This animation from Patrick Boivin is amazing, and is only one of many he has created. He started out as a graphics novelist, but decided it was faster to get his ideas across with moving images. Before long he had turned into a film maker, and the word is a better place because of it. He claims the Woolf Lapin Agency as his home page, and you can learn more about him there.
Coming up on Hulu on the 24th, TokyoPOP will be presenting America’s Greatest Otaku. This isn’t a one-time award show, but a documentary series that has the TokyoPOP team touring the country looking to see who will qualify for the grand prize. Meanwhile, beginning this presidents day weekend, Viz Media starts streaming the US premier of Neuro, Supernatural Detective. They have the first 5 episodes online to watch right now, and this is a bit of an experiment for them. They haven’t even picked up the Manga yet, but if enough people “like” the Anime (click the red heart on the streaming page), they will sign the contract and bring it to the US.
The actual Valentine’s Day is Monday, when I do my Movie posting for the week, so you are getting this one a few days early. In honor of this lovers holiday, I would like to bring your attention to this excellent duet between Brent Spiner (yes, formerly known as Commander Data) and Maude Maggart. And because the song alone wasn’t enough, they went ahead and created a tasty little romantic video to go with it. Enjoy!
For those of you running the Xfinity App from Comcast on your Apple devices, you should have been prodded about a week ago to upgrade the App, which now lets you watch Video On Demand directly on the iPad. The same functionality for the Xfinity Android App should be released any time now. The video appears to currently be limited to the Premium Channels, like HBO and Showtime, but more networks will be coming soon.
Despite the earlier report that only the first episode was going to be streamed in the US Fractale is still becoming available at Funimation each week. I am glad they resolved that issue, but it lead to the creation of an excellent explanation of Territorial Rights on the Funimation blog page that is easy to understand and actually makes sense.
Right Stuff and Nozomie have started streaming The Third: The Girl With the Blue Eye. Think Tank Girl, but the tank (named Bogie) has a serious attitude problem, so they make a great team.
Over on the Syfy Video page you can watch full episodes of Being Human (the US version), Sanctuary, and the full first season of Riese: Kingdom Falling.
Copy Shop is a bizarre time travel with cloning story with minimum dialog; a wonderful use of the short video medium to convey so much in so little time. And then, from 1943, this surreal and experimental short film is called Meshes of the Afternoon, and was created by husband and wife team Maya Deren and Alexander Hammid. While watching this I kept expecting to hear Alan Ginsburg break into poetry narrating the circular ongoing sequence in a single sentence that flowed from twist to turn without ending or pause for breath. Enjoy!
Copy Shop from Nishant Kumar on Vimeo.
My apologies to the 99% of the audience that already knows this, but it is in my Master of the Obvious contract that I have to get the word out to that final 1% that haven’t heard yet. I should also mention before we get started that the US Version of Being Human pilot episode is available as a free download from iTunes right now…
If you missed this past Monday’s episode of Chuck, you can of course watch it directly from its NBC website for free. This is something more and more networks are doing, making their programing available on multiple platforms to build their audience, a process known as convergence in the industry; making any show available to watch any time on any device. So if you didn’t catch The Cape when it was broadcast over the airwaves, you could watch it from that web page, pull it up from the NBC Video On Demand folder from your cable companies set top box, or pull down one of several viewing Apps for your phone or tablet, and see it free. The links I used in this example are NBC, but all the networks are doing it now; if you can’t watch a program on the network web site directly, they probably house it over at Hulu, iTunes, or YouTube. If you wanted it for your permanent collection you have the option of purchasing many of them from a number of distributors for download, Amazon and Apple being the largest and best established operations.
Cable TV companies have also been rebuilding their networks for convergence, for the same reason; they want the largest audience for their products they can get. So they now also have webpages for watching shows and Apps you can download to make their programming portable for no additional cost. The links I included were for Comcast, but all the cable companies are doing it. I used my login and the hotel WiFi to my laptop while half way across the country to watch the Doctor Who Christmas Special, and it worked great. The Comcast App allows you to control your cable boxes remotely, check your voicemail, and so forth, with being able to watch the videos on your phone or tablet coming shortly.
Just announced, the Anime Network starts their free simulcast of Infinite Stratos this Sunday at 8:30 PM CST. They are getting a bit of a late start, so this Sunday’s simulcast will be episode 3, but they will also post episodes 1 and 2 at the same time so you don’t miss anything. This one is Mecha combat comedy judging by the description.
I wanted to mention that Fractale is finally available for viewing! This twisted little show stars a boy with virtual parents, a girl in a world with mostly guys, a villein class of bad guys that show evil promise, and an escapee from deep in the past whom only the boy can protect. With only one episode to extrapolate from all of my conclusions may be wrong, but I am enjoying the way this is starting out.
UPDATE: Soapbox Mode On: Thanks to pirates, it now appears only the first episode of Fractale will be simulcast unless the illegal sites are shut down. According to Anime News Network, the Fractale Production Committee has forced Funimation to cease the simulcast until such time as the illegal streaming and file sharing sites are under control. The question that confuses me the most is what sense does it make to pirate something that you can watch for free, especially when doing so means you might make it no longer available for legal viewing, possibly for years until the DVDs come out? Which is not to say there are not serious issues of abuse in the other direction, as best personified by the companies that want to censure the internet, and claim they are trying to protect against piracy when they are really trying to destroy the structure of the internet because they cannot get oppressive and invasive anti-piracy laws passed. There is already a body of laws in place, a courtroom adversarial response structure that allows for due process when piracy is suspected. You don’t need to install spyware/virus sotware on peoples computers to delete files without the users permission, and you don’t need to break the router paths so the internet doesn’t work properly. This is the core of why we have a judicial system, to keep idiots from either side from destroying what we have spent decades building. Soapbox Mode Off
From Anime News Network, The Sacred Blacksmith and Vampire Knights are both newly launched programs you can watch online from the Fall 2010 season. After watching the first episode of each, I will be watching the Sacred Blacksmith to the end of its run.