When those in the US finish filing their taxes, here is an event to help you relax; Beer Wars. The movie will be showing at a few hundred theaters across the country, another of the Fathom Events series. Besides the documentary itself, there will be a live panel discussion by some of the leaders of the craft brewing scene. A little later in the month the same group will be running Death Note: Change the World, the third live action installment to the franchise. The presentation will be on the 29th of April for those who prefer original-audio subtitled, and the 30th for people who prefer an English dubbed soundtrack. These live action films join the Manga and Anime collections to give you more choices on how to enjoy the series. If you are not already familier with the story, you can watch the anime online at Joost for free to bring you up to speed before the event.
For those lucky enough to be in the UK, tonight was the first segment of the new Red Dwarf special on Dave TV. Robert Llewellyn, who plays the part of Kryten in that series, is being Tweeted to death about it, with a reported over 2,000 received so far tonight. For his last several Car Pool segments (he interviews people while driving them around in his car with web cams, very entertaining) he has had fellow Dwarfers Chris Berrie (Rimmer) and Craig Charles (Lister). He will be interviewing Danny and Holly (Norman, not Hattie) in the next week or two, I haven’t heard if Chloe Annett is going to do one or not. For myself, I will be waiting on the release of the DVD in July to watch it and add it to my collection.
A report from SciFi Wire says that Fox will not air episode 13 of Dollhouse, which would either be the season or series finale. After the way they let Idol run long, making sure those of us who depend on recording Fringe in order to see it would never see the end of the episode, I am scratching the network off my good-guys list. Wait, I did that last year. And the year before. And pretty much every year since they canceled Firefly (or was it Buffy?). So just like Firefly, Harsh Realms, and so many shows before it, you will have to wait for the DVD in July before you can see all the episodes. John Scalzi has a nice article in praise of Dark Star and other B movies, which is appropriate. The site he posted on, AMC, has just launched a B Movies Classics site, where you can watch many of them online for free. They also have the original Prisoner series and some other goodies.
Starting with the fact there is a new trailer from the BBC for the next Doctor Who special. There is also a trailer for the K9 spinoff. I haven’t found one for Torchwood yet, but it should be soon.
When new ones come out, I link to Anime streaming presentations you can watch online. There are a few places you can watch more than a single episode, and Funimation is in the process of releasing some new series for online consumption. So it seemed like the perfect time to mention that group, and a few other of my favorites. Veoh is where the new Funimation titles live, with series including Aquarion, Ghost Hunt, and xxxHolic being added to a library that already had titles like Kiddy Grade, Moon Phase, and Slayers. The folks at Anime News Network also have a library of legally watchable series, including some of those mentioned as well as Blue Gender, Origin, and Shuffle, to name a few. And then there is Crunchy Roll, where you can watch new series episodes the day after they first aired in Japan (a small fee is required for full access, other series and episodes are free). There are more, but these should get you started; got your Internet-Aware TV with the Ethernet/Wireless interface to your cable modem yet?
The final episode of the US version of Life On Mars airs tonight, and the producers think sci-fi fans will not be disappointed with the way they tie up the loose ends. The folks at io9 have audiences an interview with the producers you can check out. Meanwhile, BBC America continues to run Ashes to Ashes, the sequel to the original Brit hit production.