The actual Valentine’s Day is Monday, when I do my Movie posting for the week, so you are getting this one a few days early. In honor of this lovers holiday, I would like to bring your attention to this excellent duet between Brent Spiner (yes, formerly known as Commander Data) and Maude Maggart. And because the song alone wasn’t enough, they went ahead and created a tasty little romantic video to go with it. Enjoy!
Every year in the UK there is a great little film festival that comes along, the Sci-Fi London Film Festival, happening next from April 23nd to May 2nd. It actually turns up twice every year, because besides the April event they also run an Oktoberfest. Part of the festival focus is to support new film makers, with panels, workshops, and a 48 hour film challenge which usually funds the winner to make a feature length version of the winning entry. Well, it seems they put a number of the shorts, features, documentaries, and interviews online to check out at Sci-Fi London Web TV. You will find all the 2010 48 Hour entries there (with the tag line These films were made for zero budget in 2 days!), lots of the shorts from the previous Oktoberfest, a behind-the-scenes look at Paul, feature films including The Brain That Wouldn’t Die and Planet Outlaws, and a whole lot more. To see their entire collection you can also hit the Daily Motion SFLondon site. And if you don’t watch anything else, be sure to take the time for The Hunt For Gollum. If you happen to be in the UK, The Sci-Fi London team will be part of the SFX Weekender event on the 4th and 5th of February, where, surprise, a lot of science fiction will be screened.
Karen Gillan recorded this wonderful variation on Katy Perry’s I Kissed A Girl a while ago, with the lyrics modified to explain why the original song was released in humorous detail. If you are wondering why that song, funny though it is, belongs in a sci-fi blog post, you haven’t been paying attention; Karen has been playing Amy Pond for about a year or so, companion to Matt Smith’s Doctor Who. The song was originally part of the Channel 4 program the Kevin Bishop Show, which means if you are trying to see this from the UK it won’t work, you will want to see the Daily Motion version. There is also a nice interview with her over at 411 Mania done a while ago.
Yes, there really is such a contest, and you have until November 18th to submit your entry. The folks at the animation software company Toon Boom have teamed up with Shatner’s My Outer Space to put the competition together. According to the contest page you become a member of My Outer Space (it’s free), and then download three William Shatner audio clips which are 22 seconds long each. Using the Personal Learning Edition of Toon Boom Animate or Animate Pro (free download), you then design, storyboard, and animate your own video to create an imaginative finished product. Prizes in this contest include online animation courses, a full suite of animation software, and the grand prize is getting to work on a full animation project being developed at My Outer Space. Have fun building!
Everyone who normally reads this (and you both know who you are) is either at Comic-Con or watching it online, and that’s what I am doing. Already something exciting from the event; the new Tron trailer!
Top choice of the week has to go to Not the Messiah (He’s a Very Naughty Boy), a live oratorio based on The Life of Brian. And yes, most of the surviving Pythons are there for the event. So far I have only seen the trailer (at the bottom of this post), but it is hysterical; this is on my Must Have list for the week. You might enjoy reading the Eric Idle interview about it at the IFC.
San suk si gin, in English the Shinjuku Incident, is a return to the classic Jackie Chan Crime/Drama/Thriller venue that originally made him a star in China. But this time he is not one of the good guys, and the movie tells a more complex and twisted story than any fans of his US movies are used to seeing. If you liked the Police Story series, you will love this one. Fans only of Jackie’s comedy work should skip this and perhaps pick up his other release this week, Jackie Chan & The Karate Kids 8 Film Set. I am sure some marketing person scrambled to find enough old (in this case, 1980 to 1989) Jackie Chan movies with kids doing Kung-Fu to release together in a package, with an eye to cashing in on the new Karate Kid movie hype. But if only two of these films are good, that’s two decent Jackie Chan movies for 10 bucks each, and what if 4 of them are good? And what a surprise, it looks like the new version of Karate Kid hits the big screen Friday.
Somebody decided to release 2008’s Metal Man on DVD, most likely in the hopes that people world confuse it with Iron Man and accidentally buy it. I disagree with the reviewer at IMDB though; I think the SyFy channel would air this movie, probably right after Mansquito, but even they would show it well after midnight but before the infomercials kick in.
A real gem, and my other Must Have recommendation is Animation Express from the National Film Board of Canada. The short films in this collection have between them won 99 awards (and one Academy Award nomination). Some of these have aired on the IFC, and most of them have been making the Film Festival rounds, so I was a bit surprised to find I am already familiar with a number of them. Because of that, I am going to do something I have not previously done, and recommend the Blu-Ray edition of this disk if you have the tech to support playing it. The additional animations include one of the best I have ever seen, Ryan, a groundbreaking animation about a broken former groundbreaking animator; all by itself it is worth the price point difference. Judge for yourself, the animation is at the bottom of this entry.
In Anime, Tuesday has the US DVD release of the Bleach Uncut Box Set: Season 5 and that season brings us up to episode 109 by the time it finishes. As I mentioned a few days ago, Tuesday is also when you can watch the latest episode of Bleach an hour after it airs in Tokyo on Crunchyroll, because that is when they start simulcasting it. There is a definite lag between episodes aired in Japan and the DVD releases in the US, since the current season starts with episode 266 and the one airing this week will be episode 274.