Category: Sci-Fi

Auteur Anime

If you only ever watch one Anime feature, it should be The Place Promised in Our Early Days, a science fiction romance by Makoto Shinkai. This is a superb piece of work, and at the moment there is a perfect 720p copy on YouTube. Play it full screen in HD, click the captions button for English subtitles, and see what American animators can’t do.

Close Encounters of the Third Season Kind

If it’s true that the third and final season of Star Trek is the weakest, it’s certainly also true of Lost in Space, which became quite silly toward the end of its run. But I have a fondness for season 3 of LiS, because the month before it started my father bought the family’s first color TV. Another reason for my continued interest in the series had to do with being a boy who had just turned twelve.

I’ve just finished watching a third season episode called Hunter’s Moon, which features my mother’s old friend, Vincent Beck, who I talked about at this link. Vince was never one to turn down a job, no matter how he looked playing the part.

Early in the episode, “Special Guest Star” Jonathan Harris as the always insufferable Dr. Zachary Smith exclaims, “We’re doomed! We’re Doomed!” Ten years later, Anthony Daniels would pick up on that expression as C-3PO.

Neverwhere here

In 2011 BBC Radio 4 presented Brian Sibley’s superb radio drama adaptation of Mervyn Peake’s fantasy saga, The History of Titus Groan. The series is available from Amazon as an Audible book. It makes for particularly good listening on headphones.

Radio 4 now has another outstanding adaptation, with Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere. The series features James McAvoy, who is known to comic book fans as Charles Xavier in X-Men: First Class, and Natalie Dorman.

Natalie Dormer in “The Tudors”

Neverwhere is available through this week, until March 29. The first episode is an hour long, and for convenience I’ve put it on the audio player. Parts 2-6 are 30 minutes and they’re on the BBC iPlayer.

[audio:http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/radio4/radioplay/ptw_20130322-1317a.mp3|titles=Neverwhere BBC Radio 4]