It is time for the SFX 2011 Blog Awards, where the world class Sci-Fi magazine staff have narrowed each category down to four or so nominations. They have six categories, but they have still left us some impossible decisions. Under Best Podcast, as an example, they have both Escape Pod and Doctor Who Podshock, both of which are insanely good, so how do you decide? The Fan Community choice is even harder; Gateworld or Whedonesque gets compounded with Gallifrey Base or The Trek BBS, and I want to vote for all of them! But you only get one vote per category, and trust me when I say the others are just as difficult to choose between.
The SFWA has announced this years Nebula Award Nominees, and a bunch of them are online now for your reading pleasure. The Awards themselves will be handed out at the Nebula Weekend event taking place from the 19th to the 22nd of May at the Washington Hilton in Washington, DC.
One of the other awards given out at the event is The Ray Bradbury Award for Outstanding Dramatic Presentation, and for me this one is an almost impossible choice. There is one TV episode on the list, Doctor Who’s Vincent and the Doctor, two live action movies, Inception and Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, and three animated feature length films, Despicable Me where the Minions owned the movie, How to Train Your Dragon from the Dreamworks team, and Toy Story 3 from Pixar. I don’t have a prayer of choosing the best one; I love them all!
Just a reminder that season 3 of Being Human, the original Brit version, kicks off on the 19th on BBC America. While not the same day as the UK treatment they are giving Doctor Who, it is still only a few weeks behind, instead of the 6 months to a year behind we used to get. Also, tonight they are running the BAFTA Awards coverage, which is kind of the Brit version of the Emmy’s and the Oscars combined. I will be watching and cheering on Inception, which got nominated in a number of categories, including Best Film.
In live action movies we have a few lesser known but amusing films. The Last Lovecraft: Relic of Cthulhu is the tale of a man in a dead end job who is told he is the only surviving descendant of H.P.Lovecraft, and given an ancient artifact with which he must defend the world. The other selection this week, equally erudite, is Oppai Chanbara: Striptease Samurai Squad, in which a collage girl learns on the death of her mother that she has inherited a sword and a deadly legacy with which she must protect the oppressed. Besides their other similarities, both of these are just a bit silly, so should be fun. The more serious movie out this week has the return of Cloud and Wind in The Storm Warriors. Based on the manga series Fung Wan, this is an indirect sequel to 1998’s The Storm Riders, but in between we have seen Wind and Cloud in the Zu Warriors series of movies, played by the same actors. It is also worth noting this Hong Kong film is the first big budget Chinese language movie shot almost entirely in bluescreen.
For TV, the winner has to be Dr. Who: A Christmas Carol, the Who Christmas special from this past December. This is one of the best kind of Who episodes, sad and poignant and also full of forgiveness and redemption. The other TV program worth mentioning is the 1989 miniseries version of Around the World in 80 Days, finally available on DVD. The cast for this version was amazing, and included Pierce Brosnan, Eric Idle, Peter Ustinov, Jack Klugman, Roddy McDowell, Darren McGavin, Lee Remick, Jill St. John, and Robert Wagner along with many more.
In Anime, the clear and overwhelming winner is Summer Wars, in fact it is the best program of any kind being released on DVD this week. Among the multiple awards this film has is the Japan Academy Prize for the Best Animated Film 2010, won in previous years by The Girl Who Leapt Through Time, Paprika, Tekkonkin Kreet, and Ghost in the Shell. A high school math genius and systems analyst is hired by his secret crush for a summer job, which turns out to be posing as her fiance to her family. Since until then he spent most of his time living in the powerful online VR community known as OZ, he is quite out of his element. Then he gets an unusual mathematical puzzle on his cell, and when he solves it, it unleashes a dangerous AI that takes over OZ with the goal of using it as the platform to launch an attack on real reality to bring about the destruction of us all. After that, it gets very interesting (in the Chinese curse meaning of the word, May you live in interesting times). This project is visually amazing and highly entertaining, and if you only add one DVD to your collection this week, this should be it.
Also out this week, Needless Collection 1 is the story of mutants with special powers who came into being in the aftermath of WWIII. They run into conflicts among themselves and when interacting with normal humans. I haven’t had a chance to see this yet, so I can’t speak to its quality.
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.
I have half a dozen awards I consider worth the effort to be involved with, and one of them is the Nebula Awards. The members of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, Inc. nominate and vote on the various entries into that competition and select the winners. Along with the Hugo Awards it is one of the best places to learn about new authors and the best new stories. The video equivalent for these two would be the Academy Awards and the Golden Globes; one chosen by the pros, one chosen by the fans. Each award system has something of value to contribute, so you want to pay attention to both.
The nominations just opened for this years Nebula’s, so if you are a member of the SFWA now is the time to push your candidates to the front of the stage. When I say just, I mean it opened yesterday, the 15th of November 2010, and will run until February 15th of 2011. It really doesn’t matter if anything nominated wins or not from a Fan perspective. If it was good enough or important enough to be nominated, it is worth your time to read it at least once, even if your conclusion is you do not feel it is worth recommending to anyone. From these beginnings cult classics are born.
The new BBC iPlayer was rolled out yesterday, and it looks good. Unfortunately most of the video is not available outside the UK at the moment, but there is a subscription service in the works for the rest of us. But the radio segment works very well indeed wherever you are, with all the great programing one has come to expect from them, including my favorite, BBC Radio 7.
On the 2010 TV Choice Awards last night, Doctor Who was voted Best Family Drama, and Ashes to Ashes got Best Drama Series; congrats to both shows!
Also from BBC Worldwide comes two new games; Doctor Who: Evacuation Earth for the DS, and Doctor Who: Return to Earth for the Wii. The must-have for the DS games is the Sonic Screwdriver Stylus, while the mandatory item for the Wii is the Sonic Screwdriver Controller (Wii Remote). Unfortunately, so far the games are licensed for the UK, Australia, and parts of Europe, but not for the US. The stylus and Wiimote are not subject to the same kinds of licensing restrictions as the games, so those will hopefully be available to all of us.