Skip to main content

Something to Watch: Discs

This time Pixels arrives home with the mind numbing premise that Aliens take our inclusion of video games on the Voyager disc as a declaration of war, and return the attack with one of their own. Don’t think that Pixels is strange, though, because also this week an underground classic of a film comes out on disc: Forbidden Zone. It seems back in 1980, Richard and Danny Elfman, along with their Mystic Knights of the Oingo Boingo theater troupe, decided to assemble the stuff they were doing into a movie. The results were one of the strangest and most offensive films ever made, and someone had the guts to finally release it as a 2 disc set, the film on DVD, the soundtrack on CD. I don’t actually recommend that film to anyone because of the included offensive parts, but it is extremely bizarre sci-fi fantasy, so I have to at least mention it. There are also several live concert DVDs coming out this week for the musically addicted, including the Prismatic World Tour from Katy Perry, Roxy the Movie from Frank Zappa (The videos of the December 1973 concert series that became the album Roxy and Elsewhere), and From the Vault: Live at the Tokyo Dome 1990 from the Rolling Stones.

Monty Python and the Holy Grail Limited Edition Castle Catapult Gift Set is one of the sillier things they are doing in honor of the film’s 40th anniversary this week. It is a re-release, obviously, but I had to at least put that title in print, so you could imagine just how interesting the box set with accompanying catapult looks. In TV the Doctor Who: Christmas Specials Giftset includes all of the so far available David Tennant, Matt Smith, and Peter Capaldi Christmas Specials. Plus, they are throwing in a Sonic Screwdriver with every set, but they don’t mention which Doctor’s screwdriver is included. Quite frankly, that takes care of four of my Christmas gifts this year with two of each.

In Anime, Black Bullet: Complete Collection tells of a virus spreading fast and mutating rapidly, giving their hosts unexpected powers and abilities, along with a compulsion to attack others to continue to spread the virus. The entire thing is 13 episodes long, as is Blade & Soul: Complete Collection. In Blade, Alka has been her clan’s assassin her entire life, but now her clan is dead and she lives only to destroy those who killed them.

Continuing favorites include Lupin III vs. Detective Conan The Movie, which is a crossover story between the 2 series created in 2013 that has lots of action and humor. Plus it is a hoot to see a favorite thief go up against a favorite detective, leaving me a bit confused about which one to cheer for. One Piece: Season 7 Part 3 has episodes 410 through 421, but before you get your hopes up you are getting there, the current episode is 714, or maybe 715 by now. Or maybe even 716, I saw 714 listed a week or two back, but I am not sure what day the new episodes come out, so I don’t know how many times it has changed since then. Sailor Moon R: Season 2 Part 2 brings episodes 69 through 89 home, meaning the battle against the time traveling Black Moon royal family story arc, or at least a lot of it.

I left Aldnoah.Zero: Set 2 to the final paragraph because even though it is a new release, it is only half a season’s worth of episodes, 7->12 to be specific. Even that is only a quarter of the series so far, which runs to 24 episodes; and I try my best not to reward marketing teams which release things in tiny pieces so they can sell a lot of them for what other groups make the price of an entire season or better. While I will sometimes mention something with 6 episodes like this series, it will only happen when they are quite good (or 6 or fewer IS the total number of episodes available). The other side of that coin this time around is Dance in the Vampire Bund: Complete Series S.A.V.E. Edition, S.A.V.E. standing for Super Amazing Value Edition. The S.A.V.E. releases are quite inexpensive box sets that give you an entire series but generally run you one side or the other of $20, and you can catch them for $12 or so when sales happen. So even though most of those series are a year or two old, and have usually already been released as a complete series, I find them worth telling folks about, so they can get the most Anime for their buck (which is the way I always try to buy this stuff).

Neil Gaiman on Humble Bundle

If you haven’t checked them out before, the folks at Humble Bundle are worth a look. They come up with various bundles of items and offer them on a pay what you want basis, then split the proceeds between the content creators and one or more charities chosen by that creator (if it is more than one charity, you can direct them to apply your money to just one of them, or give a specific percentage to each of them). If you pay more than a fairly low average payment, that unlocks some additional goodies in the same collection while increasing your total charitable contribution. As each bundle hits various total target amounts contributed, additional swag is added to the bundle, pretty much the same reward system used by Kickstarter, where both your individual contributions and the total group contributions up the ante on the deal.

Most often but not always the stuff Humble Bundle has on offer are games, books, and audio dramas. They have a couple of good ones this week, with their Books choice being Neil Gaiman Rarities. Besides his very first published story, it also has one of his Babylon 5 screenplays and a boatload of other rare tales and collections. As you noticed if you took the first link I posted here, the main package this week is about $200 of Tom Clancy classic games, while the Weekly Bundle and Mobile Bundle each have a selection of games as well. Every few days something gets added, or a selection changes, so you want to check back often. As for me, I am going to grab the Neil Gaiman bundle this week, going high enough over the base amount to both maximize my charitable contribution and make sure I get all the extra stuff as each target is reached. This is my kind of win-win, and they keep doing it, over and over.

Mice and Mystics, Family version

This is about a terminally kawaii game called Mice and Mystics which Wil Wheaton brought in and showed on his program Tabletop!. Not being content to let it stop there, he also brought in some family members, specifically Anne Wheaton, Ryan Wheaton, and Nolan Kopp to demonstrate how the game should be played. Or maybe he was trying to show us how his family plays simple but interesting games together, which quite frankly reminded me about how my families gaming sessions go. This is the TableTop Season 3 finale, or at least the first part of it, and if you haven’t been following from the beginning this episode should make you realize why you want to go back and binge-watch the entire season. And then maybe the 2 before that. And if you have missed this, perhaps the channel the program is on might have snuck past you in the darkness; Geek And Sundry is a Felicia Day project that has gathered together some of my favorite people on the planet and given them a platform to prove to the rest of us why they are fun folks.

Something to Watch: Streams: Is It Wrong… ?

Yes, this is the series that asks that age old question: Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon? Except the protagonist is doing anything but trying to pick up girls, they just seem to collect around him. The anime series is based on the light novel of the same name, what in the US might be called a Novella or Novelette, written by Fujino Omori and illustrated by Suzuhito Yasuda. This is my favorite anime of the spring 2015 season (although there are a few others which are quite tasty and almost as much fun, which I make sure to watch each week), and although the season is winding up, it doesn’t look like the story line is. In fact, becoming the fastest growing adventurer now seems to be the set up for what the quest becomes in the next season, not the goal for this one. Although as we get to the end of the first season, the advice his ghostly grandfather keeps giving him makes a lot more sense once we learn who that grandfather is. If you haven’t been following this one, use the Crunchyroll link and binge-watch it this weekend to get yourself up to speed.

AwesomeCon 2015

Awesome Con in Washington D.C. this past weekend certainly lived up to its name, and its rep. They had a huge collection of actors, artists, and authors (and that only covered the first letter of the alphabet) doing their best to make the gathering memorable. Pretty much all of the guest actor/voice talent celebrities manned (personed?) a booth on the bottom level, off to the side of the hucksters area by the primary entrance, most of the time they were not doing a panel or presentation. Between those two groups were the artists, both Comics and Fine, with quite a few other visual disciplines mixed in. That last sentence gives you the idea, but not the scope, unless you expect there to be a hundred or more impressive illustrator/storytellers on the multiple-football-field sized area you are crossing to get to your next scheduled event.

They had some presentations I never expected, like Twisted Toonz, where a group of world class voice actors played out a famous movie as totally different characters than the ones in the original. This year the film was The Wrath of Kahn, and the voice of Wini The Pooh coming from the bridge of the Enterprise was one of the the least disconcerting aspects of that presentation. I can’t wait to see another show organized around the same principle, it was absolutely amazing and entertaining! Although the voice actor tasked with being Bill Cosby for one part of it kept looking out at the audience like he was trying to find an escape route.

ACon01-ExhibitFloor