Have I rambled about The Dead Zone yet? If not, I’ve done this show a great disservice. It’s on USA on Sunday nights at 10 pm et, currently. USA has a pretty nice website for it complete with the kind of ‘extras’ you’d get on a DVD. Very cool concept.

The show itself is based on the Stephen King book of the same name. The first few episodes followed the book pretty closely, and then things diverged. The protagonist is a guy that was in a coma for 6 years, and when he comes out, he has visions of people’s past and futures. It’s a concept that they could easily go cheese with, but they don’t…they keep it rather understated, really. The episode I watched tonight, Zion, was a kind of “It’s a Wonderful Life” kind of treatment that actually followed the book more closely than the series has done. Kinda clever, showing us both paths this way. Another episode put the protagonist in a place where he felt he had to choose between the lives of two of his friends. The episode title was Playing God and, well, it didn’t turn out like it would’ve on most TV shows.

Really a first rate show, and sadly not widely watched, at least among people I know. Do yourself a favor and Tivo a couple of eps. It’ll take 2-3 to get a feel of who is who since you haven’t seen it from the start, but its time well spent, trust me.

Disclaimer: I’m a newbie when it comes to anime, so all you old hands can snort all you want.

I just saw “Perfect Blue,” a complete anime movie (in contrast to so much anime that is episodic in nature) by Satoshi Kon, based on a book by Yoshikazu Takeuchi.

For anyone who thinks Anime is all about giant robots and blue-haired sci-fi girls, Perfect Blue will change your mind.

It’s about Mima, a young girl who is part of a pop band, and decides to leave it to become an actress. Some of her fans aren’t happy with her decision, and eventually she stumbles upon a website, “Mima’s Room” which is like a diary of everything she did and everywhere she went. Except that she isn’t writing it. Or is she? She keeps having halucinations whereupon her old, pop-star self pops up and starts scolding her for leaving her former life.

When the show she is filming has her in a rape scene, things get ugly as her alter ego becomes somewhat enraged at her ‘filthy’ behavior. Soon after, the bodies start showing up…

Creepy stuff, with an ending that took me totally by surprise. Well worth watching, imo.

Again, not for the kids though. The rape scene, even though it is a scene being filmed, is still very much mature content.

Found this rather fun page over at Amazon.Com:
So you’d like to … Become Anime Literate in 60 Days or Less

” So, you’re looking to join the secret society of the Otaku in sixty days or less, are you? We’re a small, sometimes elusive crowd, but we’re always looking for more recruits and are always accepting members. We won’t let any ole Joe Shmoe into our brightly colored world of robots and beautiful girls, however, without the proper introduction to anime. Being one of the most humble and beautiful Otakus around, I have decided to give you the advantage, to get you up and running and walk you through some of the prerequisite anime viewing. Come and be amazed.”

An amusing read and pretty useful, too!

This isn’t news, but I just found out. Fox has cancelled Dark Angel to make room for a Whedon show, Firefly.

I wasn’t a huge fan of Dark Angel, but this last season, with the show getting a kind of hip-hop feel to it and the whole ‘mutants vs mundanes’ thing taking off, I was starting to enjoy it. And the season finale was a real cliff hanger. Now we’ll never know…

Sunday night (June 16) TNT has a 2 hour season premier of Witchblade (8:00 pm ET/PT). This was a great series that was tragically overlooked when its first season ran.

Yancy Butler, who stars as Sara Pezzini, had to take some time off to go into rehab partway through the shooting of season 2. Let’s hope she comes back healthy and strong, and still kicking ass.

Well, actually its an article more about Willow than Buffy.
Worth a read, but time-shifters be warned… spoilers within. Get the season finale off your Tivo and then read the article.

Holy crap! I got home from work kinda drained and lazy so I figured I’d pop open a beer, plop on the couch and watch some TV. I had 3 eps of BuffyTVS languishing on my Tivo, so I watched the first one (that’d be the one from 3 weeks ago). It was pretty good, so I slid into #2. By the end of that one… omigawd I’m glad I didn’t have to wait a week for the third. Jesus, talk about intense.

I’d really been thinking Buffy had lost its way when it switched networks, and maybe it had, but these last few eps have been seriously intense. I’m being purposely vague so as not to spoil anything for folks who haven’t been keeping up to date, but DAMN, these are ‘must see’ episodes…

Finally got to see Spiderman. Work sent four of us to one of these deluxe theaters where you can have food, drinks and stuff while watching the movie in a chair that’s big enough to be comfortable. Personally, I would’ve rather had a $500 bonus but these days you take what you can get, I guess (this year we’ve been blessed with a 10% pay cut and 3 rounds of layoffs). Anyway, the theater was pretty nice. Two of the guys I went with talked through the whole thing, which was pretty irritating.

As to the movie itself, it was pretty damned fun. It didn’t quite break the barrier into the ‘love’ zone, but I certainly liked it. I’ll definitely get the DVD when it comes out and watch it a few more times. Special effects were stunning and there were some fun cameos, like Lucy Lawless in a very quick part (LL=Xena, and the director of Spiderman, Sam Raimi, was director of Xena). (OK, gotta admit, I didn’t even recognize Lucy Lawless, but noted her name in the credits.) The plot was pretty true to the Spidey comics and we got good and set up for the sequel (Oh christ, I just wrote SQL instead of sequel… what the hell is happening to me!? Har!)

So, weak-willed bastard that I am, I bought the XBox version of the Spiderman game on the way home… heh. Haven’t got very far though.

So now its almost 11 and I still haven’t really done anything tonight… taking Friday off though. Maybe I can catch up on some projects then.