If you are not already watching the made-for-BBC America series Orphan Black, you need to correct that right away! One of the twistiest new shows on TV, they uplevel their game with every episode. And it is easy to find yourself there; they are part of the BBC America Supernatural Saturday lineup, airing immediately after Doctor Who and just before The Nerdist. So odds are good you have been watching all along, since it is just easier to leave your TV on the same channel. But if you haven’t been, most carriers who provide BBC America have a Video On Demand service for your set top boxes through the remote, or an online streaming service like Comcast’s Xfinity (tablet/smartphone app or web page for your computer) where you can start with the first episode and work your way through the entire series. If you don’t have a cable/satellite system that supplies VOD oriented services as part of a Value Added package (it lets you watch more channels and programs more ways for no additional money just to make staying their customer more valuable to you), you can buy the episodes from places like iTunes and Amazon Instant Video. This one is really good, you should at least watch the first episode and get a feel for the show.
A new show this season, Random Hero seems to be somewhere between The Greatest American Hero and Sarah Jane Smith. The first episode sets the tone nicely and seems to promise some fun stories coming up…
No genre this time except for the no-budget REDD, and it might look like the mainstream The Great Gatsby is all that’s out there. But don’t overlook Desperate Acts of Magic, a tasty little indie comedy film that is out this week in limited release; if you can find it, it looks quite fun. And if you are a documentary fan, also in very limited release is My Other Me, a film about cosplayers.
If you want to attend the Smithsonian’s Star Trek #SIBeamUp! on May 16th you probably want to get your applications in now, as attendance will be very limited. They will give the ten social media users who gain entry a closer look at the Star Trek goodies in the Air and Space Museum collection (including the Tribbles and the original Enterprise model), and the winners will be able to talk with the curators about the collection. If you want to attend you need to go to the #SIBeamUp! page and fill out and submit the form before noon tomorrow (Monday, May 6th). Winners will be informed by email on May 7th. The event will be held the morning of May 16th at the Air and Space Museum on the mall in DC, and even if you don’t win into the up-close-and-personal event, you can still attend the Star Trek’s Continuing Relevance symposium at 1PM at the Moving Beyond Earth exhibit in Gallery 113.
Movies this week include a ton of things released previously on DVD and now coming out on Blue Ray, like Hitchcock, but they have been available in some format for a while, so not new as such. The best of the new releases looks to be The Assassin’s Blade, the Jingle Ma 2008 film out of China. There is also Shifter about a kid who gains the power to shift into the body of a wolf and goes to save his parents, but I couldn’t find a proper link to it.
We do better in TV, with Fringe releasing both season 5 and the entire series as two different box sets. May I just mention how shocked and surprised I was that Fox actually let a high quality TV show run all the way to the end, without canceling it 6 episodes in after playing it in the wrong order and changing what time/day it airs each week? We also have K-9: The Complete Series, an Australian Doctor Who spin off that they made appear to take place in London by use of some London production input. Some of that London production input is from Bob Baker, who took a break from co-creating all those wonderful Wallace & Gromit projects to help out with the series. There is a rumor that they have a second series in the works, but I will remind everyone that when you look at the quality you need to keep in mind it is a children’s program, just like the Sarah Jane Smith series.
In western animation we have Superman: Unbound, where Superman goes up against Brainiac to try to save his home town of Kandor, miniaturized along with all of its inhabitants and held captive by the arch villein.
In Anime, Natsuyuki Rendezvous: Complete Collection is about a still grieving widow, the man who wants to woo her, and the ghost who comes between them, making for one of the stranger romantic triangle stories I have ever followed. Since they only have 2 bodies between the three of them, it can occasionally get a bit confusing as to who is doing what to whom. As you might suspect from the subject matter, this one is a bit melancholy. Toriko: Part 4 continues the combat gourmet saga through episodes 39 to 50, which are every bit as funny as the food fights that went before.
While not quite genre, both Sound Of The Sky and Kids on the Slope are music based series with a positive attitude, and look like a lot of fun. Finally this week, Sekirei: Complete Series puts both seasons into a single box set for the first time, making it a more cost effective buy.
This one is truly strange; Scooby Doo and Twin peaks collide. In fact it happened twice, in two separate episodes, both silly fun to watch. The info comes fromThe Mary Sue, and the heads-up was courtesy of Topless Robot.