Skip to main content

Things to Watch

Movies released to DVD this week include Don’t Die Without Telling Me Where You’re Going, the 1995 fantasy about love and reincarnation. Also now out on DVD is Stan Helsing, just 5 days after it hits the movie theaters.

A lot of TV programs are coming out this week, of which the most interesting is Battlestar Galactica: The Plan, which seems to be a bit racier than its televised brethren.

More speculative future history than science fiction, the excellent Life After People: the Series is being released as a box set. Another doesn’t-quite-fit category is manifested by Adult Swim in a Box. The only part of the contents I can recommend is Robot Chicken Season 1, which you can get separately, but as an overview of a networks vision I don’t think anything like it has been released before.

New Anime this week includes Genshiken 2: Vol 2, to bring our favorite Otaku team to the forefront. Another quality release is Death Note Re-Light #2: L’s Successor as the series picks up the next story arc, with the former hero being the new bad guy. The Claymore: Complete Collection box set is out for those looking for demon combat fun. A new arrival to the US is Shonen Onmyouji, a 26 episode story set in historic Japan involving spirit power and exorcism. They have also finally released the Popotan Complete Collection if you fancy a bit of jumping through time and space without control taking your building with you (you will NOT see the Doctor in these episodes). For classic Anime re-release, BoogiePop Phantom looks to lead the list.

Blomkamp’s new movie, Best Dream Sequences

Media Rights Capitol has agreed to supply the money for Neil Blomkamp’s new Sci-Fi film according to Ain’t It Cool News. Just as he did with District 9 he will be running a low-budget operation, making up for it by inventing the FX as he writes the script, and we saw how amazingly that worked on his first movie. IO9 has put together a wonderful collection of the Science Fiction Dream Sequences, ranging from the 1920s to the current decade. While they don’t include all of them, they have certainly covered the best, and you can watch every one from those pages.

Lilith and the Science Symphony

There is a reason I follow science fiction authors on Twitter. One example is Lilith Saintcrow, or @lilithsaintcrow in Twit Speak. In a single screens worth of entries she referenced the Symphony of Science, which is echoed in Sagans Latest Music, an ethical discourse on the difference between Kindness, Morals, and Justice, a serious Netiquette site called One Geek To Another, a report on gender-based evolutionary size tactics and why they work, an a news story indicating that Bush used PsyOps on the American public as a way to distract us from what he was doing. 10 posts, 6 ways to tie your brain in a knot; you got to love the web, and the people like her that contribute to it!

“

Black Lightning, Water of Mars

I loved Daywatch and Nightwatch and am waiting for the third in the trilogy to be released. I also enjoyed Wanted, and the man who directed all three of them, Timur Bekmambetov, is at it again. This time the Russian movie he is creating is called Chernaya Molniya, in English Black Lightning, kind of Batman Meets Transformers. It is hard to believe looking at the trailer that he made the movie for only 8 million dollars; and now I need to find out where to buy a flying car like that! Also, BBC America has posted some Water of Mars trailers on their video server, but much like the UK BBC online offerings it seems to be limited to viewing from a single country.

Things to do: Cons and Movies

This is a weekend with something for everybody in the theaters. Astro Boy goes into wide release this Friday for the younger crowd (although a few of us older types might just sneak in and say we didn’t). Stan Helsing, the Parody is also out, with a lot of raunchy humor in a creature feature for the teenage crowd. The serious (you can’t really say Adult when the protagonist hasn’t made his 20s yet) movie of the weekend is Cirque du Freak: The Vampire’s Assistant, fresh from the Film Fest circuit.

The London MCM Expo happens the 24th and 25th, and if you like to cosplay in Europe it looks like the party to make. MCM stands for Movies, Comics, Media, and they cover them all. A few of the Media Guests include Terry Farrell, Nicole De Boer, Kandyse McClure, Masahiko Minami, and Ron D Moore. I’m not even going to try to list the Writers and Artists Guests, you’ll have to see the list yourself to believe it.

In the US my personal choice for this weekend is SteamCon in Seattle, with Author GoH Tim Powers, Artist GoH Paul Guinan , and Musical GoH Abney Park. Being a SteamPunk addict myself, I am reading their tweets and wishing I was on that coast this week. So I’m throwing an Abney Park video in at the end of this post, just to show you what you might have missed.

the biggest con this weekend is probably Mile High Con 41 in Denver, CO. It started life as a ReaderCon, and still hosts around 80 authors at various events, but now covers all aspects of fandom. Hot on its heels comes Icon 34 in Iowa City, IA, another ReaderCon that grew. Geek.Kon is a Sci-Fi, Anime, and Gaming convention in Madison, Wisconsin, also this weekend.

In Kansas City Motaku takes place on the 24th and 25th, and if you couldn’t tell by the name it is an Anime con. Necronomicon in St Petersburg, FL, is a media/reader con; if you are there you will get to hear physicist/author/singer Catherine Asaro’s Friday Night Concert!

From tomorrow through Sunday is the Ohio Valley Filk Festival in Dublin, Ohio. This is the event where they hand out the Pegasus Award for Excellence in Filking, and if you want to sing along with such classics as the Superman Sex Life Boogie or The Return of the King, Uh-huh or even A Reconsideration of Anatomical Docking Maneuvers in Zero-Gravity Environment you might want to pick up the Pegasus Award Winners Songbook. If you are wondering what Filk is, you can read the FAQ or listen to some:

And the promised Abney Park video: Enjoy!

Things to Do: Film Fests

Sci-Fi London is holding their Oktoberfest Film Festival this weekend! It kicks off on Friday with the Royal Observatory Greenwich (home of Greenwich Mean Time) unveiling the Sci-Fi Universe planetarium program for the first time anywhere. There will also be Aliens, Anime, and MST3K all-night film marathons and much more. Of course, the 53rd BFI London Film Festival continues until the 29th, so the UK looks to be the place for movies in October.

In Melbourne, Au, the Atom Awards Presentation will take place Friday, and while the films are more Science than SciFi, there are some interesting entries.

Also this weekend, the South Asian International Film Festival will be taking place, with entries like ALADIN for the Disney-entranced, and BUBONIC FILMS GONZO TRAILER EXTRAVAGANZA for the terminally warped (pretty much the Hindi version of Troma Studios TrailerFest).

In the US, the Austin Film Festival runs from the 22nd to the 29th, and it is the first time I have heard of Caprica showing on the big screen at a festival (probably because I wasn’t paying attention the last time). Other Sci-Fi like films include 31 Minutes, The Ballad of Friday and June, and The Bake Shop Ghost, for the first few letters of the alphabet. Many of the movies are oriented around Art and Music, the main two driving forces that define Austin (yes, it is the state capital of Texas, but that is a small part of what happens there). Other films worth paying attention to for this fest include Give The Dog A Bone, the Incredible Story Of My Great Grandmother Olive, followed by Leonardo, and then Lo. Other offerings include NASA and the Space Pen, The Mouse That Soared, Mighty Mutant Mollusks, Missy and the Maxinator, and about 20 more. This is my kind of Film Fest!

Opening on the 23rd and running to November 11th in Florida, the Fort Lauderdale International Film Festival kicks off with a Sci-Fi romantic comedy called Timer in an opening night gala event. Other draws include the live stage presentation of Repo: The Genetic Opera and the film Seventh Moon.