Trisha L. Renken-Sebastian (aka "Trisha Lynn" is a jill-of-many-trades. A former editor of both Wizard: Anime Insider and Sequential Tart, she has also been the managing editor for Saucy Goose Press, a small independent publisher, and contributed to a 2009 episode of the public radio show “This American Life.” She currently lives on Vancouver Island in Canada where she bides her time until she can create her own socially responsible media empire.
I felt it was a weird thing that every time you ask for a strong female role, it’s written in this strange way where it uses sexuality far too much. Or it’s all about being a woman and beating a man. So it wasn’t a surprise to me that the only way to do a strong female role properly was to not have originally written for a woman.
—The agent-and-publicist-less Angelina Jolie on why she decided to star in Salt, courtesy of the December issue of Vogue.
(Many thanks to indie blogger Anne Thompson for the link.)
Adam Ferrara: A comedian and actor, his biggest credit to date is starring as Chief Nelson on “Rescue Me.”
Tanner Foust: A stunt driver whose credits include two of the The Fast and the Furious movies, he’s also a rally driver and has competed in the X Games.
Rutledge Wood: He’s the dark horse of the trio, having no major mainstream screen credits to his name, other than appearing on SPEED in a show called “NASCAR Smarts.” This show is so off the radar it doesn’t have its own Wikipedia page.
Now, I’m not the most car-obsessed person in the world and I love original-flavor “Top Gear.” I also loved “Initial D” when I first saw it. And yet something really bothers me about the approach they’re taking in the trailer.
Lemme backtrack a second: German race car driver Sabine Schmitz has been featured on the original “Top Gear” several times; the most recent appearance was in 2008 when she and her two “D Motor” co-presenters took on the lads in a series of crazy races, one of which involved the removal of a prosthetic arm.
The thing I noticed about the German team was that Schmitz seemed to have the most personality and charisma out of the three (and I am willing to concede that perhaps I like her a lot because she’s a female racer). However, all three were pretty fun to watch during the double-decker race because they were as aggressive and crazy as Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond, and James May.
These three guys? I don’t get a sense of that kind of craziness, and that’s what keeps people watching “Top Gear.”
But, [Tanner Foust] rocks because he wears his heart on his sleeve. While riding shotgun in a Lamborghini with him around the Las Vegas Convention Center, I told him that fan-boys of the UK series were rooting for this version of “Top Gear” to fail. His first response was viscerally physical. His jaw set, his eyes narrowed behind his sunglasses and he gripped the steering wheel more tightly. For a split second I had a vision of him letting go of the steering wheel and lunging at my neck. Then he explained just how much the concept of Top Gear meant to him.
It was at that moment that I realized he looked so hurt by the comment because the guy’s just like us — a fan-boy.
Anyway, this is going into my DVR, and if all things go right, you may even be able to either read or hear a commentary of the show between me and our U.K. TV expert Kara Dennison.
“Top Gear USA” premieres on the History Channel on Sunday, November 21 at 10:00 pm Eastern/9:00 pm Central and will likely repeat.
In a wonderful bit of synergy, the last movie in the Saw franchise was released in 3D right before Halloween. Having never seen any of the movies before, Lyssa Spero and I decided to watch the first one a while ago and recorded the results for all of you to hear.
I must warn you that the audio in this is terribly NSFW if you don’t have headphones on because there were just that many moments of WTF going on. Also, it goes without saying that this commentary is full of spoilers for not only the first Saw, but a few of the others, and has casting spoilers for Saw 3D.
Anyway, I hope you enjoy listening to this as much as we enjoyed recording it.
Let me also point out that the Phantom sounds like a petulant child. Let’s compare some of his lines from the original: “Floating, falling, sweet intoxication/Touch me, trust me, savor each sensation.” Yeah, it’s a bit Chester the Molester, but at least he’s trying to be sexy. (And he could be pretty funny, too, especially at the expense of the managers and Piangi.) His new verbal pyrotechnics? “I don’t see the problem/This is ancient history!” I mean, I can hear a cheating husband say that on Springer any day of the week, though possibly not in song.
What does dance have to do with comic books? Plenty, says LXD creator Jon Chu
Picking up where I left off, I didn’t stay very long in the southern end of the Javitz Center because the one panel I’d RSVP’d for was in the northern end of the hall with the majority of the large publishers, game companies, and stores.
When I registered as a member of the Press, I had to supply my email address, presumably so that I could receive a confirmation that they received my information. What also happened is that as the convention grew new, my Inbox became flooded with press releases from those same publishers, game companies, stores, and individuals who wished to promote their panels and get members of the Press to write about their work.
One of the things I love about the Otakon anime convention is that the people who run it not only have a great love of the medium, they care about people in the industry as well. After director Satoshi Kon’s passing two months ago, the members of the non-profit responsible for running the Baltimore, Md. convention decided to do something for the family members and colleagues he left behind.
“There was such an outpouring of shock when he died, and so many fans expressed appreciation and gratitude—we wanted some way to let his family see, firsthand, how much of an impact Kon had,” wrote former con chair and current Otakorp. member-at-large Jim Vowles in a post to the Anime Cons ML.
Fans can visit the website (located at https://www.otakon.com/satoshikonfarewell.asp) and they can either send a message to a Gmail account that has been set up for this purpose, send a letter or condolences card to a U.S. physical address, donate money to an accredited charity which helps fight life-threatening cancers—or most importantly, purchase DVDs of works by Satoshi Kon.
From the website:
First, strong sales may increase the likelihood that Kon’s final project [The Dream Machine] will be completed. Second, like most in the animation industry, Satoshi Kon was not a wealthy man, but unlike many, he held some intellectual property that he hoped would continue to provide for his family after his death.
Me, I’m up for purchasing Perfect Blue when payday hits on Saturday, and I urge you to pick something out as well.
Approximately 10 years ago, I used to go to a lot of conventions, like the San Diego Comic Con (aka “Nerd Prom”) and Anime Expo. In fact, in 2001, I think I went to six different conventions on two different U.S. coasts.
My most traveled year was 2003 when I was working for the now-defunct Anime Insider as an associate editor and went to the Wizard World conventions in Chicago, Arlington (Texas), and Philadelphia; my busiest year was when I was an assistant editor for Sequential Tart and covered Anime Expo all by myself.
As a writer, I love the concept and the results which come from the annual 24-Hour Comics Day events; this year’s batch was no exception.
For the non-comics geeks reading this, I’ll explain briefly: Back in 1990, comics author, theorist, and now-luminary Scott McCloud dared his fellow comics artist friend Steve Bissette to draw a 24-page story in 24 hours. The aim of the exercise was for Bissette to become a faster artist, because as anyone who wants to break into the comics business as an artist knows, nobody likes to work with someone who can’t meet a deadline. And just because McCloud is the kind of man who puts his drawing tools where his mouth is, he decided to create a story under the same constraints.
The results can be viewed here, and over the last two decades, many other comics creators have taken up the gauntlet of the challenge. With the advent of the Internet, creators have also begun blogging about their process and it has now truly become a worldwide event which drawn in new participants every year and spawned a book or two.
When it comes to innovation in comics creation, though, I think that this year San Antonio, Texas artist Lea Hernandez took home the prize in coolest and most tech-savvy comic, with an entry that I think she’s calling “Jackwagon,” which she created entirely on her iPhone, courtesy of an application called Brushes.
To read it in its entirety, click here (and note that it’s not entirely safe for work).
There are a lot of things that can make me cry while watching a movie. When I saw Return of the Jedi for the first time in the theaters, the climactic battle between the Ewoks and the Imperial soldiers traumatized me because the little innocent fuzzy creatures who didn’t really undertand about war were dying. (Of course as an adult, I have to wonder exactly what that very large net was supposed to catch, and what the Ewoks were gonna do with whatever they usually catch.)
Now that I understand what real pain, heartbreak and loss are, whenever I sense the real thing in a movie, it will instantly reduce me to tears even faster than before. One such moment came early during the preview screening of Life As We Know It, and it affected how I viewed the whole movie. Continue reading “Trisha’s Take: Life as We Know It review”→
When I was a nascent comics fan in the mid-1990s, one of the most important things I learned about the art was that Rob Liefeld can’t draw feet.
Since then, I’ve learned that the former Marvel Comics wunderkind who created X-Force and one of the founding members of Image Comics also can’t draw women, men, guns, pouches, and quite a few other things. In addition, by not fixing these kinds of errors, I always got the impression that he didn’t seem to care that he was a bad artist; one family friend of his told me back then that he was “laughing all the way to the bank.”
In a wonderful bit of synergy, the last movie in the Saw franchise was released in 3D right before Halloween. Having never seen any of the movies before, Lyssa Spero and I decided to watch the first one a while ago and recorded the results for all of you to hear.
One of the things I love about the 
As a writer, I love the concept and the results which come from the annual 
