I really enjoyed SyFy’s Tin Man last year (ugh, still not used to writing SyFy. Stupid, stupid name). While it wasn’t exactly a masterpiece, it was a cool sci-fi re-interpretation of the standard Wizard of Oz story. Now SyFy has done the same thing with Alice in Wonderland.

Now it isn’t exactly a “preview” cause the first part aired yesterday (the second will air tonight), but I still haven’t had the chance to check this out. It stars Caterina Scorsone as Alice, Kathy Bates as the Queen of Hearts, Andrew-Lee Potts as resistance fighter Hatter, Tim Curry as resistance leader Dodo, Colm Meaney as the King of Hearts, Harry Dean Stanton as the Caterpillar and Matt Frewer as the White Knight. Here’s the trailer:

Now for the second part of my Christmas wish list. I already blogged about the normal books last week and this time I’ve listed the comics/graphic novels I want. I’ll try to be a bit more informative than the previous post, actually writing a bit about the books (was impossible last time with the amount of books in that list). The main reason I’m writing about these is that they all look like great books and you might get inspired to get these for the geeky gal or guy in your life.

Scott Pilgrim

This series has been on my list for some time now; it’s about Scott Pilgrim, a guy who falls in love with a girl, but has to beat her 7 evil ex-boyfriends in battle before he can date her. A film adaption is currently being made based on it, and it looks awesome! Here’s the description:

Scott Pilgrim’s life is totally sweet. He’s 23 years old, he’s in a rock band, he’s “between jobs,” and he’s dating a cute high school girl. Nothing could possibly go wrong, unless a seriously mind-blowing, dangerously fashionable, rollerblading delivery girl named Ramona Flowers starts cruising through his dreams and sailing by him at parties. Will Scott’s awesome life get turned upside-down? Will he have to face Ramona’s seven evil ex-boyfriends in battle? The short answer is yes. The long answer is Scott Pilgrim, Volume 1: Scott Pilgrim’s Precious Little Life.

The first volume Scott Pilgrim’s Precious Little Life is available on Book Depository for £6.07.

Runaways

I love stories with people discovering they have special powers and Runaways has an interesting slant to it: a group of kids find out their parents are “The Pride”, a criminal group of mob-bosses, dark wizards and ‘more evilness’. They runaway and learn that they’ve inherited their parents powers.

All young people believe their parents are evil… but what if they really are? Meet Alex, Karolina, Gert, Chase, Molly and Nico – whose lives are about to take an unexpected turn. When these six young friends discover their parents are all secretly super-powered villains, the shocked teens find strength in one another.

The first collected edition Runaways vol 1: Pride and Joy is available on Book Depository for £4.08.

Rising Stars

J. Michael Straczynski! Ever since Babylon 5 I’ve wanted to read some of his non TV show stuff, and Rising Stars looks like something right down my alley. It’s about 113, called “Specials”, born with special abilities after a comet struck near their hometown while they were in utero. The series explores how society may react to the advent of superpowers and how those who are Specials may react towards society and each other.

There are multiple editions of this series and it can be kind of confusing what exactly is what. The easiest to get is the Rising Stars Compendium, which collects all publications in one volume (£27.93 on Book Depository for the paperback, £56.30 for the hardcover). This version covers everything, so you don’t have to get anything besides that. Besides that though, they still also sell the thinner volumes, each covering parts of the story (5 volumes in total), but I’d suggest the compendium is easier (plus cheaper on the long run).

Buffy Season 8

I loved how Buffy ended it’s TV show, but still I was happy to find out that it would continue in comic book form. I’ve read the first three collected editions so far, and want the fourth and fifth ones that are out now (Time of Your Life and Predators and Prey).

The actual issues have been coming out almost once every month since March 2007, and in total there are now 30 issues. I tried collecting these issues, but it was easier to just wait for the collected editions. Each collected edition bundles 5 of the issues together (so far there are 5 of these, covering issues #1-#25). I’m not sure how much more I can say about this, it’s a definite must-have for every Buffy fan.

The first collected edition The Long Way Home is available on Book Depository for £6.51.

Fray

Yep, another Buffy/Joss Whedon comic. Well, technically it’s not ‘Buffy’, but it is part of the Buffy-verse. Set in the future, Manhattan is now a slum, run by mutant crime lords and disinterested cops. Stuck in the middle of this all, is Melaka Fray, a vampire Slayer.

Fray is available on Book Depository for £10.07.

Fables

I adore re-interpretations of mythology, fairy tales, and other old stories. While it’s not that difficult to find good re-imaginings of mythology, it always is a bit trickier with fairy tales. Fables though seems like exactly the type of re-interpretation that I’m interested in.

The series deals with various characters from fairy tales and folklore – referring to themselves as “Fables” – who have been forced out of their Homelands by “The Adversary” who has conquered the realm. The Fables have traveled to our world and formed a clandestine community in New York City known as Fabletown. Fables who are unable to blend in with human society (such as monsters and anthropomorphic animals) live at “the Farm” in upstate New York.

The first volume of Fables (Legends in Exile) is available on Book Depository for £5.16.

Yoko Tsuno

I blogged about this series last week, and as I said then I would love to have these in English (so that I can lend them out and show people how awesome it is). If you haven’t seen that post and are too lazy to click through and read there what it’s all about, it’s about a young Japanese electrical engineer who gets mixed up in time travel, space and all sorts of other sci-fi-y adventures.

The first volume On The Edge of Life (weird, it’s actually not really the first volume, not according to the original French version, but it’s the one they started publishing in English first and is numbered as #1) is available on Book Depository for £4.45.

Any tips on what other comics I should get? Or I should put on my wish list next time?

It doesn’t happen everyday that someone you know is making a TV show, and actually delivers something that looks awesome. I met Sizemore (aka Mike Atherton) almost two years ago at the Tuttle/SocialMedia Cafe (not sure what it exactly is called nowadays, haven’t been able to make it for ages), and he’s one of the familiar faces I keep bumping into at various events here in London.

I think it was about a year ago when he mentioned for the first time that he was working on creating a new sci fi show… and now a sizzle reel has been released and it looks awesome. It’s not an actual trailer yet (cause there isn’t an actual pilot yet), it’s more like a mini promo to pitch the show to TV networks and executives etc. They’re hoping to shoot a pilot in 2010.

For more info about Slingers, head on over to Sizemore’s blog.

Besides my new Shelftastic recurring posts, I’m also starting Book Lust (yeah, I couldn’t find a more original name, any other suggestions?). I’ll feature books that are coming out in the future, specifically those with shiny pretty covers.

I already blogged about Naamah’s Kiss in my Christmas Wish List, but the cover of it’s sequel has just been released and it’s just as gorgeous:

As I said before it’s the sequel to Naamah’s Kiss, Jacqueline Carey’s third trilogy set in the world of Terre d’Ange. The hardcover will be coming out in June 2010. Here’s the blurb:

Far from the land of her birth, Moirin sets out across Tatar territory to find Bao, the proud and virile Ch’in fighter who holds the missing half of her diadh-anam, the divine soul-spark of her mother’s people. After a long ordeal, she not only succeeds, but surrenders to a passion the likes of which she’s never known. But the lovers’ happiness is short lived, for Bao is entangled in a complication that soon leads to their betrayal.

I mentioned last week that I’ve got a ton of gorgeous bookshelves and other creative book storage solutions to share with you, so I’ve started a new recurring blog post: Shelftastic!

To start thing off, this first Shelftastic features a cool book case design: the stair-case!

I think it’s a pretty cool design and would work perfect in rooms with high ceilings. Imagine if it went higher than this and you could pull out more than just the 3 parts shown in the image above? It’s designed by Danny Kuo:

The initial keywords: space, storage, future. In the future space becomes more desireable because big apartment buildings are taking over normal 1, 2 or 3 level houses. Building vertically is more efficient because less ground square meters are needed to house people. Therefore focus will be on height rather than width in the future. However current storage furniture is designed for humans with a length of 1.7 or 1.8 meters also our furniture needs to grow in height in in order to be more efficient. This StairCASE is an answer to this need. It reaches the ceiling and the topshelves are still easy to reach without getting into awkward positions or getting help from another furniture piece.

Episode 150: “If animals can recycle, so can we”

Wow, this is the 150th Video of The Day post I’ve done! This video is a collection of 11 shorts from Animal Planet to highlight ‘going green’. They’re from 2008, but this is the first time I’ve come across them (I don’t watch that much Animal Planet myself), so I thought I’d share them with you:

My lunch of choice when I eat at home is soup and some bread (or hot noodles), so this tray set would be perfect for me:

It’s available for $30 on UncommonGoods.com. Santa?

Via Design Crush

I came across this great offer on British Beauty Blogger: you buy any Estee Lauder fragrance and then you can buy their professional make-up collection for only £49 (worth more than £300). On the actual Estee Lauder site though, it was completely sold out and has in fact disappeared now from the page. Yesterday I was lucky enough to stumble on it at Selfridges and I got it straightaway! Yay!

The makeup collection includes 4 lipsticks, an eyeshadow compact with 15 colours, a face compact with 2 blushes and a bronzer, 3 eye pencils, eye makeup remover, 4 makeup brushes, a golden stand mirror, a traveler case and a makeup case. For only £49, that’s a pretty good deal. I’m completely in love with one of the lipsticks, and the eyeshadows and eye pencils are a great addition to my growing makeup collection. Keep in mind, one makeup brush alone costs at least £15, so buying the set for those brushes alone make already sense.

They still had quite a couple in stock at Selfridges and I also saw some at one of the other Oxford street department stores (I went to all of them, so I’m not sure which ones still had it).

Here are a couple photos I took of some of the stuff (room is a bit dark, so photos are more bluish than in reality, left out mirror and golden pouch thingy):

Deluxe Eyeshadow Compact with 15 coordinating shades (Sugar Cube, Ivory Box, Honey Drop, Lavender, Chocolate, Tea Biscuit, Copper Penny, Petal, Mulberry, Pale Moon, Cinnamon, Apricot and Mocha Cup in Pure Color EyeShadow, plus Sage Duo in Estée Lauder Signature Eyeshadow)

4 Pure Color Long Lasting Lipsticks (full-size, in Tiger Eye, Candy, Rose Tea, Fig). I’m loving the Fig!

Deluxe Face Compact (Estée Lauder Signature Silky Powder Blush in Rosewood and Nude Rose, and Bronze Goddess Soft Matte Bronzer)

3 Artist’s Eye Pencils (great for smoky eyes, in SoftSmudge Black, SoftSmudge Brown and Slate Writer), Projectionist High Definition Volume Mascara (10-day supply, in Black), Lash Primer Plus (10-day supply), Gentle Eye Makeup Remover (full-size 3.4 oz.)

4 Deluxe Makeup Brushes (Powder, Blush, Eye and Lip)

Cosmetic Traveler Case

It’s officially December! Time to bring our the Christmas carols and decorations. It’s less than a month to Christmas, so I thought I’d help out all those wonderful people who will have to buy presents for me. My birthday is only 2 months after that, and I always end up just using the same wish list.

I read tons of books, so this first part just contains the books I want. Look at all those pretty covers! (Just click on the images to go to Amazon and see more details).

Books from writers of which I’ve already read previous books:

Books from writers I’ve never read before:

I’ve also finally set up my GoodReads account with all the books I’ve read. Well, that’s not completely true; it contains all the books I’ve got here in the UK in my bookcase and all the books I remember reading. I know there’s a plank at my parents with some books I couldn’t get through, and I don’t think I’ve added all of those (another thing to go on my TODO list when I’m in NL).

This sounds intriguing:

Eight talented candidates have reached the final stage of selection to join the ranks of a mysterious and powerful corporation. Entering a windowless room, an Invigilator gives them eighty minutes to answer one simple question. He outlines three rules they must obey or be disqualified: don’t talk to him or the armed guard by the door, don’t spoil their papers and don’t leave the room. He starts the clock and leaves. The candidates turn over their question papers, only to find they’re completely blank.

Exam debuted a couple months ago at the Edinburgh Film Festival, with a release date in the UK for January 8th 2010, and it looks pretty interesting. The trailer is pretty cool, but again gives away more than I feel comfortable with. Do we really have to see that much of movie? I suggest watching it halfway to three quarters. The final bits seem to spoil too much:

So what did you think? Did you watch it to the end? Too spoilery or not?