Back when the online/satellite-only CBC Radio 3 was doing a weekly podcast hosted by DJ Grant Lawrence, I locked on to a lot of Canadian indie acts of the mid-2000s: Metric, New Pornographers, Immaculate Machine, Chixdiggit, Basia Bulat, You Say Party, Sarah Slean, Joel Plaskett, etc. Honestly, I've really fallen out…

I wonder if the interest in reviving the romance genre in western comics has anything to do with its comparative abundance in manga? I read a ton of that stuff, both titles aimed at guys (Toradora!, Evergreen) and girls (Orange, Say I Love You, So Cute It Hurts!). Difference being that Fresh Romance is offering a…

I want to add The Hunchback of Notre Dame to the discussion, representing as it does Peak Disney-Full-Of-Itself, before its animated features either self-destructed (like how "Empire of the Sun" fell apart and was cobbled back together as "The Emperor's New Groove", minus all the Sting songs) or worse yet, actually…

Fair enough, but that was four years ago, for a show that was then 12 years old at the time the articles were posted. They also did the decade-old Cowboy Bebop back in 2011-2. Since then, I think the only other exception would be Genevieve reviewing the first episode of Sailor Moon Crystal, 2 years ago.

Besides, AV Club has a strict no-anime rule. "X done in the style of anime", sure (where X is Gravity Falls, Adventure Time, Star Wars, etc). But actual anime, never.

It's interesting that J. A. Micheline's capsule review above goes out of its way to avoid the big reveal at the end of the first chapter of Orange. But honestly, it's a series that's better the more blind you come in to it.

Nothing from RKives makes the list, huh? I think my top pick from that album might be Sennett's "Well You Left", a delightfully weird shambles of a song. That said, I didn't really care for Under The Blacklight; the album's "true tales of Hollywood sleaze" theme had already been done to death.

Unfortunate by-product of this post: someone is probably pitching a CGI reboot of Animaniacs right now.

Oddly, I guess this is the one Dolby album I don't own: I have The Flat Earth, Aliens Ate My Buick, Astronauts and Heretics, and A Map of the Floating City. Thanks for the heads-up to seek out a deluxe edition with all the songs that got put in or left out.

I don't think I appreciated how great "2000 Miles" is — and yes, great as a Christmas song — until Canadian jazz singer Holly Cole covered it on her Christmastime Blues EP.

Cannonball Run was a remake already, of The Gumball Rally.

Just by coincidence of release dates, I had a bunch of anime discs arrive this week; I may have to tip my mail carrier or leave him some money at Christmas time.

The anachronistically-styled showtune "Blood" at the end of My Chemical Romance's The Black Parade might be the most MCR thing to ever MCR (for good and ill).

Bought Bowie's Blackstar off iTunes and it's as brilliant as advertised. Granted, I was already inclined to like his 2000's stuff like Reality and Heathen, so I suppose it would be a real jolt to someone whose Bowie experience consists of only Let's Dance and Ziggy Stardust, because it's richer and more challenging.…

Got back from a business trip and the Delta flight was one of those ones with the seat-back pick-your-own-entertainment systems. Moreover, I guess it was a plane that flies internationally, because its top movies were available in multiple languages, and they had a bunch of Japanese and Indian movies, subtitled in…

I doubt it'll ever happen, but I'd love to see a negative review of the Atlas Shrugged movies from someone who likes the source material. Or conversely (and far less likely), someone who doesn't like the books but thinks the movies are good. Most reviews are like this one: taking an enormous four-paragraph dump on…

Sounds like we would have been better off with a second season of Titan Maximum.

Last weekend, I was at Anime Weekend Atlanta, doing a presentation on the obscure Muv-Luv series of PC games. Well, formerly obscure… the Kickstarter to do an official English version just passed a half-million dollars and will soon become the most-supported visual novel KS ever. Anyways, this weekend, I made a video…

After 50+ hours, I finally reached the end of Muv-Luv Alternative, the visual novel that's the highest-rated of all time over on vndb.org. And yeah, the scope, ambition, and themes of this thing is pretty much off-the-chart. It's little known in the West because, like most visual novels, it's not legally available in…

John Carpenter? I heard of you. (PUNCH) I heard you were dead.