Strider’s Web – Page 85

Something to Watch: Discs

The one new Movie title isn’t genre, and Janis: Little Girl Blue looks like it actually came out this past week. But it is an excellent documentary about an amazing artist who we lost too soon, so I had to mention it anyways. The IP Man Trilogy puts 3 of the movies in that series into a single box, at a noticeable savings over buying them individually, so if you don’t have them already now might be the time. Likewise DC Universe is releasing a number of their animated feature films two to a box for the price of one this week, including Son of Batman/Batman: Under The Red Hood, All-Star Superman/Superman Doomsday, and Superman vs. The Elite/Superman: Unbound. TV is represented by Nova: Rise of the Robots, also not genre but very worth watching.

We do better in Anime, with some actual new genre titles like Assassination Classroom – Season 1 Part 1 bringing the first 11 episodes of the series home. Akame ga Kill: Collection 2 is the second half of that rather twisted story line, this time with the old enemies working together. Black Butler: Book of Murder has two OVAs about Ceil and the Demon Butler, and a cast that includes legendary author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle; that alone should make this an important selection. Finally Gunbuster: The Movie tells the tale of the monsters between the stars, and the humans who go out to fight them. The time dilation caused by their near light speed transitions means the ones they go out to protect may be long dead before the battle is even joined.

Chu’s Day

Chu’s day is a high energy J-Rock girls band from downtown Tokyo who seem to be playing live somewhere every day. In fact it was difficult finding official studio tracks to post, most of their official videos are them playing live in some club or at some event. The first track is Rocking Shoes, the second is Cycling, at least one of them is from their 2015 album Have A Nice Chu’s Day.

Something to Stream: THWIP! The Big Marvel Show

Starting this week, Marvel has its own in-house news/promotion show, THWIP! The Big Marvel Show. They will put out new episodes every Wednesday both on their web site and on YouTube. The first episode runs about 15 minutes, I don’t know if that is going to be the standard or if it will fluctuate depending on the material available each week. This could be fun, or it could get really old fast; there is no way to know based on a sample set of 1 how it will work out, but we will find out. Thanks to THR for the heads up on this one.

1984: Patrick Troughton

A year before he became the 2nd Doctor, Patrick Troughton did a BBC Radio production of George Orwell’s 1984. He wasn’t the first actor to give voice to Winston Smith, because that was David Niven in 1949, within a year of the books original publication. He was the first actor to ever play Robin Hood on TV in 1953, and I can’t help but wish at least one complete episode of that show still exists in some format so I could watch it. Video Curios posted his 1984 online a few years ago, and Open Culture posted the heads up, so here you go; enjoy.

A Sad Fairwell to SF Signal

The award winning SF Signal posted its final entry on May 5th, one day after Star Wars Day. For the past almost 13 years I have hit the site at least once a week, always finding lots of interesting and exciting science fiction and fantasy articles and links there. If I went for no other reason, I always checked out their regular postings on free science fiction you could read, hear, or watch on line. They have even won some Hugo awards for Best Fanzine and Best Podcast, and I have had them in my Blog Roll for over a decade. But John DeNardo made the announcement last week that they were shutting down new entries because they could no longer devote the amount of time such a site required. It will remain online until at least June so you can still access the 100 Gig of sci-fi interviews and articles, and they are looking into some hosting options that will allow it to stay online at least as a static site. I wish them well on their next endeavors, and am sorry to see them go.

Something to Do: Movies

The UK film The Lobster has been touring the film festival circuit, picking up 14 awards so far, and is now getting a limited theatrical release. Single people are locked into a hotel and given 45 days to form a romantic relationship; those that don’t manage to do that are converted into animals and released in the woods. While it sounds interesting, I missed seeing Captain America: Civil War this weekend because I was sick, I will have to do that film before I see anything else.