Sci-Fi Storm

Also out on the 21st is the British spoof of the zombie genre, Shaun of the Dead. An electronics salesman and his slacker roommate fight through Zombie hordes to reach the girlfriend who just broke up with him, but they just keep getting in the way! Stephen King says “it’s a 10 on the fun meter and destined to be a cult classic.” Again, check out the trailers – WMV 128k, 300k, 700k.

The live action movie of the classic ’60s Supermarionation series Thunderbirds will hit the shelves on December 21st – just in time for the last minute SF fan. It features Director’s commentary with Jonathan Frakes, behind the scenes, rehersal and design footage, the development of the Fab1 car and more. I missed this in the theater (as I did most recent movies) so I hope to review the DVD soon. Watch the trailer by selecting the appropriate speed for your connection – WMV only – 128k, 300k, 700k.

I finally got the time to finish going through THX 1138 – The George Lucas Director’s Cut – a newborn has been taking a lot of our time and is a constant distraction – I’d like to view it again before writing this, but I promised a review a while ago. Anyways…in a nutshell, it may have been made in 1971, but it is still a relevant film and wears its age fairly well. And for the first feature film of the man who later gave us Star Wars and Indiana Jones, an amazing film.

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Egads. This is probably the second biggest DVD release compared to the original material, next to the Lord of the Rings trilogy – The Ultimate Matrix Collection. This is 10 DVDs – one each for the three movies, one each for the Revisited featurette collections, The Animatrix, and three more disks full of goodies – and it hits the streets on December 7th with an MSRP of $79.92 (pre-order now from Amazon.com for 30% discount). It’s a whopping 35 hours of extras. A perfect Christmas gift for the Neo or Trinity in your life. I like the look of the special gift set, also available for pre-order, with cool plastic case and a Neo bust.

A Trailer for the The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King Extended Edition is now online at the official web site. Get a glimpse of the 50 minutes of extra footage included in the new edition, including the confrontation with Saruman, The Mouth of Sauron, and more.

I’ve updated the SF TV Store with a number of items. Notables are the complete seasons of Hercules: The Legendary Journeys, and the next two Doctor Who releases: “The Green Death” and The Visitation”. Could the Beeb be any slower? Two episodes in six months?

Almost missed this – Buck Rogers in the 25th Century – The Complete Series comes out on Tuesday. Apparently both seasons are packed on 5 discs. No work on any special features.

Well, I’ve done a lot of cleanup work of the original mockup, and actually made it a little more functional (articles are actually database driven now, with a couple of samples for testing). You can take a quick peek of the new setup here. Note that I am actively working on it still, and the theme elements are not complete (images need to be re-rendered, etc. – I’m hoping to use PNGs with transparency maps where possible), and as I work on things it may be offline or break. Just thought I’d offer a glance. One thing’s for sure – no more pastel theme 🙂 In the meantime, I thought I’d offer what’s in the queue for review I am trying to get to: [sfs=437]Land of the Lost: The Complete First Season[/sfs] (although fiziko over at Bureau 42 has already posted a review); [sfs=477]THX-1138: The George Lucas Director’s Cut Special Edition[/sfs] and [sfs=424]V: The Complete Series[/sfs], the latter two generously provided by Warner Bros. Online.

Chris Gould over at DVDAnswers.com has finished his series on the changes between the original, special edition, and DVD versions of the Star Wars Trilogy with the details changes of Return of the Jedi. Biggest change which we already heard about – Hayden Christensen appears at the end as the “ghost” of Anakin.

The Seventh Season of Stargate SG-1 was released a week ago, but I forgot to mention it. Thankfully a rep sent me some links to some clips of some of the interviews found on the DVD set, listed below – only Windows Media right now, but I may have more later.
Michael Shanks: 300k
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Christopher Judge: 300k

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Peter DeLuise:
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Amanda Tapping:
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