Invasion - Simulblogging the E.B.E.s (SPOILERS)

We finally got to see the aliens tonight on Invasion. They were lame, glowing stingray looking things, but at least we gat a look. They have been dragging us along for weeks and we still don’t know what’s going on. I keep telling myself that I am done with this show, but the fact that it is after Lost and that the Russ character is a cool audio-blogger keeps me coming back.

Ohh, and now we find out that being taken over by the alien or getting impregnated with one (whatever Puppet Master like thing is going on) can heal people, even to the point of growing back limbs. It grows a whole new body? The old skeleton was the sheriff’s?

Of Course, now the sheriff has gotten out the chainsaw. Oh yeah, what we need is a little Evil Dead action. Oh man, the deputy is going to cut his own arm off. This show has just jumped up there on my list. But, come on! His own arm. Right! The guy would have passed out!

Well, I will be back next week. They kept me hooked with the cutting off of appendages.

Dr. Who is on His Way

Sci-fi Wire is reporting that the first season of the New Dr. Who is coming to the U.S. on DVD. Finally, will get to watch the episodes without using BitTorrent.

Man With the Screaming Brain

As a devoted Cambell fan I really wanted to like Man with the Screaming Brain. Not to say that Bruce isn’t great. He handles the part of a American scientist whose brain is split in two and shared by European gangster.

I love B-movies, give me Artic Boa any day and throw in Campbell for good measure, but the plot of Man was just so rehashed and tired that I kept flashing back to movies that had done it better. The one redeeming quality was Ted Raimi as the European doctor’s assistant who is way too in to American culture. He is funny and sweet (as Raimi always is).

If you want to see Campbell at his best pick up Bubba Ho-tep and leave this one for a Sci-Fi channel rerun.

Romero Gives Hope for New "Dead" film in the Works

I guess Land of the Dead did so well in Europe that the studio will fund another one. I was pleased with the movie, but it looks like Romero is putting some cool Stephen King adaptations on the backburner, darn!

via aintitcoolnews.com - read the full story at Empire:movie news

New York Times 100 Notable Books of the Year Predictably Lacking Sci-fi and Fantasy

It is really no surprise that The New York Times' 100 Notable Books of 2005 left off every sci-fi and fantasy novel that came out besides Half-Blood Prince, but one could hope that they could broaden their pretentious minds a little! There were tons of great books out this year by notable writers like:

Neil Gaiman: Anansi Boys

Robin Hobb: Shaman's Crossing

Doglas Preston and Lincoln Child:Dance of Death

Octavia Butler: Fledgling

and, of course,

Orson Scott Card: Shadow of the Giant and Magic Street

Just to name a few. This isn't counting the novels by lesser known and first time authors like Brandon Sanderson's Elantris and many others.

Jump on the Times forum and push the sci-fi fantasy. It is time these stuffed shirts had some fun with their reading!

Aliens vs Predator Director's Cut

How did I miss yesterday that the unrated director’s cut of Aliens vs. Predator came out. This is what I have been waiting for since I drug Anna to see the PG-13 version in theatres. Anderson (the director) said that "All of the best scenes were cut." The director’s cut is supposed to have many new scenes, plus a sub-plot that will shed more light on the actual story.

One of the biggest let downs of the theatrical release, was that it didn’t adequately explain what was going on. Though I really enjoyed the main woman character and loved that Anderson took her from Claremont’s old comic. This is going on my Christmas list!

WARLORD back at DC!

Febuary 24th DC is bringing back their sword and sorcery comic WARLORD!! I remember reading this book anytime I could get my hands on it when I was a kid. If it is anything like the new Conan series over at Dark Horse it will be a must read. It will be written by Bruce Jones with stunning visuals by Bart Sears! Newsarama has a six-page preview and I have to say that it looks great.

Firefly Designer sells off costumes

I wish I had the money for some of this stuff. Especially, Mal's Browncoat.

Firefly costume designer Shawna Trpcic is auctioning off her private collection of original Firefly costumes, to start a nestegg for her kids' education and give some lucky browncoats a chance to own a piece of the Firefly mythos.

Buy your costume HERE

Joshua Glenn discusses Utopian and Anti-Utopian Debates in Cold War Science Fiction

Being interested in Utopian and anit-utopian narratives and the theory of Fredric Jameson (after a Marxism class where I read some of his work with Le Guin) I found this article very intriguing. Glenn quotes Jameson as saying that in

books like Dick's ''Dr. Bloodmoney, or How We Got Along After the Bomb" (1965), a pastoral set in a post-apocalyptic Berkeley; Le Guin's ''The Lathe of Heaven" (1971), about an overpopulated Portland, Ore., made livable by a plague; and John Brunner's ''The Sheep Look Up" (1972), about an Earth whose air is unbreathable.

These books are more utopian, in a way, than Bellamy-style idylls, Jameson claims, because the latter offer false hope that ameliorative reforms might transform society. ''What utopian thought wants to make us aware of is the need for complete systemic change, change in the totality of social relations, and not just an improvement in bourgeois culture..."

Read the full article HERE

found via boingboing

Spielberg's War of the Worlds

I won’t be one of the many that run out to buy War of the Worlds on DVD today. It’s not that I didn’t like the movie. I liked it. The effects were great, the actors delivered their performances, but it just didn’t deliver the story that I wanted to see. I just couldn’t help but feel that we had seen it all before. Sure, I know what you are saying. The story is old. It has been made a hundred times. What new can be brought to the table? I think what I was looking for was a link between the characters. Not just the family, I liked Cruise as the manual labor everyman struggling to connect with the kids he only sees on weekends, but that is where the connections really end. The rest is just surface level stuff we have seen before in every disaster movie ever made.

There are many times in the movie where you think that people will connect beyond the "you watch that way and I'll watch this" level, but they are all poor attempts. Some people find the daughter and want to get her safety, A man hides in the basement with them and proves that he is crazy, Cruise helps a guy fix a car. These little glimpses try to tie the film down to a human level, but fail in a big way.

Maybe disaster movies are only made for thrills and can’t go any deeper. Well, Spielberg claims that the movie goes further in exclusive DVD footage clip on CNN. It’s all nice and tidy with Cruise and the actor playing his young son practicing what kind of handshake they are going to do. If this is the only example they could find of real human interaction, and I believe it is, then I rest my case.

So, go out and rent War of the Worlds this week. Watch after your turkey and noodles, but don’t look for it to tie you to the rest of the human race or make you thankful that machines well beyond the capabilities of modern human science are not located under the ground at our feet because as much as Spielberg wants to drop his ideas, this movie is up with effects and down with people.

Black on SG:1

Sci-fi.com is reporting that Claudia Black, the kick ass Aeryn Sun, one of the many reasons to buy Farscape on DVD, is going to have a returning role on the next season of Stargate SG:1. Sci-fi Fridays are back!

First Post - Orson Scott Card's InterGalactic Medicine Show

Oohhh, our first post and what better to talk about then Orson Scott Card’s new Webzine InterGalactic Medicine Show. Card has gathered a group of writers around him to produce a very nice on-line magazine that offers up a ton of material (that is updated almost weekly) for a very small price. For my $2.50 paypal payment I read short stories, a serial novel by Card called Hot Sleep, a new Ender’s universe story, and much more.

The best thing is that for $2.50 a month, less than I pay at my local comic store for 22 pages, I get a new issue every 30 days. Card has provided me with hours of enjoyment between his novel and his website. Now, he pushes the envelope further with InterGalactic Medicine Show.