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Holiday Specials

Word is out the Doctor Who Christmas Special will air in the US this year on the same day it does in the UK; December 25th! Usually it lags over here by several months, but last year they did announce that Torchwood would air here 5 hours after it aired in London. As it turned out that didn’t happen, although the lag was no where near as long as it could have been. We will see if they keep the promise of same day release this year or not.

There are two other SF holiday specials to look forward to as well. Eureka and Warehouse 13 have been announced as running back to back on Tuesday, December 7th, beginning at 9PM Eastern/Pacific time.

Thanks to Airlock Alpha and Slice of SciFi for the heads up on the specials.

Source Code trailer

Duncan Jones did a brilliant movie called Moon, and if this trailer is any indication he is about to do it again with his new film Source Code. Scheduled to be released on April 15th, this is a story about a time traveling soldier who is out to stop terrorists and hopefully save the girl. But he only has eight minutes at a time to pull it off, and at the end of each eight minute segment he dies, unless he can finally get it right.

Something to Watch: DVDs

No actual winners on the movie front this week, although it could be argued that The Expendables counts since it was based on a comic book. Personally I prefer an actual sci-fi or fantasy story to count something as genre. There are a few that meet that requirement, like Deadland, a post-apocalyptic thriller about a man looking for his lost wife after WWIII. There are also a few Fangbanger films, Vampire Sisters and Lesbian Vampires. Please note that I did not recommend any of these movies, although Fire & Ice: The Dragon Chronicles could be interesting and has several actors I like.

TV shows didn’t fair much better, with the History Channel series Ancient Aliens: Season 1 being the only real selection from live action this week. Yes, I know the people doing the program think this is actual historical research, but until they bring in some actual physical evidence it is still science fiction. On the animation side Batman Beyond: The Complete Series becomes available finally.

For anime, the classic Ghost Sweeper Mikami – Collection 1 isn’t your Saturday morning ghostbusters type program. Reiko Mikami is very beautiful and very greedy; her sidekick, Tadao Yokoshima is a serious pervert hot for Reiko, which makes it easy for her to manipulate him to do all the dangerous jobs while she collects the money. Also out this week, the much more modern Sekirei – The Complete Series from Funimation. This series is a fun romp about a highly intelligent guy who doesn’t do well under pressure, and the bevy of combat babes who need him to unleash their special powers for the competition rounds. Once you are on the shows homepage, there is a link to let you watch streaming episodes online if you are not sure if this is for you.

AMV assortment 13

AMV – Anime Music Video – Is one of my favorite art forms. It includes the obvious, animation and music, but also the detail that makes it art; the ability to combine any two of those sources into something wholly new. These are a few recent AMV builds that I particularly liked.

Augmented Reality Star Wars

For the iPhone or iTouch with camera, there is now a great Augmented Reality shoot-em-up based on the Death Star attack from Star Wars. Tech Crunch gave the word about Falcon Gunner, and it does look like silly fun. Of course, you might want to consider carefully where you want to play this in public. This is the first of what promises to be a whole series of Augmented Reality games coming from Vertigore, and since they did the licensing deal you can expect the first chunk of them to live in the Star Wars universe.