Sci-Fi Storm

I missed this, but the DVD set for the first series of The Sarah Jane Adventures, comes out tomorrow. In addition, the fourth series of Doctor Who has been announced for release on November 18th. And for those on Captain Jack watch, a reminder that Series 2 of Torchwood) is out next week, and I should have a review of the DVD set in a couple of days.

The Thunder Child writes “The Chicken Heart is one of the most famous horror radio episodes of all time, from Arch Oboler’s Lights Out series. Comedian Bill Cosby has a famous monologue about the Chicken Heart, and you can listen to an excerpt of it at http://dailyspace.blogspot.com/2008/09/chicken-heart-that-ate-new-york-city.html.” This is the one mentioned before. I grew up with this Bill Cosby album…it was hilarious…

Uncle Mortimer writes “This year The 2008 Macabre Mansion Special Halloween Broadcast will be featuring two Dark Shadows programs; “Dark Shadows, Return to Collinwood” and “Dark Shadows, The House of Despair”. Beginning Saturday October 25th and continuing through Halloween, listen to Macabre Mansion for these two Dark Shadows audio productions as well as a special broadcast introduction recorded for us by Mr. David Selby.

In addition to Dark Shadows, this year we are pleased to be including two “Alien Voices” productions; “Alien Voices, The Invisible Man” and “Alien Voices, The Time Machine”. Alien Voices is the audio theater production company founded by Mr. Leonard Nimoy and Mr. John de Lancie and their audio productions feature the voice talent of fellow Star Trek actors. We’re pleased and thankful having been given special permission from Mr. Leonard Nimoy and Mr. John de Lancie to broadcast these two excellent “Alien Voices” productions. Listen during the Halloween Special for a special broadcast introduction recorded for us by Mr. John de Lancie.

For more information visit:
http://www.macabremansion.com/index.php?room=special

-Uncle Mortimer
Macabre Mansion
www.macabremansion.com
“

Kenth Johansson writes “After 11 years online, one year ago Elfwood.com was set up as a small company. The reason was to ensure the future of the world?s largest sci-fi and fantasy community. And what a year it has been.

‘We have doubled the daily average of visitors and turned around the negative trend of new material at the website. Not at least, we have secured the future of Elfwood. Cost for hosting and servers had become too high to handle as a hobby project’, says founder Thomas Abrahamsson

In this new setting there will be more resources available to help out with development, maintenance and general improvements.

‘The idea now is to develop additional features for those who donate to Elfwood, the so called Elfwood Patrons. We want to offer something special to those that support our community. We hope that those who value and use our services will do that and help us develop’ Thomas says.

In the mean time, Elfwood is climbing the lists of most visited websites and just recently pushed in on the list of the 6000 most visited in the world.”

The third and fourth episodes of Gemini Division, “Love Costs” and “In Deep”, are now live on the official web site. In addition, you can check out a special bonus video here.

Just a reminder: Heroes: Season 2 was release on both DVD and Blu-Ray, along with the Blu-Ray release of Season 1.

NBC’s first original web series, Gemini Division, hit the wirewaves with its first two episodes. You can even watch them here (click on the Read More link). Gemini Division stars Rosario Dawson (Sin City, Men In Black II) and Justin Hartley (Smallville), and is about NYPD detective Anna Diaz (Dawson) who thinks she found someone special in Nick (Hartley), but when he is murdered she discovers he wasn’t the man she thought – in fact, he wasn’t actually human.

(continue reading…)

The Thunder Child writes “For various and sundry reasons explained in http://dailyspace.blogspot.com/2008/08/chicken-heartor-why-read-40-year-old.html, (in which I talk about one of my favorite radio episodes, The Chicken Heart), I went to YouTube to see if any Lights Out/Arch Oboler radio episodes had migrated there.

And someone has actually animated, in three parts, the episode The Visitor From Hades, and you can see all three parts at: http://dailyspace.blogspot.com/2008/08/great-minds -think-alikeor-arch-oboler.html

Now if only someone would do the same thing for The Thing On the Fourble Board…or better yet, The Chicken Heart!” I had the Bill Cosby album in which he talked about listening to Lights Out, and specifically The Chicken Heart…hilarious…

I’ve talked about this show before: The Harlan Ellison-created but studio-botched Canadian series that starred 2001: A Space Odyssey‘s Keir Dullea. In fact, I recently managed to gather together my network of spies, etc. and see the series again, but had completely forgotten to write up a Retro Review for it. Well, I may just wait a couple months now and see it at least in DVD quality – the [sfs=859]Complete Series[/sfs] will be released. It doesn’t sound like there will be a lot to it – the 16 filmed episodes, a trailer (which may be the more sales-oriented promo that had Douglas Trumbull talking up fancy special effects that they ended up not using). So now, you too can see just how bad it can be…and there is probably a LONG wait for the movie version, as even rumors of it seem to have died.

Of course you are wondering why I’d have an article on the opening ceremonies of the Olympic Games in Beijing, but please tell me that I was not the only one on this: During the part where they were lifting the Olympic rings off the floor, and the people were flying around, waving their arms and turning around, did you have an urge to pump your first in the air and yell, “Renew! Renew!” and wait for a laser to blast them out of the sky??