I read this a while ago and just kept forgetting to mention it here, but Paste magazine has an excellent article on the experimental animation of Tezuka Osamu, including a number of the videos themselves embedded in the story. Best known in North America as the creator of Astro Boy, Tezuka pretty much invented Japanese Anime in its modern form, as well as authoring an amazing number of Manga titles. The new Astro Boy Movie will be hitting theaters in October, while last February was Tezuka’s 80th birthday and the NHK’s 20th anniversary of their satellite service. In honor of that, the NHK is running specials from February until October about Tezuka Osamu’s contributions to Manga, Anime, and Japanese popular culture (you do have to scroll down a bit to get to the entry about it). In April of this year the 13th Tezuka Osamu Cultural Prize awards were handed out, the winners being those Manga and Artists deemed the best in Japan. Here is his 1962 experimental piece, “Male”…
Anime Today interviewed Bandi Entertainment’s Robert Napton about the new movie EUREKA SEVEN – good night, sleep, tight, young lovers for episode 99. They covered some other interesting topics as well, which mostly involves trying to sell you things, but there are a few good contests you might want to get in on. The movie will be showing on the big screen in the US for one night only on 24Sep09 courtesy of Fathom Entertainment. If you happen to be in Texas this weekend, you might want to hit San Japan, the Japanese Culture and Anime Con in San Antonio. To the north, there is Anime Iowa, and for Europe try Aya Revolution. All the Cons are running Panels, Cosplay, Screening Rooms, and all the other usual; two have AMV competitions, and one has both a J-Pop and J-Rock lounges.
io9 strikes again, this time with the 10 best Fan Collectibles that don’t exist… and neither do the fans. More than one of them was created by Joss Whedon. There is a new Mind Meld at SFSignal; this time the topic is Books That Hold Special Places in our hearts and on our shelves. I found quite a few favorites listed there, as well as a few I missed the first time around.
I spent a little time watching the Perseids Meteorite Shower this morning, or as much as I could see through the overcast and light pollution. I am obviously not the only one, as my tweet box is full of such links to pictures. SteamCon is coming in October, and it looks like a lot of fun. Author GoH is Tim Powers, Music GoH Abney Park is my favorite Steampunk band, and Artist GoH Paul Guinan is well known for his Victorian Robots web site, although his Heartbreakers Graphics Novel series (created in conjunction with his wife, who does the plot/dialog/story segment of the process) are Steampunk Webcomics that have been nominated for the Eisner Award. Finally, I was not impressed by much in the G.I. Joe movie beyond the special effects, which even I had to admit were at least somewhat competent (sad when somewhat competent impresses you compared to the other aspects of the presentation). But I did enjoy this little twist, which reminded me of Firefly’s The Hero of Canton to the point I had to include it for comparison… and then a counter-argument.
For a take on the Hugos from a Biology perspective, you might enjoy these three from Peggy… Shoggoths in Bloom by Elizabeth Bear, Exhalation by Ted Chiang, and Erdmann Nexus by Nancy Kress. Three more stories I need to hunt down and read.
My favorite moment during last night’s awards presentation (which I had to watch online through Cheryl Morgans Live coverage, not being there) was when they announced Best Fan Writer goes to Cheryl Morgan and her response: #*%! I won a Hugo!!!… LOL. David Anthony Durham won the Campbell Award for best new writer. Best Dramatic Presentation: Long Form was won by Wall-E, while Best Dramatic Presentation: Short Form went to Dr Horrible’s Singalong Blog. Winner for Best Novel was The Graveyard Book, by Neil Gaiman, and Neil was the presenter for Our brand new category, Best Graphic Story: won by Girl Genius, Kaja and Phil Foglio. Other winners included Ellen Datlow, David G Hartwell, Weird Tales, John Scalzi, Ted Chiang, Elizabeth Bear, Nancy Kress, and several others. I find this rather amazing, because for the first time ever every one of my picks from the nominations were actually the winners. Congratulations to everyone, and do you know where your towel is?