It started out with Starship Sofa, a wonderful podcast that had both a news and a Radio Play segment. Later they added Tales to Terrify, with audio stories for the horror fans. They have now launched District of Wonders, which includes both of the aforementioned series as well as two new ones: Protecting Project Pulp with some wonderful gold and silver age SF and Fantasy stories from the pulp magazines, and Crime City Central, which is the same thing from the True Crime type pulps. Whether you prefer the individual sites or the aggregate collection, these are some classic and world class stories you will really want to hear for yourself. And if you like those, don’t forget to check out Holodeck Workshops if you are one of the aspiring writers out there. Thanks to SF Signal for the heads up on this one.
It doesn’t look like we get any genre movies this week, so I thought I would mention the documentary Jiro Dreams of Sushi, about the award winning ten seat sushi restaurant in a subway station in Tokyo and the man that runs it.
We do a little better in TV this time, with both Touched By An Angel: The Complete Fifth Season and Touched By An Angel: Seasons 1 through 5. The show ran 9 seasons, so the latter set brings you to just past the halfway point. If you missed it when it originally aired it was quite a well done fantasy about helpful spirits. The other TV release is Sheena: The Complete Second Season, which completes the series which ran from 2000 to 2002. The original Sheena TV series ran in the 1950s, and both series were based on the comic book which ran from 1937 to 1953, the very first comic book series with a female protagonist. Wil Eisner and Jerry Iger created the character, which they based on H. Rider Haggard’s 1886 book She.
The anime release for this week is Golgo 13: The Professional, and that is more spy thriller than sci-fi or fantasy. It is also a re-release, the original feature length film came out in 1983. And yes, this is the movie, not the OVA.
The London version of the Doctor Who Experience was amazing, and I loved visiting it. But it shut down and moved a while ago, and finally today the Doctor Who Experience Cardiff opens its doors on its new home. Be sure to check it out, it is well worth spending the time to explore.
You still can’t see Continuum here, at least not yet, but there are rumors they are working on a deal for a US network to carry it. In the meantime though, there is another trailer to watch.
Obviously The Dark Knight Rises is the movie of choice this weekend, but at select theaters you can also see the Dark Knight Trilogy. Apparently they were pretty impressed by what Marvel pulled off with their marathon leading up to the midnight release of The Avengers, so Warner Bros stole the idea. Batman Begins starts on Thursday evening the 19th at around 6PM with the new film playing at midnight, and the entire run of three movies will take 8 hours and 45 minutes.
There are several tasty movies this week, starting with Lockout. This one is another Luc Besson action adventure film, which seems a lot like Escape from New York done in orbit; escapist action fun all the way (yes, pun intended). Extraterrestrial looks like a lot of silly fun; you wake up with no memory of the one night stand who’s house you are in, to meet her wacky ex-boyfriend and neighbors, only to discover the Earth has been invaded. This one is Spanish with English subtitles, and definitely falls into the comedy category. Also in comedy, The Fairy (Le Fee) tells the tale of a man who searches all over Le Havre for the fairy who granted him two wishes and disappeared, taking his heart with her. This one is French with English subtitles, and is the third in a series of rather surrealistic films, the previous titles being Iceberg and Rumba. Finally, 4:44 Last Day on Earth is an award winning love story on the day the world dies.
We do every bit as good in TV this time around, with Eureka: Season 5 bringing this excellent series to a close… unless there was an announcement at Comic-Con this weekend I missed (please, please, please…). We also get Alphas: Season One, which just gives you time to catch up on it before season 2 starts next Monday. And Sanctuary: The Complete Fourth Season also hits the shelves, with more monster protecting adventure. And for those who like a bit of reality TV with their unreality, Stan Lee’s Superhumans: Season Two is also going to become available.
Anime also has some winners, starting with Fractale: The Complete Series. A boy who geeks out on obsolete electronics saves a girl being chased by dangerous men, and when she later runs away from him she leaves behind a necklace crammed with data. Suddenly he is being chased by both the political group who wants to destroy the technology that drives their world, and the one that wants to save it, for the data he has holds the key to it all.
Meanwhile, The Book of Bantorra: Collection 2 Continues the story of the Armed Librarians and their battles with the religious fanatics who are trying to capture the soul books and use their knowledge to conquer the world. It is a completely different premise than either Library Wars, where the librarians took up arms to defend against political censorship, or Read Or Die, where the Paper Sisters, book addicts of the first order, used their mystical powers to defend the world from the illiterate hoards who wanted to enslave it. Even so there is something of a common theme here, and as someone who has been reading everything I could get my hands on since the age of 7 (yes, I started late, but I have been doing my best to make up for it ever since), I dearly love all three series. And yes, I will be in the theaters to see the new version of Fahrenheit 451 when they release it.
Psychic Squad – Collection 2 rounds out the new releases for the week, but that link will get you little info, since they do not stream to North America. If you caught the first collection, expect more of the same. Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood Collection 2 compiles the second half of the series (episodes 34 through 64) into a single box set, for a more cost effective package than the original one season at a time release. And finally, Girls Bravo S.A.V.E. edition, which as usual means you can pick up the entire series for less than 20 bucks. Enjoy!