Dust off that VCR grandma gave you in '82 and get ready for the VHS revival! Despite the 3D-IMAX-bells-and-whistles craze happening at your local 65 theatre movie-plex, hardcore videotape collectors are patrolling the web for hundred dollar copies of grindhouse flicks you've never even heard of. Why would these Luddites spend hard-earned recession-era dollars on obsolescence you may ask?
Please, please, please let this trailer for Batman: Arkham City mean what I think it means. It looks like Batman and the Joker double-teaming. It looks like co-op gameplay. It looks like I could sit on my couch and flip a coin with my partner to decide the undecideable: which of us gets to be Joker and which of us gets to be Batman, holy shit, holy shit, holy shit
Two new fan films hit YouTube this past weekend. The first is a highly anticipated 12-minute fan film based on the video game series Half-Life, called Beyond Black Mesa. We here at Laser Orgy love Half-Life; we gave Half-Life 2 our top spot in the Laser Orgy 500, so you know we're serious. Commenters over at Kotaku panned this fan film for its "inaccurate" zombies, and I get what they're saying, but personally I see this film as more a tribute to the zombie shooter game genre as a whole rather than a fan's attempt at a flawless rendering of the Half-Life universe.
Stephen Fry, the sexiest man in the world, has received Harvard's Annual Outstanding Lifetime Achievement Award in Cultural Humanism -- you may recall this as the award Joss Whedon won back in '09 -- and will be at Harvard for the presentation ceremony on February 22. The presentation "will feature a performance by Fry," Harvard says.
If you've been paying attention, you might have noticed by now that the Phoenix staff has been infiltrated by nerds at the highest levels. And as nerds, and Bostonians, we realized that we all remembered reading the same book in our geeky youth: Future Boston, a 1990s anthology written by local sf writers, which mapped out a timeline for the city's next 100 years.
Art: SHAENON GARRITY
This past weekend, Arisia returned for its 22nd annual year. It's a sci-fi and fantasy convention that happens in Boston every year, and ... yes, this sounds familiar, doesn't it? Sounds a lot like Boskone, the sci-fi and fantasy convention that is slated to take place in the exact same location -- the Westin Boston Waterfront -- on February 18-20.
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