If you are a fan of Lady Sabre & The Pirates of the Ineffable Aether, you will enjoy this interview. If you are not, you should immediately hop over to the Archives and start at the beginning and read your way up to the present installment. And if you missed them, did you also miss Girl Genius? Shame on you, go back and read them both from the beginning!
Terrestrial Human
Obviously The Amazing Spider-Man is the choice this time, with a very unusual release schedule. It hits the big screen tomorrow to try to pull in the holiday audience, and Tuesday releases are not the norm. My first thought was they meant midnight Tuesday night (Wednesday morning, and a Wednesday release date is pretty normal), but when I checked the site the first showings will be at 12:01AM Tuesday morning. Regardless of how offbeat the timing is, I am looking forward to this one.
You know it is a slow week when the only two American offerings to roll out are Elvira’s Movie Macabre: Giant Monsters, a set of four movies, except none of the stores trying to sell you this package have a clue what any of the four movies are called, and Mysteries at the Museum: Season 2, a documentary series from The Travel Channel. That’s it, nothing else on offer this time around. Guessing the US holiday weekend made a major impact on the release decisions.
From an overseas source but still with a US release we have Needless: The Complete Collection as the new offering, where World War 3 has run its course and the survivors are depending on a pervert superhero to put the planet back together. Meanwhile, Ergo Proxy: The Complete Series gets re-released in a cost effective package, so if you shop around you should be able to grab it for just over $20.
If there is anything else interesting coming out on DVD this week, I haven’t been able to find it. If you have better luck, post a comment and let me know.
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.