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Something to Watch: DVDs

Not much in movies this time except for re-releases. In TV we have Doctor Who: The Web of Fear, a Patrick Troughton era tale that has not been seen as a complete story since it first aired. They managed to find most of the episodes recently, and have used an original audio recording and some animation to fill in the last missing bit, episode 3. This is the story where we first meet Alistair Lethbridge-Stewart, later known as the Brigadier, and it sets up the Doctor’s ongoing relationship with UNIT. In western animation we have the Spectacular Spider-Man seasons 1 and 2 in a single box set.

In anime, also, most things are re-releases, but there are a few genre sets coming out. In Nekomonogatari (Black) the protagonist has survived a vampire attack with the help of his beautiful friend. He then learns she was able to help him because of the power given her by being possessed by the Curse Cat, and he must try to free her if he can. In Little Busters! – Collection 2 they are receiving cryptic messages delivered by cats and seeking a friend’s lost shadow. And then things started getting really strange.

Something to Watch: DVDs

In Movies, I have to name The Secret Life of Walter Mitty first, because they truly did an amazing job on the remake of this film. It is one of the few instances where I liked the re-imaged version better than the original, it is just that good. Switch with Andy Lau is a twisty little Secret Agent vs. Smuggler tale tied together with the artistic history of their nation’s culture. This action film is a Chinese equivalent to the Mission Impossible series of movies. Led Zeppelin: Good Times, Bad Times may be the definitive documentary, possibly even surpassing It Might Get Loud for sheer fun; if you are a Zeppelin fan, do not miss it.

Ripper Street: Season 2 and Bletchley Circle: Season 2 are both worthy follow-ups to their original series. They are both period pieces set in interesting UK history slices. I am sure everyone is aware of the near-fantasy Ripper legend, but Bletchley Park was one of the birthplaces of modern cryptography as well as advances in computer science like the world had never seen before. It was there that Alan Turing himself (yes, the inventor of the Turing Test ) made the first attacks on Enigma, the Nazi cipher machine, which shortened WWII by 2 to 4 years, or made it possible for the allies to win at all, depending on who’s analysis you prefer.

In Anime, Nyaruko: Crawling with Love! isn’t exactly the rom-com the title might suggest… or is it? Nyaruko, also known as the Crawling Chaos, has been sent by the Planetary Defense Agency to protect Mahiro from the rampaging demons trying to destroy him. It turns out all of the creatures from H.P.Lovecraft’s Cthulhu mythos are aliens, and cute girls, and they all seem to like him. Mahiro and his friends fight to survive, learn about love, play intergalactic video games, and might just save the world if everything goes right! Like most of the best anime, you can watch it streaming online before you decide to commit your money to owning it yourself. You would think I would stop mentioning that, since it is true of so many shows of all types these days. But what the heck, including a direct link is never a bad thing.

From the New World is another tale which starts innocently enough but rapidly goes off the rails. This time, it is a thousand years in the future, and Saki and her friends seem to live in a place where you can materialize anything by an act of psychic will, no technology required. But then a long-lost artifact gives the lie to the facade of their world, and they learn about the bloody secret history of how their world came into existence. Now the question is, will they live long enough to save it, for humanity and everyone else?

Berserk: The Golden Age 3: The Advent has Griffith still imprisoned by the Kingdom of Midland and the Band of the Hawk running for their lives when Guts returns to lead them to the rescue. OK, that’s a bit abrupt, but then One Piece Collection 9 continues the tale of Luffy and the Straw Hat Pirates as they gather together friends on the quest to make Luffy King of the Pirates. This set runs from episode 206 to 229, but the currently streaming episode is 640 or so, expect a disconnect between them if you watch both media delivery styles. Also be aware Spice and Wolf is being released in a single box set, and Heaven’s Lost Property is as well. If you don’t already have them, they just became a bit more cost effective to acquire.

HHGTTG 30th Anniversary Edition Game

Probably the first computer playable game I ever got addicted to was the HHGTTG from Infocom, although 9 Princes In Amber and Leather Goddesses of Phobos were both hot on its heels. Now you can play the Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy Game 30th Anniversary Edition online at BBC Radio for an updated retro gaming experience. They do warn you to save your game state often, as it tends to kill you a lot, but it includes a bunch of new story passages written by Douglas Adams that they have been sitting on for a while.

Something to Read: Discworld

I know that lots of sites are doing April Fools gags today, but I would rather talk about Terry Pratchett’s wonderful creation Discworld which overall is funnier than most of the pranks going on. In all it comes to about 40 books these days, with hopefully at least a few more waiting to make it into our hands. From the first story The Color Of Magic to the most recent release Raising Steam, they are every one of them poking fun at all aspects of small mindedness, bureaucracy, prejudice, and superstition. There are a large number of wonderful recurring characters that you will find yourself relating to, often because they make up the limited number of sane people (and sane not-people) to be found in a given tale. They tend to come in groups, like the City Watch, the Witches, Ahnk-Morpork, the Wizards, and Death (yes, Death is both an individual and a group; see Soul Music, or perhaps The Death Of Rats).

The Discworld universe is in a steampunk/fantasy branch of the Multiverse, where wizards and engineers have an equal hand in creating the future, and humans share the land with a full range of other races, including Golems, Vampires, Dwarves, and Igors (the last very handy if you are suddenly in need of transplanted organs and limbs). Figuring out which order you should read the books in can be difficult, I recommend using the group approach. Go to the Novels chart on Wikipedia to find the earliest story instance of each group. Read each one of them, and I feel confident one of them will become an instant favorite, even if you don’t particularly care for the others. Then read through all of the novels in that group; by the time you finish that set, you will have met enough of the characters and picked up enough of the background for the other groups that you will know which one you want to read next. You can also read them in story-line chronological order for each group, either method will do nicely.

Sooner or later you will have read everything he has written about Discworld, but do not despair! He has written other stuff, including an excellent collaboration with Neil Gaiman. And there are four Discworld TV miniseries released on DVD, 15 stage plays have been published, two feature length animations have been created, a number of fan productions from around the world have been released into the wild, and a ton of radio plays of the stories have been recorded by the BBC and others for you to enjoy as well. There are several projects in production, including a 13 episode TV series about The Watch, a miniseries of Unseen Academicals, and the fan production of Troll Bridge. Once upon a time Sam Raimi was going to do a feature film from The Wee Free Men for Sony, but that fell through. All is not lost though, because Rhianna Pratchett announced she was going to pick up the project instead.

Raising Steam Buildables

I picked up Terry Pratchett’s Raising Steam when I was in the UK for the Doctor Who 50th Anniversary celebration last November, it is a wonderful book you really ought to read. Now they have put together a great little collection of the characters and objects from that story as PDF files that you can download, print, cut out, and fold into their 3D likenesses. Hop on over to Raising Steam 3D and get your free downloads, so you can create your own collection. Thanks to Jenn for the heads up on this one.