The 800 pound gorilla for this week is obvious: Iron Man 2. If it is half as good as the first one, it will be twice as good as everything else opening this week.
Before the Cons, a salute to Ada Lovelace and to this, her day. This was a woman who wrote software in the first half of the 1800’s for Charles Babbage’s Difference Engine, and wrote the world first algorithm, thereby becoming the worlds first computer programmer.
The World Horror Convention takes place from the 25th to the 28th in Brighton, England. You can not get in unless you already have your ticket, because it is completely sold out. This is possibly related to the fact that this is the first time ever that this convention is being held in Europe.
In North America, Wizard World, the Toronto Comic Con, runs from the 26th to the 28th. This is Canada’s monster Comics and Collectibles event, second only to the San Diego insanity. Meanwhile, Comicpalooza will be performing a similar function in Houston, TX. Just take a quick peek at the guest list, which is huge; actors, artists, and authors galore… and that’s just the A’s.
I-Con 29 is a general Sci-Fi con, but huge; again, a glimps of the guest list will give you a feel for the scope of this event. This one takes place at Stony Brook University, in Long Island, NY.
Pax East is a Gamer Con running this weekend in Boston. I am not much of a gamer (I’m usually the guy they send out first so they can spot the snipers when they take me out), but I would be there for the music alone! Nerdcore Godfather MC Frontalot, the orchestral VGO, the hacked hardware of Anamanaguchi, and many more. If you hadn’t already guessed, PAX stands for Penny Arcade Expo, which usually hangs out on the west coast.
Perhaps the most unusual Con of the month is Xanadu Las Vegas, a Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Fetish Convention. Only in that city would you have a Masquerade dedicated to the memory of Forrest J. Ackerman (who along with his date wore the first costumes to a Sci-Fi Con ever in 1939), and judged by an Adult Film Star who is also the con GoH; and only in this city would you have a Masquerade where the wearing of an actual Mask is against the law (Nevada State Law prohibits the wearing of any face covering in any casino, and you will be arrested forthwith). This one looks like a world of fun and CONtradiction.
As the holidays gets closer, there is less and less to do, but there are still a few things. The best bet for this week looks to be the Houston ComicCon on the 12th and 13th. There are Comics creators and artists as guests, including the creator of Deadpool, but this is predominantly a collectibles event.
This is a weekend with something for everybody in the theaters. Astro Boy goes into wide release this Friday for the younger crowd (although a few of us older types might just sneak in and say we didn’t). Stan Helsing, the Parody is also out, with a lot of raunchy humor in a creature feature for the teenage crowd. The serious (you can’t really say Adult when the protagonist hasn’t made his 20s yet) movie of the weekend is Cirque du Freak: The Vampire’s Assistant, fresh from the Film Fest circuit.
The London MCM Expo happens the 24th and 25th, and if you like to cosplay in Europe it looks like the party to make. MCM stands for Movies, Comics, Media, and they cover them all. A few of the Media Guests include Terry Farrell, Nicole De Boer, Kandyse McClure, Masahiko Minami, and Ron D Moore. I’m not even going to try to list the Writers and Artists Guests, you’ll have to see the list yourself to believe it.
In the US my personal choice for this weekend is SteamCon in Seattle, with Author GoH Tim Powers, Artist GoH Paul Guinan , and Musical GoH Abney Park. Being a SteamPunk addict myself, I am reading their tweets and wishing I was on that coast this week. So I’m throwing an Abney Park video in at the end of this post, just to show you what you might have missed.
the biggest con this weekend is probably Mile High Con 41 in Denver, CO. It started life as a ReaderCon, and still hosts around 80 authors at various events, but now covers all aspects of fandom. Hot on its heels comes Icon 34 in Iowa City, IA, another ReaderCon that grew. Geek.Kon is a Sci-Fi, Anime, and Gaming convention in Madison, Wisconsin, also this weekend.
In Kansas City Motaku takes place on the 24th and 25th, and if you couldn’t tell by the name it is an Anime con. Necronomicon in St Petersburg, FL, is a media/reader con; if you are there you will get to hear physicist/author/singer Catherine Asaro’s Friday Night Concert!
From tomorrow through Sunday is the Ohio Valley Filk Festival in Dublin, Ohio. This is the event where they hand out the Pegasus Award for Excellence in Filking, and if you want to sing along with such classics as the Superman Sex Life Boogie or The Return of the King, Uh-huh or even A Reconsideration of Anatomical Docking Maneuvers in Zero-Gravity Environment you might want to pick up the Pegasus Award Winners Songbook. If you are wondering what Filk is, you can read the FAQ or listen to some:
The Ignatz Awards were handed out this weekend, at the Small Press Expo in Bethesda, MD. The Guest of Honor for the event was Gahan Wilson, and the actual physical Awards will be handed out next Saturday at the conclusion of the expo.
I read this a while ago and just kept forgetting to mention it here, but Paste magazine has an excellent article on the experimental animation of Tezuka Osamu, including a number of the videos themselves embedded in the story. Best known in North America as the creator of Astro Boy, Tezuka pretty much invented Japanese Anime in its modern form, as well as authoring an amazing number of Manga titles. The new Astro Boy Movie will be hitting theaters in October, while last February was Tezuka’s 80th birthday and the NHK’s 20th anniversary of their satellite service. In honor of that, the NHK is running specials from February until October about Tezuka Osamu’s contributions to Manga, Anime, and Japanese popular culture (you do have to scroll down a bit to get to the entry about it). In April of this year the 13th Tezuka Osamu Cultural Prize awards were handed out, the winners being those Manga and Artists deemed the best in Japan. Here is his 1962 experimental piece, “Male”…