The 11th annual Sci-Fi London Festival of Science Fiction and Fantastic Film kicks off on Tuesday, the 1st, with a ton of great stuff going on. They will be doing 6 world premieres including the Steampunkish Death, the claustrophobic True Love, and the rather impressive Memory Lane, said to be made for $300.
In this game you get 12 women pregnant, bond with their kids while they are growing up, and the kids become your team for the battles. Games may have changed a bit since I last noticed. This one is for the PSP platform, and is scheduled to be released tomorrow, at least in Japan. I am not sure what category it should be listed under, since it mixes dating, child-raising, and combat role-playing in an alternate universe setting. Thanks to Crunchyroll for the heads up on this one.
It is finally time to go see Pirates! Band Of Misfits in all its silly animated glory, and I am ready! If you are in the mood for something a bit more serious, John Cusack plays Edgar Allen Poe working with a Baltimore detective trying to catch the killer reenacting all of Poe’s most horrible scenes in The Raven. Right now the link to the film’s web page takes you to IMDB instead, I think their DNS entry is hosed. If you are in an area that gets limited release films, Warriors of the Rainbow: Seediq Bale tells the true story of the aboriginal Seediq tribes who rebelled and almost drove the conquering Japanese army off the island in 1930s Taiwan. Quite a range to choose from this week.
There are no well known movies coming out this week, which is how we end up with Thor at the Bus Stop and Planet of the Vampire Women sharing the first mention, because they are at least sort of genre. I really can’t recommend either of them to anyone, even a little. I can, however, recommend Let The Bullets Fly, a nice little action comedy that takes place in 1920s China. A bandit arrives in a small town in the middle of nowhere claiming to be its new mayor and then has to go head-to-head with a tyrannical petty noble, and the results are a lot of fun to watch.
The 1933 version of The Perils of Pauline serial is also coming out this week. This one has a bit of history, as it was one of the original movie theater serials done in 1914 based on the Charles Goddard Book. It has been redone several times since, including a 1947 version where Betty Hutton played Pearl White, which is kind of interesting since in the 1914 version Pearl White played Pauline. Serials were of course what lead to episodic TV series in later years, so it seemed fitting to mention this one in the TV section of this entry.
In western animation we have Iron Man – Complete Series and X-Men Complete Series, which are actually part of Marvel Anime, western characters re-imagined for the Japanese anime fans. So while not exactly western, close enough to mention here.
In anime proper, the exciting release this time is Fullmetal Alchemist: The Sacred Star of Milos, a new feature length film in the ongoing saga of the Elric brothers. This is one of my favorite steampunk anime series, so I should also note they are releasing another repackaged box set of Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood – Collection 1 containing the first 33 episodes in a single collection.
Finally, Jyu-Oh-Sei: The Complete Series has been released in a S.A.V.E. edition, which means you can now pick up the entire series for around $20.
The Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences has an audio book available as a podcast series that I would like to recommend. It has all the Steampunk goodness of the written format without the need of focusing your eyes on the printed page, and thereby getting distracted. Not terribly surprising, considering the author had a hand in creating PodioBooks and went on to write several physical books on the topic, starting with Podcasting for Dummies. Personally I love the Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences books and universe, and hope you will find it as fun to hang out in as I do.
Not long ago I mentioned the Robert A. Heinlein Radio Archives, and a bit before that it was the Ray Bradbury Radio Archive, both part of the new Radio Archives section of the Sci-Fi London web site. They have expanded their collection yet again, this time with classic radio plays from Issac Asimov and Frederik Pohl. The Asimov stories include Pebble In The Sky and Nightfall, the Pohl include Tunnel Under The World and The Map Makers. You can listen to them online, download them for your permanent collection, or if you have an Ubuntu One account you can have them delivered there to enjoy through the cloud. You should also be aware that Sci-Fi London 11, the new incarnation of their annual film festival, runs from March 1st through the 7th. Wish I could be there for it.