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Something to Watch: DVD’s

The TV show that stands out this week is Blood Ties: The Complete Series. While all of this had been previously released in two series boxes, it is nice to have everything available in a single package.

The silly montage of copyright-free footage taken from vintage porn and 1950’s Sci-Fi films know as Sex Galaxy will also be hitting the shelves. If you are an MST3K fan, this should be right up your alley.

On the Anime front, Ah My Buddha – The Complete Collection is a good choice, with enough action to keep it interesting. The fan service built into the premise (he only gets strong enough to banish demons when he sees naked women) never really delivers, since naked women without nipples are obviously not really naked; think Sophia Loren in a bodysuit in that 1960’s movie.

Lucky Star Complete Collection is an entirely different critter on several fronts. To begin with, the young women in this series are the focus, not the eye candy. In addition, it tells a high-school tale that almost works for guys as well…

Rental Magica – Collection 2 takes us back to the world where multiple systems of magic work, each with its own set of practitioners (all of whom are in competition with each other), based on the book voted “Best Action Story” by Japanese fans as part of the 2007 Light Novel Awards (the Manga came after the book).

Hidamari Sketch × 365 – Complete Collection is also being released on Tuesday. I probably shouldn’t mention it here, since it has virtually no Sci-Fi elements, but the artist in me couldn’t resist.

Fun from Asia

A taste of strange from Japan today, starting out with a Japanese commercial for children’s near-beer, so kids could have toasts with their parents. And somehow it got twisted… Just another look into the stranger side of J-Life from WTF Japan, Seriously. Meanwhile, Geekologie has word of a dancing robotic samurai server in a Japanese themed restaurant in Thailand. One good computer virus and the patrons become shish-kabob, although with a face like a cross between Darth Vader and the Cookie Monster it is difficult to get too worked up about the possibility.

Robot Avatar, Apocalypse Nerd on TV

The word is out that Robot Chicken will be giving the full treatment to Avatar and Twilight, as it did for Star Wars. They have done the first handful of episodes for season 5 and are continuing with production. Seth Green estimates 10 months until we get to see it on TV, but in the meantime season 4 is on the store shelves.

And then there is Fallout, a BBC funded project based on the Dark Horse Comics series Apocalypse Nerd. You can never have too much British End of the World comedy, after all. Right now it is only a pilot but with luck the BBC will pick it up for a full series. Thanks to SF Signal for the heads up on this one.

Fallout: Teaser Trailer from tupaq felber on Vimeo.

Best Rube Goldberg Ever!

Big record companies are famous for being greedy and short-sighted, and a great example of this is what happened when online music videos came around. At first, the artists went after them as a means of getting their music in front of the public, generating buzz and fans; free advertising in an online world. The record companies let them do it, and thousands of fans would embed their favorite songs on their pages, exposing still more people to the music. But the record companies always want to be paid for things other people create and distribute, so the lawyers worked out a way to make YouTube pay on a per-play basis for the music. Since it worked out that YouTube only has to pay when the music is streamed on YouTube itself, most record companies refused to allow any music they had under contract to be embedded. This shut the bands out of gaining thousands of new fans by having their songs on all kind of pages, while the record companies themselves aren’t making any noticeable amount of money from the streams (assuming they aren’t just cooking the books to avoid paying the bands their royalties); a loose/loose situation. But after hammering on their record company for weeks, Chicago’s alt rockers OK GO got them to allow this amazing video to be embedded, and I predict it is going to bring them thousands of new fans, mostly mad scientists in training who love rock! For the background on this one, visit DVice.

Things to Watch: DVDs

Two films mark this week as a major release date for the young and young at heart. Ponyo was supposed to have been on the shelves before Christmas, and then again in January, but each time they pushed the date back. Unfortunately I can’t read the official Studio Ghibli site, nor do I know which country it is telling us the DVD date is for. But Amazon seems to think it will come out Tuesday, so unless they pull another last-minute reschedule we may hopefully see it this time.

The award for best drama performance while wearing a rug-thick costume with built in animatronics goes to Where The Wild Things Are, the Spike Jonze implementation of the famous children’s book. This live-action film is designed for slightly older kids than the animated Ponyo, but both are wonderful stories that any adult can relate to.

Then there are two made-for-TV programs that you might think were for children, but they aren’t. The 1966 BBC program Alice in Wonderland was definitely built for adults, and even originally aired after 9PM. This masterpiece had such starts as Michael Redgrave, Peter Cook, Peter Sellers, and John Gielgud in it, and its release onto DVD is long overdue.

The other one goes by the shorter title Alice, and was on the Sci-Fi Channel in December. Also designed for adults from the same source material, this one stars Caterina Scorsone, Andrew Lee Potts, Matt Frewer, Tim Curry, Colm Meaney, Cathy Bates, and many others. I don’t think it is any great surprise both of these are hitting the shelves the same week that the Tim Burton/Johnny Depp version opens in Theaters. And that one also has some amazing actors, including Stephen Fry, Alan Rickman, Helena Bonham Carter, and Anne Hathaway; one would think this story draws almost as many quality actors as Hamlet, a tale everyone wants to be in at least once.

For fans of disaster movies, 2012 does its best to kill off the entire planet, and you can’t get much more disastrous than that while we are all stuck in a single gravity well. While this one feels a bit more like a thrill ride than a movie, it is fun.

Speaking of fun, do not miss Gentlemen Broncos; while more a story about a Sci-Fi author than science fiction itself, this one is downright funny.

For classic TV, this time around it is Doctor Who: Dalek War, two John Pertwee era stories. Frontier in Space is grand space-opera told on a tiny budget, and features not only the Daleks but is also the last time we saw Roger Delgado as The Master. Planet of the Daleks may look like a Hartnell story, but it does have some original Dalek background information, plus after the photo layout I just have to grin any time I see Jo Grant with a Dalek.

Besides the previously mentioned Ponyo, there are several other anime titles this week. The Yozakura Quartet don’t play instruments, but are a mixed-blood (demon and human) demon fighting team; this boxed set is the complete collection. Season three of ARIA The Origination is also out, and the 13 episodes are packaged up with the OVA for extra value.

Eureka Seven: Good Night Sleep Tight Young Lovers was a re-imaging of sorts; they took all the same characters from the same world but changed the core premise of Eureka herself. That change to the character’s origin completely changed the dynamic of the plot line. Which means, even if you own the original TV series, you haven’t seen this story yet.

Kurokami The Animation Part 1 show a run time in the product description of 200 minutes, which tells me it is only the first 8 episodes of this 24 episode series. Since that would make the combined total for all three DVD releases somewhere around $90, I think I will watch it on Crunchyroll first and decide if it is worth that much cash, or if I should wait for a less expensive “Complete Series” release.

And I think I finally understand why they delayed Ponyo; because also on Tuesday there will be Special Editions of three other Studio Gibli classics; Castle in the Sky, Kiki’s Delivery Service, and My Neighbor Totoro. If you are missing any of these, now is the perfect time to add them to your collection.

Funny things…

Some things are too funny to avoid. One of those things is the tremendous body of work created by Mitch Ben and the Bonzo Dog Band. This was the place where comedy and music slammed face-first into each other, and each grew a bit in the process. So I thought i should post a few songs here, for those who didn’t know about them. But just before we go there, the best bit of street theater ever; Antwerp is singing scales from The Sound Of Music, and so is Wellington! If your town hasn’t gone there yet, you could still get lucky.