No, it’s not the name of a band; you can actually listen to the human genome, streamed as live audio, over at DNA Radio. They are currently broadcasting Chromosome 1, and at their present rate of data rendering they figure they will have played it all in 23 years or so. Comic-Con, started as a fan-organized event, has turned into a major marketing event with serious money at stake. While I think everyone already realizes this, nothing brings it home like an article in Bloomberg, the financial news organization. They do touch on a few of the movies to be premiered at the event as well.
Otakon kicked off today, and included the east coast premiere of EVANGELION 1.0: YOU ARE (NOT) ALONE, and a fun little project called Pirates vs. Ninjas. Musical guests include VAMPS for those wondering what Hyde has been up to since he left L’Arc-en-Ciel, and MELL. It is being covered by all the usual suspects, including Anime News Network, Ani Gamers, Funimation, and more. The con has an official Twitter link and a dealers room webcam, but that’s not as much fun as being there yourself. It runs through Sunday if you still want to grab a daypass.
The comic-con is coming next week, already sold out, and filled with some amazing guests. For those of us who can’t be there, G4 will cover it, as will several hundred bloggers.
Word has come out that the new season of Dollhouse will be starting a week later than the announced original air date, but this is not a bad thing. They made the move to give a bit of extra production time to the team, since they only start building the new episodes this month. If Fox wasn’t already aware there was a serious following for the program, they probably got a clue when their sales servers crashed from people hammering on it to order the limited edition season 1 box set available only to Comic-Con 2009 attendees. Fox finally got it right, now can NBC do the same with Day One? The last TV show built by Javier Grillo-Marxuach, the creator of Day One, was The Middleman, which comes out on DVD on July 28th.
Fathom Entertainment brings another exclusive Anime event to the big screens across the US. This time around they have the feature film Eureka 7 – good night, sleep tight, young lovers, playing one night only on Thursday, September 24th (yes, that is 2009). Tickets went on sale today for its only other big-screen showing in North America, and its North American Premier, at the FanTasia 2009 Film Festival in Montreal, CA, on July 28th. Purists will want to be at the FanTasia showing, which is in Japanese and subbed; the Fathom presentation will be dubbed.
The Fantasia International Film Festival 2009 starts this Thursday, July 9th, and runs to the 29th. The films include a dozen of my favorites that I never expected to hear about being on a big screen, like Cyborg She and The Clone Returns Home, as well as many others I would love to see but never have, like Rough Cut and 8th Wonderland. There are even some I would go to just because of the silly titles, like Lesbian Vampire Killers. It doesn’t hurt any that Montreal has near-perfect weather in July.
Since I don’t have the option of going there, my sights are set on something a bit more temporally restricted: Otakon 2009, the Otaku-friendly Anime Con also held every July, this year from the 17th through the 19th. It kicks off with a performance by VAMPS, and has way too many guests and events for me to go into here; visit their Guests and activities menus for a full rundown.
And finally today, I had to share this video of Guillaume Estace playing the Star Wars Cantina song on a Chapman Stick. Enjoy…
We are 3 weeks away from Comic-Con 2009, the big one in San Diego, and it is already sold out. Which means I will be watching it on TV and watching and listening to the many podcasts and vlogs. As always, they will be doing the Eisner Awards as well as a number of other awards presentations. Hollywood will be out in force promoting all the new genre related movies, and they will be running multiple film festivals. It runs the 22nd through 26th of July, with a preview night on the 22nd. Also on the 22nd will be the longest total solar eclipse of the 21st century, and you can watch it live online. Another presentation of the IYA2009 ongoing event, this contribution is being hosted by the Chinese scientific community.