Tom Baker was my doctor, right up until David Tennant came along. Of all the actors that played the part, these were the two who spoke to me, who became the Ideal Doctor. I don’t know how the new one will do, but I will be watching. This is all old news, but I felt the need to post these videos again since there is now a New Doctor 12 trailer online. And then I posted the others because I couldn’t help myself.
This weekend has Con-G, an Anime con in Guelph, ON, Canada (and personally I love the pun in their name). The events at this one lean heavily to Cosplay and music, and it looks like a lot of fun. At the west end of the Great White North Tsukino-Con will be happening in Victoria, British Columbia. Being on the tip of Vancouver Island, Canada, they may just pull in a few folks who were in the neighborhood to do something Olympic.
Anime also lives in Kansas City, MO, at Naka-Kon, where they have some amazing guests and events lined up, including Peelander-Z. Saturday brings on Chibi Chibi Con 10 in Olympia, WA, as well.
In the general Fan category we have ConNooga, at the historical Chattanooga Choo Choo Hotel and Convention Center in TN. They are covering all aspects of the genre, but it looks like their strength lies in their Artists Guests
For the gamers, Total Con-fusion claims the title of New England’s largest gaming event, and Owl Con covers the game gamut in Houston. The Bash Con gaming fest is in Toledo, Ohio, and like OwlCon takes place on a collage/university campus.
Finally, Furry Fiesta in Dallas is for those who wear the fur.
I can’t believe I am missing Farpoint again, and only realized it because of the Farpoint Hashtag running rampant through the folks I am following on Twitter! Not only is it one of the best Fan-run Cons ever, it takes place within an hours drive of where I live! Of course, even if I had remembered I would have missed it this year, because I seem to have broken my foot while fighting my way free of the Snopocalypse. Project for the weekend: build a database of events I don’t want to miss on one of my home computers, and set it up to propagate automatically to a few select servers. Project for next weekend: set up one module on every server farm in my cluster to spam me across all the devices I own one month in advance of every event in the local database, and resend the alert once a week until the event happens. Who knows, perhaps by 2020 I will stop missing events from ignorance, and only miss them for actual reasons.
This is a wonderful compilation of Star Trek: TNG segments, with the first iteration rumored to be a two minute long blooper reel assembled by Gene Roddenberry himself. As you can see, it has grown a bit since then, evolving into this 10 minute presentation called The Sexed Generation. But after that, I went looking for variations, and found a few…
Thanks to the folks at Sci-Fi Geeks for the initial heads up on this one. They were also the place I first learned Korea upgraded Avatar to 4D, adding 30 physical effects to the movie (including moving seats and the smell of explosives), because 3D was just not good enough.
The live action movie release to consider this week is The Time Traveler’s Wife, and yes, this is a love story, much in the tradition of Richard Matheson’s Time And Again. This close to Valentines Day, it seems appropriate, and it is a fairly decent treatment of the book.
The animation to be aware of is Dante’s Inferno: An Animated Epic, but be warned this animation is not for children, nor is it work friendly. The structure is the same as Animatrix, with a separate writing, directing, and production team (all leaders in the field who have created Anime classics) for each segment. This has not been released in theaters that I am aware of, although a limited number of lucky viewers got to see it on the big screen at various film festivals around the world. The DVD is being released in parallel with the game (the game company commissioned the film), both of which are based on the original epic poem.
The TV collection to look for this time around is SG-U Stargate Universe: 1.0; they lost the annoying blue vampires and re-invented the franchise as a Battlestar-style lost in space adventure. The Stargates have been relegated to the same role as Trek’s Transporters, and the galaxy spanning communications system introduced near the end of SG1 are used to keep the episodes from being limited to the ship, the landing zone of each planet, and the characters trapped on the ship. I personally loved SG1, and found any episode of SG-Atlantis that had the blue guys in it unwatchable (which did leave them with 20 or 30 good episodes over their 5-year run). So far I find SG-Universe to be about half way between the two, but if they stop trying so hard to be the new BSG (which they are failing at) and go back to the core strengths of SG1 (good mix of humor to go with the OMG moments, excellent dialog, and retain the good ensemble chemistry they have to bolster the dynamic tension), this series has the potential to equal or surpass the original.
On the anime front, Soul Eater Part 1 bears a style resemblance to Dead Leaves, both for the graphics and the audio, and looks like it could be a lot of fun. You can watch Soul Eater episodes online at that link to give you an idea if it should become part of your permanent collection. Gaogaigar Season One Litebox comes from the folks who built Godanner and Betterman, and shows you how that team started out. And while Naruto Shippuden: Volume 6 is also coming out on Tuesday, I will be waiting for the next season-long box set before plunking my money down; there are just too many episodes in the series for me to be able to afford any other choice.
Topping the MediaCon list this time around is the SFX Weekender, being held in Camber Sands in the UK. Media guests include Doctor Who’s Tom Baker, Buffy’s James Marsters, Torchwood’s Gareth David-Lloyd, True Blood’s Michelle Forbes, Sarah Jane’s Elisabeth Sladen, and Red Dwarf’s Mac McDonald; and that’s just the Actors (the Author guests list is every bit as impressive).
In the US, The Official Xena Convention (the 15th year) takes place this weekend over in LA, and while the guest lineup may not be as varied as the SFX Weekender, it does include many major players in the Xena world, including Lucy Lawless, Renee O’Connor, Hudson Leick, and Gina Torres. If you were ever a Xena fan, you don’t want to miss this one.
And there is a chance some of you might be able to find your way to BasauriCon in Basauri, Spain, which starts February 5th. It is primarily a Battlestar MediaCon, with Edward James Olmos & Mary McDonnell as the main guests.
In Canada, G-Anime takes place at the Palais des congrès in Ottawa. Besides all the usual Anime Con events, this gathering include a Competitive Cosplay Dance Workshop; be sure to bring your costume for any outfit-specific queries you might have.
One of the best movies of 2009 (certainly in the top 5) is coming out on Tuesday: Cold Souls. This one isn’t an action/adventure tale with Sci-Fi special effects wallpaper like so many others, but the core premise of the story is science fiction, and the rest of the film explores the consequences spinning off from that premise. Because it was in such limited release in the theaters a lot of folks didn’t get the chance to see this on the big screen. Do not miss it now; the acting is amazing, and the story itself is wonderfully presented.
The other movie worth noting is Zombieland, yet another comedy about the living dead; at this rate, they could become almost as numerous as TV shows about Vampire Cops/Detectives.
Speaking of TV, also this week are the final David Tennant Doctor Who episodes, >Dr. Who: End of Time Parts 1 & 2 and Doctor Who: The Water of Mars. If you haven’t already acquired the other two Who Specials, Doctor Who: The Complete Specials box set gets released Tuesday as well.
the only new Anime I found coming out this week is Skull Man: Complete Collection, which looks like it would make a good double feature with Red Garden (if you have 12 hours to watch a double feature). I just wanted to mention last weeks Sands of Destruction again, because they have a great tag line: Destroying the world solves everything.