Strider’s Web – Page 464

Things to Do: Movies

There are two new genre selections to choose from this weekend. The first is Hot Tub Time Machine, which looks to be silly fun requiring no mental straining at all. The main sense of Deja Vu generated in this one just might be that we have seen these jokes before. If you are more in the mood for animated fun, How To Train Your Dragon could be just the ticket. It is built by the same team who did Shrek and Kung Fu Panda, so expect more of the same great humor and animation quality.

And there is a third choice: Waking Sleeping Beauty. I don’t normally recommend documentaries, but this one tells a behind-the-scenes story about the rebirth of the Disney animation studios that received a lot of attention on the Film Fest circuit.

Something to Watch: DVD’s

Bringing Psychic Warriors to the big screen for the first time, The Men Who Stare At Goats hits the shelves Tuesday. This amusing fictionalization has more truth in it than the government wants you to know about, or certainly any senate budgetary oversight committee.

From AMC, the 2009 miniseries remake of The Prisoner keeps some of the original referents and redevelops others from the ground up. I don’t think it quite lived up to the 17 episode 1967 series, but I am going to watch them both back-to-back before I decide for sure.

For the young female segment of the audience, The Twilight Saga: New Moon is also being released this week. The second film in this series, it is packed with more brooding stares than ever before.

For fans of a much more classic vampire tradition, Orlock the Vampire 3D becomes accessible to the general public. This 1922 silent masterpiece was originally titled Murnau’s Nosferatu, but it was believed all full length versions of it were destroyed. Keith Carter took this one surviving example and processed it for the complete 3D experience, and then Lloyd Kaufman of Troma does the whole introduction thing to round out the package. As a person who has actually paid cash money to sit in a movie theater on Halloween and listen to a live synthesizer player and percussionist create the audio accompaniment for the truncated version of the film, I can’t wait to add this one to my permanent collection.

There are a few quality western animation coming out this week, starting with The Fantastic Mr Fox. This twisted little movie is fairly true to the book it’s based on, and it has a great voice cast. Also, Toy Story and Toy Story 2 Blu-Ray Special Editions (2 disk sets) become available on Tuesday. If you want the standard definition (regular DVD) versions of these releases, you will have to wait until May 11th.

On the Anime front, Darker than Black is accessible, but from the reviews I have seen somewhat disappointing. I need to see it for myself before I can voice a real opinion. I can voice an opinion on Trinity Blood: The Complete Series: it is worth your time to watch. Yet another tale about humans and vampires, but taking a slightly different approach than you might expect. The Standard Edition was released back in December, this is the Blu Ray version. Finally, there is Nabari No Ou – The Complete Series Part 2. In this story line, Ninja’s beat on each other for the right to rule the world, but the primary character, Miharu Rokujou, just want’s to run his restaurant.

Hyperland: Douglas and Baker

In 1990, Douglas Adams got together with Tom Baker, and they made a program for the BBC called Hyperland, a documentary about the Web. The Internet had been around for decades at that point, and even became common among early adapters around 1984 through dedicated client services like AOL and Compuserve. But the modern version of the Web was being invented as this program was being made, and only came into being two years later, around 1992. So here is a bit of history; you can find more here. By the way, did you see the Doctor and Romana hawking computers in the early ’80s? How about Captain Kirk?

Talk Like William Shatner Day

Last year someone called for March 22nd to become Talk like William Shatner Day. That someone was Maurice LaMarche, who bills himself as the 3rd most prominent William Shatner impersonator, and he is also the Voice of the Brain (as in Pinky and the Brain). It is coming around again Monday, gang, so practice your dramatic pauses and get ready…

Llewellyn, Hayridge, and Baker

The word from Red Dwarf is that Hattie Hayridge, the female Holly of Red Dwarf, has been interviewed by Robert Llewellyn for his Carpool program on Llewtube. In other UK SF news, Tom Baker will be doing one or more additional turns as The Doctor, recording for Big Finish Productions. That is according to Comic Mix News, who pulled the tidbit from Tom Baker’s own web site. Besides pointing you to the forum entry, I should also mention that his Home page is very nicely done, but now I am going to have to re-watch Blackadder to see if I can spot him.

Something to Do: Cons

KamikazeCon 3 in Houston, Tx, will be the massive anime event of the weekend. This is no great surprise considering it is the town that has created a full third of the English dubs for anime DVDs over the last decade. They have a ton of guests and a events for the gathering; wish I could be there.

SenshiCon, Alaska’s Original Anime Con (their tagline) takes place at the UAA Student Union in Anchorage, Alaska. While their web site seems to be in need of some help, they do have a strong voice actor guest list which seems to be primarily from FUNimation. Another anime convention this weekend is MomoCon, which I would love to tell you about. Unfortunately their web site is a blank black screen when I go to it, but perhaps you will have better luck. As near as I can tell from their source code, the Georgia Tech Anime Con is using a script to gracefully degrade to standard HTML if you don’t have Flash installed, and has a script which hides the standard HTML if you do have Flash; in my browser both scripts seem to be active at the same time, hiding both the Flash and the HTML.

LunaCon 2010 in Rye Brook, NY is a general Sci-Fi Con with author GoH Tanya Huff. They look to have pretty much everything going on, including Dancing in the Gears, the 2nd annual LunaCon Steampunk Ball, and a massive number of Events and Programs scheduled for the festivities, as you can tell by the list of participants. Meanwhile, in Chattanooga, Tn, FantaSciCon is happening, and it gets my vote for the best Con T-Shirt I have seen this decade. It also has a good selection of guests and a lot of fun events.