Tenacious D storm downthetubes

Over on the official web site for the new Tenacious D movie (Titan Books has some tie-in books on the way), there's an option to "overhaul" a "lame" web site, using some fun flash screengrabbing and animation. Clever, with quite a few different "skins" to choose from.

Here's what the boys did to downthetubes.net...

More manga from Harrison Davies?

Bumped into artist Paul Harrison Davies yesterday, looking a bit knackered from the recent happy birth of his daughter but still bubbling at reaction to his fab strip in Constable and Robinson's recently-published Mammoth Book of Best New Manga, which was edited by Ilya and also includes strips from Michiru Morikawa, winner of the Grand Prize of the International Manga and Anime Festival, Selina Dean and Asia Alfasi, as well as established names such as Andi Watson and Craig Conlan.

He tells me reaction and sales on this excellent collection have been good enough to result in discussions of a follow up title, format yet to be decided. Meanwhile, he's working on some new material which should surface on his blog sometime soon... Meanwhile head over there and check out his cool spot illos.

Hollywoodland

Heading for UK cinemas 24 November is Hollywoodland, which centres on the mysterious death of George Reeve, the man who played Superman. The trailer looks slick (but as others have pointed out, does it give too much away?)

Ben Affleck, who has a couple of bad years in the entertainment press, won an award for Best Actor for his role as George Reeves in the film at this year's Venice Film Festival. Good news for a man known for his love of SF and comics (he's huge Star Trek fan, so maybe now his name will start getting thrown into the rumour ring when it comes to the new movie...)

Special

Okay, this one passed me by. I need to read more dreamwatch (unashamed plug). There's a new film bearing down on us called Special, centring on Les Franken (played by Michael Rapaport), who leads a painfully unremarkable life as a metermaid until he enrolls in a drug study for an experimental anti-depressant.

An unexpected side effect of the drug convinces Les he is developing special powers and must quit his job to answer his new calling in life... as a superhero.

The tag is: "A very select group of people in life are truly gifted. Special is a movie about everyone else."

I'm sure this is something everyone's been aware of for ages, but the trailer certainly indicates this could be great fun...

The Host

Anyone who's feeling intrigued by the new monster movie The Host might find the official Korean web site interesting (www.thehost.co.kr).

Entertaining use of Flash... make sure you allow pop-ups on the site.

Cat Tracking into parallel dimensions

It's a well known fact that many SF and comics writers own cats. Don't ask me why, it's just one of those weird rules of the universe.

Of course many freelancers work from home, but even they must sometimes wonder where their cat has disappeared to. Into Schrodinger's box? A parallel dimension? Or simply to scrounge food off the little old lady two streets away and then work its way back to your house employing the "Six Dinners Sid" method of coming home?

Well, tough luck, cats -- it seems you're close to having their lives monitored just the way we are through CCTV, money trails, RFID chips and your wild bretheren are pursued across the African plains for Big Cat Diary. The technology for GSM tracking is getting smaller by the day.

This German company has info on the latest GSM tags that could be used to monitor your moggy -- but at 110g, it's still too heavy for the domestic feline and you can be sure they'll lose the thing about five minutes after leaving your house. The company doesn't sell the things, but they reckon that by next year a smaller, lighter and more robust version will be on the market.

But do you really want to know where cats go?