Beginning tomorrow Primeval New World hits the Syfy Channel. If it gets enough viewers in the US, they may make a season 2 after all. If you are not already aware, this spinoff from the UK program brings the time travel anomalies to North America, and the cast includes a few favorite folks from Eureka as well as a member or two of the original series, at least in guest spots. I followed what the Canadian fans had to say, and it was very positive, but there just wasn’t enough of them. I am hoping it picks up enough fans here that they decide another season would make the company some money.
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This is too funny; an A Capella version of the Game of Thrones theme song done as 5 part harmony. It was put together by The Warp Zone, and they have a lot of other hysterical stuff on their channel. It was about an hour before I could pull myself away from watching their videos and do this post. Thanks to Topless Robot for the heads up on this one.
We have several choices this time around, beginning with the action comedy This Is the End, in which a bunch of celebrities try to survive the apocalypse. The Purge takes place in a future where all laws are suspended once a year for 12 hours, and follows one families attempt to survive the event. Also this week is the Joss Whedon version of Much Ado About Nothing with Nathan Fillion and Amy Acker.
In movies the comedy/horror/romance Warm Bodies tells a story of zombie love in a way I have never seen presented before. This actually is a good date movie, not something I usually would associate with zombies. Also out, the animated Escape from Planet Earth shows why humans are the scariest creatures in the galaxy. For the action addicts out there I should probably also mention A Good Day to Die Hard hits the shelves this week.
In TV we have Falling Skies: The Complete Second Season, continuing the alien invasion vs. human resistance story.
In Anime, Appleseed XIII – The Complete Series is a 13 episode TV series that follows up the movie with a deeper look into that clone and cyborg driven post war society. From Shirow Masamune, the man who gave us Ghost In The Shell, who shares a tendency with Philip K. Dick to have a single question at the heart of his stories: How do you define what it mean to be human, and who or what qualifies? Dusk maiden of Amnesia: Complete Collection is the story of a woman who was murdered 60 years ago, but now she can’t remember anything about it, or even who she was. But with the help of a boy who can see and hear her, they set up a paranormal investigation club with the goal of find out all about her and the event, even though a lot of the club members don’t know that is what they are doing.
Tegami Bachi: Letter Bee Reverse is bringing out season two collection 2, with the action heating up, the Letter Bee’s under attack by multiple threats, and destruction and mayhem being used by Reverse to undermine society and perhaps wipe it out. In The Everyday Tales of a Cat God: Complete Series is about a lazy goddess who gets kicked out of heaven and doesn’t seem to improve much on Earth.
Both Birdy the Mighty: Decode and Phantom: Requiem for the Phantom are having the entire series released in a S.A.V.E. edition this week, so if you shop around you should be able to pick them up for around $20 each. Birdy was always more dangerous to the innocent bystanders than the bad guys were, but the original collateral damage queens also have a lower priced release this week: Dirty Pair: Part One is being put out as a Litebox edition, which means less shelf space used up to boot.
If you don’t already know about it, there is a wonderful site dedicated to how the past saw the future called Paleofuture. The original site is at the first link, and started off being a project for a class that Matt Novak was taking back in 2007, which he figured would be taken down when the class ended a few months later. What he didn’t expect was that he would become addicted to learning about all the different stuff folks in the past thought about how the future would be. He continued to add new entries to the site until he finally graduated in 2011.
Then Matt got his first real job at the Smithsonian in September of 2011, which was also happy to host the Paleofuture new and improved site. It looks to me like he learned a lot from some of the Smithsonian team about how to both research his topic and present the results of that research. His entries went from being the isn’t this neat kind of postings he did in school to detailed analysis of not only what folks in the past were thinking about what the future would be like, but how and why they came to those conclusions. It was during this period that his site grew into the ideas powerhouse it is today, rich in understanding of the various previous eras and how they each perceived the times to come.
The site moved again this week, following Matt this past Thursday to his new job at Gizmodo to become Paleofuture in its 3rd incarnation. Mind, each of the previous sites still exist in archived form, they just aren’t having new articles added. Matt has a lot of good info and ideas to share, if you haven’t run across him before now I recommend you take some time to explore his sites.
If you are not already a fan of this Australian Indi band you should check them out, because Operator Please has some tasty music. My favorite track by them is Song About Ping Pong, but all their songs are good. Their official home page seems to have evaporated so they may not be a band any more, and the one time I know of they appeared on US TV was in season 4 of Chuck, in the episode Chuck Vs. The Fear Of Death.