Did you happen to catch the Syfy Channel miniseries Tinman, the wonderfully twisted version of the Wizard of Oz? The team that brought you that creation return on Sunday, the 6th, with Alice, with their wonderfully twisted version of Through The Looking Glass. This time it brings some serious star power to the party, with a cast that includes the likes of Kathy Bates, Tim Curry, Matt Frewer, Colm Meaney, and Harry Dean Stanton to name but a few. Oh, and my favorite bit: Andrew-Lee Potts got to be the Hatter.
All forms of audio/video/text storage
There is a new Buck Rogers series coming out in 2010, and judging by this rather retro teaser it might just be a fun show. I heard about this from Big Dumb Object who got it from Ain’t It Cool who had it from Sci-Fi Wire. The new Buck Rogers series is from the same folks who brought us Star Trek: Phase II, formerly known as Star Trek: New Voyages. If you would like some more details about the new project check out the interview on TrekMovie.
This weeks top choice for Horror/Spoof goes to Transylmania, college kids doing a semester in Romania with the wrong kind of night “life”. This comedy will probably only be in theaters for a short time, but it is also the only new genre live action I could see being released this week.
December looks to start off as a slow movie month, but Avatar comes along on the 18th, and xmas brings both The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus and Sherlock Holmes to the big screen.
We have two top domestic live action choices this week! The first is Terminator Salvation, and Warner Bros. is holding a online event on December 5th with the director. If you are interested in the history of this kind of event, read all the way to the bottom of this posting to see my latest rant on the topic.
The other big film is Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian, which I just missed seeing at the Smithsonian IMAX theater premier event (tickets were WAY tight). It is also being released as a two movie package if you didn’t get the first one already, Night at the Museum/Battle of the Smithsonian.
If there was a live-action speculative fiction TV show released this week, I managed to miss it. Someone will no doubt point it out to me about 15 minutes after I post this.
It is a DVD, and Fantasy, but it is a DVD Game, not a movie: Harry Potter DVD Game: Wizarding World also comes out on Tuesday.
There are several interesting Anime releases this week. For the classics, there is My-Otome Complete Collection: Anime Legends edition. The Anime Legends series are extremely popular programs re-released with an economical pricing structure. Out as a compilation for the first time this week is Chevalier D’Eon – The Complete Series, a beautifully crafted alternate history sequence, but definitely not a lighthearted story.
Hunter X Hunter Box Set, Volume 4 continues the push for Gon and his friends to track down power in the form of treasure, magical beasts, and so forth. The Gunslinger Girl OVA gives some more background on a few of the formerly human characters, and trust me when I say these are children you would NOT want to meet in a dark alley.
‘Rental Magica’ DVD Collection 1 is an assortment of strange magic users out to battle evil, and come from a variety of magical traditions. Most sites claim this was actually released last week, but since I missed the Anime section last week I though I should mention it now.
About the Warner Bros. Special Events. This is something they have started recently (there is another one coming up for the new Harry Potter DVD release), and seems to involve group watching of the DVD together with an internet connection to the meeting software that allows you to type in questions, which the director (or actors or anyone else they involve from the movie production team) can answer verbally.
If you have been in moderated celebrity events in Second Life this decade, Virtual Places Chat in the ’90s, or live Usenet (meaning IRC or Internet Relay Chat) in the 80’s, you have already experienced this. And yes, I know the Usenet example I cited was from the 90’s, it was just the one I had handy courtesy of a recent post on a different topic. I actually have transcripts from moderated IRC sessions with SciFi authors I asked questions of going back as far as 1984 from QNet (the Commodore version of AOL and Compuserve in those days), but I didn’t have a link to any of them to point to. Perhaps this reference work will help, should you need it.
The bandwidth, and therefore the resolution, has just gotten better each decade; text only in ’84 at 300 baud, downstream-only audio in the mid ’90s at 56K, entire 3D virtual worlds with 2-way audio chat and streaming video by the mid 2000’s with 2-way asynchronous broadband. From the description of what they are going to do and how they will be doing it, this application of the event environment appears to be something we had the technology to do by 1998 or so, except for the Hi-Def video. But since the Video is going to be played locally from a DVD player and not streamed over the Net, it does not in any way change the bandwidth requirements.
You can’t get much sillier than Gadgets you’ll need to Survive a Zombie Attack; thanks, Crave!
When I see a link from William Gibson on Twitter, I make a point of following it. He has found some of the most interesting things, most of which I was unaware of. This video is a case in point; A musical video clip by Yannick Puig Inspired by the sound track “I lived on the Moon”, of the Kwoon’s album “Tales and Dreams” (description from the creators YouTube page). Another great one is the Norism series of images.
And did I mention the Muppets do Rhapsody?
There are a few interesting movies coming to theaters this week, including one that was delayed some months while they reworked it: The Road. Another post-apocalyptic world is explored, but recent reviews are very mixed; a number of folks think it was better (truer to the book) in its original version. This one is on the screens Wednesday to take advantage of the holiday weekend box office window. Actually, everything else does that as well.
There seems to be a martial arts release with no element of fantasy in it, called Ninja Assassin. Since I have almost never seen one based wholly in reality, I thought I should mention it here anyways, just in case.
Another one that probably doesn’t belong here I have to mention for its 1938 War of the Worlds connection: Me And Orson Wells, a movie about the creation of The Mercury Theatre on the Air. The original 1938 broadcast of WotW electrified the country, because it realistically simulated a broadcast radio emergency program; many people thought a real Martian invasion was taking place. Now that I have said all that, I guess I’m going to have to re-watch another old favorite, The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension, which also has a tie-in to that broadcast.
I do see one other actual fantasy movie for this week, this one suitable for the kids as well:The Princess and the Frog from Disney. This animation is only in the Limited release date, for LA and NY, however; the rest of us have to wait until December 11th to see it.
And here is a trailer from a movie currently in production that is going on my see-in-the-theaters list, Season of the Witch