If you live in the Southern California area, or are just an Anime/Manga fan in general, you no doubt know that Anime Expo will be starting up this week. It’s not the only though! AM2, Orange County’s answer the loss of AX. Although still young, in comparison, AM2 provides just as much entertainment and opportunities as its elder brother AX. However, one thing AM2 will have that Anime Expo does not, is AniMaid Cafe. Providing an experience usually only offered in akihabra, Japan, AniMaid Cafe is very much the same, but with an Anime Twist. Their President, Kchan, described it perfectly as, “A place where anime fans are served by anime fans.” I was lucky enough to talk with both AniMaid Cafe’s President Kchan, and Vice President Venus-Chan, where we talked about some of the new and exciting experiences they will be providing at AM2. (more…)
So there are certain behaviors that will solidify you as a geek without any chance of deniability. Cosplay in any sort of non-Halloween or non-spice-up-the-sex-life situation, for one. Or how about proclaiming, “There can be only one!” each and every time you’re faced with a multiple-choice question? I, and many others, flaunt our geek-flag in the form of fanfiction—quite possibly the geekiest geek pastime out there.
Quick definition: fanfiction is…well, fiction… written by fans…of a particular fandom. I really did try to come up with a more English-teacher appropriate definition, yet the only other way I can describe it is, if you ever had a hankering to have seen Indiana Jones have his way with He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, I have your outlet (this really exists by the way and will be linked below). (more…)
A quick little disclaimer before I delve into the review: I didn’t LOVE part one of Transformers, definitely didn’t like part two, so I didn’t go to Transformers3 with high expectations. I didn’t follow the press releases so I had no inkling of anything happening in this installment aside from the brief glimpses I got during trailers of other movies I DID wanna see.
If all you want to know if whether or not to see it, or just want a general rating of it, I’ll say this. Go see it, make up your own mind. Purely for the entertainment value of this review, to me, personally, this movie was somewhere in between GOOD and GREAT. A B+, 3 out of 4 stars, take your pick.
This review WILL contain spoilers (so, no bitching in the comments) and it will have plot lines revealed as well. Onward ho! (more…)
In the upcoming two-part prequel to his Lord of the Rings phenomenon, Peter Jackson has announced a new character among his all-star lineup, and as usual, his casting couldn’t be more perfect. Evangeline Lilly will be stepping out of the LOST forests of Hawaii and into the Mirkwood forests of Middle-Earth as an ethereal Elven beauty written specifically for The Hobbit.
Taking place before Lord of The Rings, back when Bilbo was even smaller, The Hobbit will return us to Jackson’s visual orgasm of Middle-Earth where we be seeing more of the familiar faces we’ve grown to love, (Ian McKellen’s Gandalf comes first and foremost to mind) cameos from fan favorites that we just can’t do without, and even meeting some new characters along the way. This recent announcement fills out most of the major casting decisions, as Jackson plans to flesh out the roles that the many unnamed Mirkwood Elves play in the novel.
Jackson immediately took to his Facebook page to confirm the casting and taunt us with teensy scraps of information, stating, “Her name means ‘daughter of Mirkwood’ and, beyond that, we must leave you guessing! (No, there is no romantic connection to Legolas.)” No other details have been specified except for the name of the Jackson-invented character, Tauriel.
Adding the character has generated a lot of mixed feelings and even some spouts of nerdrage amongst the Ringer Purists, but the point remains the same – how visually bland would it be to visit Tolkien’s Mirkwood? Two characters are mentioned by title only, and even their roles are minor. It’s hard to feel an attachment to faceless characters, and the idea that there would be no lovely Elven ladies wandering the forest is ludicrous at best.
Evie’s future seemed ready to take off after the LOST finale, while at the same time a rumor was circulating that she had no intention of returning to acting – a statement met with dismay, as there are very few ladies in the biz with the kind of natural talent and beauty that this dimpled dame does. The rumor seemed more and more likely to solidify once she moved from LOST to boring, generic L’Oreal commercials, but those at least were more legitimate than LiveLinks. Now she looks to be coming back from her acting hiatus with the blockbuster work that was expected of her immediately after the LOST finale, with at least one movie released per year until 2013. It may not be much, but I’m getting my fix!
Now that the initial hype has started dying down and more people are getting used to thinking of Evie in Elven garb, details about what kind of personality her character will have still remain elusive. Will we be seeing the ancient Elven ancestor of Kate Austin? Will she pull an Eowyn and kick some ass at the Battle of Five Armies? Or will she follow the Liv Tyler path – stand around, look pretty, here’s a tear? Unfortunately for us, Jackson is good with handling leaks, so it looks like we have a year to wait before we meet Tauriel. I always hope for brunette badasses, personally.
Whatever the case may be, I’m even more pumped now to see The Hobbit than I was before. Didn’t think that was even possible. And after seeing the EE’s, I completely trust in Jackson’s choices regarding Tolkien’s world 100%, this being no exception. Don’t you?
Kevin Wolf was the only other artist booth I checked out at A-Kon22, drawn mainly due to a character sculpture,Kyle, that reminded me of Crow from MST3K. I zoomed forward to caress the little statue and started chatting up Kevin about his web comic. Ridiculously charming and easy to talk to, Kevin allows me to pet Kyle and tells me a little about the comic. It deals with several…creatures doing, from what I can tell, not much but living life! (more…)
If you haven’t been keeping up, video-games have constantly been under a lot of heat and for the past six years Californian law makers have been lobbying to have the sale of mature title video-games deemed a criminal act with a 1,000 dollar fine tacked on. At first this seems alright, but it would be the only medium to do so. There is no criminalization for sales of mature books, movies, or music to minors, so why are video games being picked on?