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Things to Do: Cons

To start out this week we have PhilCon 2009, which despite its name happens from November 20th through 22nd, in Cherry Hill, NJ. This is one of the big East Coast events each year, if you are in the neighborhood you should stop by.

The Anime con I will be attending this weekend is Anime USA in Arlington, Virginia. There are a huge number of guests and events, and you can take a look at previous years videos to get an idea of what kind of fun they have in the shadow of the Pentagon. This year kicks off their very first round of having a Host Club for the ladies and a Maid Cafe for the guys, and both come with karaoke variants. FYI, the Gear Masters Ball is Formal Steampunk this year.

The Arkansas Anime Festival (AKA the A2F) also has a Steampunk/Victorian Ball/Dance, but what I really find interesting is they keep having Ani-Raves separate from the Con itself, one a month. Wish someone was doing that around here with J-Rock non-Anime artists also represented; I would be there every time!

Other Anime Cons this weekend include DaishoCon in Stevens Point, WI. Besides all the usual panels and events, they also have Zombie Survival 201, a Cosplay Swimsuit Contest (with a depressingly cautionary warning about the indecent exposure laws), and other silly instructional presentations. In Indiana, Anime Crossroads has great guests and a Cosplay-oriented events schedule. Also this weekend is Another Anime Con in Nashua, NH., and BishieCon in St. Louis, MO.

ZonaCon in Orlando, FL, is running with the tag Where Anime Meets Horror, and leaning to the Zombie side of UnLife. Horror Hound Weekend would have to win my vote for best Media Con this time. I am not a horror fan, but Elvira trumps all other film hosts, and with movies like Black Sheep and Let The Right One In, you know it is going to be twisted enough to be interesting. And then there is the flip side of that con: YuleCon, the Holiday Anime and Gaming Convention in the Dallas/Ft. Worth area.

Things to Do: Film Fests

The New York City Horror Fest starts off tomorrow with the Kick Off Party at BLVD, Five bands / 11 Films / One hour free beer!, and runs through the 22nd. One of the interesting things they are doing is the Killer Shorts Sudden Death Film Competition in cooperation with the Monster Mania Collectibles Con held semi-annually in NYC. The opening band has songs called things like “Video Vixen Vampire”, “Mermaids in Outer Space”, and “Spooks on the Loose”; I would probably have spent more time watching Witches In Bikinis than the actual movies.

I should also mention that the Sundance Film Festival (No, that is NOT this weekend) just announced the Sundance Film Festival U.S.A., where they will be presenting festival films in other cities around the country on the 28th of January.

Things to Do: Movies

Just a reminder that tomorrow, 17Nov09, is the last chance for quite a while for anyone to see The Wizard of Oz on the big screen. And it is nice to finally have this classic available on DVD for the small screen (or not so small these days).

It was supposed to be out on July 24th, but Planet 51 finally hits the theaters on Friday. This alien invasion animation looks like it will be a lot of fun, with plenty of humor and the usual world-class animation this team leads you to expect.

The live-action film for this weekend is of course The Twilight Saga: New Moon. If you need to have this one explained to you, nothing I can say could help, but you could try their IMDP page, where you will find new news stories being cranked out at the rate of one every few minutes.

Things to Watch: DVDs and TV

Obviously, the number-one DVD release for this week is Star Trek the reboot. I thought Simon Pegg was brilliant as Scotty, Zachary Quinto likewise for Spock, and Bones was also better than the original. If you have the device, don’t forget to grab the Phaser app for your iToy.

Two other movies may be interesting; Thirst is a Korean Vampire movie from the people who created The Host. And the spoof Vampire Party could be amusing, if a little over the top.

For TV series, both Farscape, the complete series and Farscape Season 4 get re-released this week.

The main Anime release is Evangelion: 1.01 You Are [Not] Alone, the first in the new series of Evangelion animated movies. Also out this week is the Blue Drop: Tenshi-tachi no Gikyoku complete series, and Polyphonica, again the complete series.

On the TV front, the new version of The Prisoner kicks off tonight on AMC; they are also hosting the complete original series for online viewing if you want to catch up before the new one starts.

Apple 64 Still Lives!

This one has gone back and forth a bunch, with the bottom line being that Apple is scared shitless that people will be able to write and run their own code for a hardware piece they bought and now own, but was built by Apple. OK, fine, they want to control everything Apple, But why are they trying to blackball/control a Commodore 64 emulator? Oh, yeah, the C64 included a built-in programming language (Commodore Basic, which supported Uni-Code). They have finally allowed the Commodore 64 to Live!, even if only as cripple-ware. Two of the best links are C64 iPhone, and the wait is over for the C64 iPhone interface…

Bottom line, a version of the 64 still lives; Observe: