The folks over at SFX got together with the team from Spoken Word Audio and created a Sci-Fi Quiz App that runs on various iDevices. And unlike many of the BBC offerings, this one is available for us in the US as well. If you think you have what it takes to beat the quiz and you are in America, you can grab it here; if you are in the UK, use this link instead.
The good news is that the shared universe multi-author ongoing masterpiece Wild Cards is going to be made into a film of some flavor, and original authors George R. R. Martin and Melinda Snodgrass are both involved. In fact, Melinda Snodgrass will be writing the screenplay for the production, according to the Hollywood Reporter. I would be a bit concerned about this since the project belongs to the Syfy Channel, who has made consistently excellent miniseries and consistently dreadful TV Movies. But this is the very first project for the new Syfy Films (a new joint venture between Syfy and Universal Pictures), so there is hope this could be treated as it deserves. If you are not familiar with the series, do yourself a favor and go out and buy the first 10 books in the series now, and read them in one non-stop marathon. The story opens not long after WWII, when an alien spaceship comes to use a biologic weapon to eradicate the human race, but is engaged in aerial combat by Jetboy, who defeats them to the point where only a single bomb goes off. That bomb impacts on New York City, where the virus kills 99% of everyone it touches. Of those who survive, 99% have bizarre physical and mental modifications, sometimes with a power to counteract their loss: the Jokers. The one percent of one percent who are left are the Aces, blessed with superhuman powers. This series has been going on since its inception in 1987, with some of the best science fiction authors on the planet contributing characters and stories. It treats its superheroes and villains even more like real people than the graphic novels do, although there are graphic novel versions available as well. I can’t wait to see how they do with this one!
The Doctor Who Experience was quite memorable, and I wanted to include a few more images from it. While it is difficult to determine what constitutes the proper chronological order for a Timelord, I have no problem posting them in episode order. The first image is from the very first Tom Baker episode, Robot. The second are two Daleks from completely different eras, while the third is the junk Tardis console they cobbled together for Matt Smith’s episode The Doctors Wife.
Jellybean evidence has been requested by several folks who looked at the Shrek image the other day and contacted me to say they did not see the jellybeans I said it was made out of. So here is a smaller portion of the same picture, but not shrunk to avoid eradicating the details. It was actually missing from the window the final day I was there. When I inquired about it, I was told they had removed it to get the display area ready for their next creation; something in a Tardis, I believe.
There are no actual genre films that I could find coming out this week, although there is at least one cult favorite coming back with a final film: A Very Harold & Kumar 3D Christmas. I don’t even need to describe it; you already either love or hate this series of films, so nothing I say is going to sway you one way or the other to attend this. There were a number of good ones from last week still in the theaters you might want to check out, such as RA.One, the latest Bollywood Sci-Fi romp. This takes the crown from last year’s Robot as the most expensive Bollywood movie ever made, and also like Robot the protagonist is not quite human, and more of a bad guy than otherwise. Interestingly enough, they actually made the game this movie is about, and folks were able to play it before seeing the film. And there is still time to see In Time, a twisted successor to Logan’s Run.
There are a couple of live action movies coming out this week that look interesting, and I think Bunraku will beat out the competition by a noticeable amount. It had a very limited theatrical run, so for most of us this will be our first shot to see it. Stars include Josh Hartnett, Woody Harrelson, Demi Moore, Gatck, and Ron Perlman, while the premise includes cowboys without guns and samurai without swords. The other live action selection is Snow Flower and the Secret Fan, a story that crosses centuries and cultural evolution to talk about friendship.
There is another film of note this week, and it is a documentary: the Magic Trip, staring Ken Keasey, Neal Cassady, Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, the Warlocks (they later changed their name to the Greatful Dead), and the Merry Band of Pranksters. This is the epic journey the bus Furthur and its humans took in 1964. If you knew what it meant to be On The Bus in the sixties, you can finally see the movie they filmed during that journey a mere 48 years later. I am planning to watch it as part two of a double header, with Howl starting the lineup, therefore watching the core events that caused post WWII America to evolve into the counterculture of the 1960s in one sitting. There is also a western animated feature film, Cars 2, with an all star vocal cast from Disney.
Only one TV series that ran nationally in North America found this week, Transformers Beast Wars: The Complete Series. This show was rather well done, with some good quality 3D animation for its time and a story line that evolved out of the original Transformers series. Personally I thought it was much better done than Transformers themselves, at least until the live action feature films came along.
In anime the primary selection is Amagami SS – Collection 2, continuing the story where all the potential futures for our protagonist are explored, each in their own parallel timeline and universe. There is no indication in what I have read if they continued the previous collection practice of having each shows primary voice actress sing the closing song, but I certainly hope so; it was a very nice touch. Also this week, Gakuen Alice – Complete Collection has schoolgirl friends transferring to a school where explosions, superpowers, and axe-wielding teddy bears are all part of the daily events.