Last year someone called for March 22nd to become Talk like William Shatner Day. That someone was Maurice LaMarche, who bills himself as the 3rd most prominent William Shatner impersonator, and he is also the Voice of the Brain (as in Pinky and the Brain). It is coming around again Monday, gang, so practice your dramatic pauses and get ready…
The word from Red Dwarf is that Hattie Hayridge, the female Holly of Red Dwarf, has been interviewed by Robert Llewellyn for his Carpool program on Llewtube. In other UK SF news, Tom Baker will be doing one or more additional turns as The Doctor, recording for Big Finish Productions. That is according to Comic Mix News, who pulled the tidbit from Tom Baker’s own web site. Besides pointing you to the forum entry, I should also mention that his Home page is very nicely done, but now I am going to have to re-watch Blackadder to see if I can spot him.
There are some quality DVD’s coming out this week, and some much anticipated releases; but the two are not always the same. The one expected to pull the best numbers this time around is the perfect example of that: The Twilight Saga: New Moon sold tons of tickets to the prepubescent estrogen brigade, while generating noticeable amounts of negative reviews. Which attitude is the correct one depends on who you are, as always, but the saga will continue since the investment has been rewarded by the audience.
The other film that requires actual people to play the parts is Ninja Assassin distributed through Warner Brothers.
From the realm of TV we have the History Channel classic Clash of the Gods TV series. This is a bit different from most of the TV entries I post here, since it has some basis in reality. Some, but not a lot, thanks to the subject matter, so it gets a mention here.
The American animation of note is from Disney (what a surprise), with the title of the Princess and the Frog. Once again, they do a nice job on fitting the best music to the animation, and create a thoroughly enjoyable movie experience.
For imported animations, AstroBoy The Movie finally makes it to DVD, for those of us who missed it on the big screen. It has a serious history, starting in the 1930s or 1950s depending on which path you follow. It has also inspired every robot variant since then, many of which have been real-world builds.
While they don’t have any robots (yet), Genshiken 2 does have an interest in robots, and any other topic you might build a Manga, Anime, or Game out of. Even though it is called 2, this is actually the third series in the franchise. They took a break after the first series, and actually built the anime the characters in that series were watching, Kujibiki Unbalance.
And then there is Tayutama: Kiss On My Deity The Complete Collection. This one comes somewhere between Ah, My Goddes and Ah, My Buddha, and is a ton of fun. The final entry worth noting is Slayers Revolution, season 4 of the classic series. This season was built a decade after the others, reuniting the original cast and creating some closure (and delivering some new excitement).
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.
William Shatner has been up to many fun and amusing things over the years, and this new project he is associated with allows groups of people to team up to create new science fiction projects. It is called My Outer Space, where the planets are talent pools each specializing in a range of skill sets, and the starships are virtual production companies, each working on a film, stage play, or animation. It looks like they are serious about gathering up some talented people and creating new science fiction, so stop in and check them out.
I don’t see any new genre movies coming out this weekend, although The White Stripes: Under Great White Northern Lights is going to be hitting some screens on Thursday. IO9 had some good news about an upcoming series of made-for-TV movies that SyFy will be presenting. It seems they have signed up Felicia Day as a Werewolf-hunting descendant of Little Red Riding Hood for their new Fairy Tale series. Considering what problems their made-for-TV movies have had, I think they should just put her in charge of the entire project.