop show series with some incredible actors and production values, filmed in Vancouver and currently running on Showcase. But Showcase is a Canadian channel, and as far as I have been able to determine so far, if you live in the US you do not have a channel you can watch it on, and the web sites that stream it are blocked here as well. I have at least been able to watch the mighty impressive trailer posted below (unless they have yanked that too by now). The show normally runs on Sunday evenings at 9PM EST on Showcase (insert your own boilerplate that means check your local listings here). Last weekend they ran episode 5. This weekend, in honor of Canada Day, they will be running a marathon of those first 5 episodes beginning at 5PM ET Sunday and ending at 10PM. They will repeat that sequence beginning at 11PM, and the moment I find out how to watch it legally in the US I will be posting it here. The second video is from FanExpo Vancouver with some tasty background, and that is about all I have time to type right now… I am figuring an hour to pack the car, and maybe nine to 11 hours drive time to Toronto. If I can get in a 5 hour nap and a run to a local Thai restaurant for takeaway, I should be ready to watch the series so far!
Looper is the story of a man who kills time travelers for a living, and then goes back in time to save himself. The same himself who is trying to kill him. This is a new trailer for the movie, you can see the last one in my previous blog entry on the topic. And I still do like the tag line, Hunted By Your Past, Haunted By Your Future. Another fine Bruce Willis sci-fi film.
I am happy to report my local cable system just added MNet America to the channel lineup. They were already running two Korean channels, two Japanese channels, over 10 Chinese channels, 6 Indian channels (4 in Hindi, one in Punjabi, one in a language I didn’t recognize), 3 Filipino channels, a Vietnamese channel, and a few more I have not been able to identify. I do not count the New Zealand channel, because they are A) an English language country, and B) all Cricket matches, nothing there very oriental even though they come from the same part of the pacific rim. MNet is short for Music Network and it has a ton of music, mostly Pop in nature. It is based out of South Korea, but they do carry more than music and more than just Korean programing. The show I am excited about having weekly access to now on that network is Danny Choo’s Culture Japan, where I can see footage of events and interviews with creators of all the Japanese stuff that will become a major part of life here in 6 months to a year. And yes, by Stuff I mean Manga, Anime, Live Action, Games, Cosplay, collectables, Music, and everything else that you might see in Akihabara. Also a lot of convention coverage, as Danny is very popular as an Anime Con guest.
Caroline John was the name of the actress who played Elizabeth Shaw on Doctor Who, and we lost her this month. She was an active actress, with 50 titles to her credit, some of which had her sharing the screen with Jon Pertwee’s Doctor. Here are just a few of the tribute videos to remember her by…
I have a hard time imagining how they could do this justice, unless it was shown on an HBO-equivalent premium channel where running a hard-R program was a good thing. The are looking at making Barbarella as a TV Show according to that article from /Film. Both of the recent attempts to resurrect and re-imagine the original film for the big screen crashed and burned before they began filming. I have no real confidence that the TV version will be created either, but perhaps it might make it to the screen this time. The original report came from Deadline, and the closest anyone has ever come to creating a remake was 2001’s CQ, a very nicely layered film within a film which succeeded on many levels and which I recommend for everyone’s permanent collection.
Simultaneously exceedingly cute and eerily disturbing, Ted is about a talking stuffed teddy bear who came to life while its owner (Mark Wahlberg) was a child, and he has never been able to get rid of him since. This is the first feature film project Seth MacFarlane has done since he developed Family Guy, and besides writing and directing it he also does the voice work for the bear.