Sci-Fi Storm

Kenth Johansson writes “Top fantasy art community Elfwood (www.elfwood.com) attracts more and more visitors. The website now enters the top 6000 list of most popular websites world wide and just about misses out on the top 3000 among most popular websites in the US.

“Its fantastic that more visitors are finding their way to Elfwood. More visitors means more publicity for our members and the great work they publish”, says Elfwood founder Thomas Abrahamsson.

Elfwood recently launched a supporter type membership called Elfwood Patron, where members by making a small donation get access to new features and supports the future development of the website. This was the latest in a row of new releases that earlier included a Fantasy and Sci-Fi forum, thats rapidly becoming a popular resource amongst the fantasy and sci-fi community in large.”

A British judge ruled that Lucasfilm owns the likeness of Stormtroopers in the U.S., but at the same time says that, at least in Britain, the copyright on the outfits have expired. Lucas sued Andrew Ainsworth, who created the design of the troopers, when Ainsworth asserted ownership of the design and started selling replicas, including in the U.S. Lucas won a $20 million judgment in a California court, but the British judge also ruled that the actual U.S. sales, which only totaled $50k-60k, were not serious enough to justify U.S. jurisdiction or enforcement of the judgment. Ainsworth is free to sell his replicas anywhere but the U.S.

The Thunder Child writes “I thought I’d share the news, which I’ve just put on my blog, Daily Space, that the “Sprayman” (a Slovenian artist) now offers live video streaming on his website – albeit for only 2 hours a day.

He creates space paintings – as well as other genres, using spraypaint. They look very cool, and its even funner to watch to see how he creates the effects and how long it takes him.

Check out my blog at: http://dailyspace.blogspot.com/2008/07/watch-spray man-at-work.html for the link to his site, as well as the link to the interview I did with him last year.”

The last (for now…) installment of the Stargate SG-1 franchise hits the shelves on the 29th with [sfs=831]Stargate: Continuum[/sfs], with the members of SG-1 expecting to see the “extraction” of Ba’al by the Tok’ra, but end up in a time-traveling paradox on the frozen wastes of the Arctic…Read More for a review of this straight-to-DVD release.

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Thanks to chad for pointing out that the comments system was broken – it is now fixed. Patches applied to the OS wrecked a number of Perl modules, and one escaped notice…I’m working on a “temporary” replacement to the software (Drupal most likely), even though I still intend to finish the custom software in the end. My biggest problem with Drupal right now is I have to create a theme I like for it.

You haven’t been seeing it, but behind the scenes the Story Submission queue has been spammed for months, making it difficult to find legitimate submissions (of which there have been very few). Yet another reason to get off this ancient software…

For those in the U.S. watching Doctor Who on the Sci Fi Channel, just a heads up: tonight’s episode (“Turn Left”) is essentially Part 1 of a trilogy leading up to the finale of Series 4. And although I haven’t found any release information for Series 4 on DVD in the U.S. yet, two more classic DVD sets are due to be released on October 7th: “The Brain Of Morbius”, a Tom Baker episode, and the entire Colin Baker series collectively titled “The Trial Of A Time Lord”. Pre-order now so you don’t forget!

Nominations for the 60th Annual Emmy Awards are out, and as expected genre shows are getting technical nominations – but some are also getting some mainstream nods: Tin Man and Andromeda Strain are up for Best Miniseries (although against the expected winner John Adams), and Battlestar Galactica episode “Six Of One” is up for Outstanding Writing in a Drama Series.

Sometime early this morning (early being between midnight and 2am, as I was woken up by a stupid page from work), the first act of Joss Whedon’s Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog went live. It is a streaming video short in 3 acts, with the other two acts released on the 17th and 19th and will remain online until the end of the day on the 20th, with a followup DVD at a later date. It features Neil Patrick Harris, Felicia Day and Nathan Fillion. Joss came up with the idea during the writers strike. And all I can say, having no real sleep so far, is “bizarre”. And I have a feeling that opinion won’t change later…but I’ll bet I’ll enjoy it more. Update 7/17: Act II is now live.

JMS posted yesterday on rec.arts.sf.tv.babylon5.moderated on Usenet (you can read it here with a brief update, and to follow up and various discussions regarding possibly future Babylon 5 projects. In brief, don’t hold your breath. He explains that “The Lost Tales” DVD was made on a small budget, and along with Legend of the Rangers, he felt that they detracted from the overall story of Babylon 5, than added to it. Despite rumblings from the studio about another DVD or perhaps a cable offering, that would be done on the cheap, JMS has decided that he would rather do a big-budget feature film – or nothing at all. And I agree with his decision – you could feel the budget on “The Lost Tales” was tight – it just didn’t feel right. Better to let the series itself stand on its own, than damage it further with forced material to make the studio money. It’s bittersweet, though. This site grew out of other projects and ideas I had that revolved around the show.

The movie The X-Files: I Want to Believe hits theaters later this month on July 25th. To help closet X-Philes understand what is going on, producer/writers Chris Carter and Frank Spotnitz came up with a list of 8 episodes to act as a refresher for those who in the intervening years since the series may have forgotten some points, and those episodes along with a few extras will be release next Tuesday as The X-Files: Revelations. Read More to find out what is inside.

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