Yippee…! Last night I booted up my Xbox 360 to play a little Far Cry 2 and was pleasantly surprised to see my old 360 dashboard morph into the much touted New Xbox Experience, 1full day before the expected launch date. As it turns out - everyone who signed up for the beta program, and not previously accepted, was granted access as of last night.

After creating a reasonable facsimile of myself in the new Avatar creation tool (much to the dismay of my wife who was a little creeped out by my anime-styled clone) I headed straight for the goods: the new Netflix integration. In case you hadn’t heard, Netflix has joined up with Microsoft to stream all of their on-demand titles directly to subscribers’ Xbox consoles. At their second-to-lowest subscription package, this means near-instant - and unlimited - access to streaming content straight from Netflix vaults.

While the selection of goods is a little on the pale side, at least compared to their full library, it’s an absolute steal at the price. Of course, you still get access to their DVD-rental service and can stream the content to your PC as well.

I don’t mean to make this sound like a damn infomercial, but Netflix support is without a doubt the coolest feature the Xbox 360 has going for it right now (I mean, aside from all the game-playing and whatnot). I can’t wait for less mainstream fare to become available - although Herzog’s Aguirre: the Wrath of God and The Short Films of David Lynch are nothing to sneeze at. And more HD programming would be welcome. But, other than that, nicely played, Microsoft!

And buh-bye pay-per-view!

Wasn’t planning on doing an all-kids day here at Yellow-Menace, but some days are like that. A hefty backslap to Kotaku’s Japan-based correspondent Brian Ashcraft as he and the missus welcome progeny number deux into the world.

Trust me when I say that 2 kids is where the fun really starts!

I’ve been meaning to get off my lazy ass and post these for a couple weeks now. My son is a rabid Ghostbusters fan. I picked up the Ghostbusters/Ghostbusters II DVD combo about 18-months ago and for whatever reason he promptly sat through the original film about twice a week for six months straight. He hums the incidental music to himself when occupied with other things and knows the name of every character, major and minor. Seriously - it’s scary.

So when Halloween time approached this year, when asked what he wanted to be for Halloween, his response was: Peter Venkman! Of course, being me - I procrastinated until October 29th before hacking out his costume in desperation over the course of two days. I fabricated a proton pack and proton accelerator out of spare shipping material lying around the office and computer cables from home and accented it with vinyl graphics I produced at work. I made the night vision goggles out of swimming goggles and two small sections of PVC pipe. Elbow and kneepads were purchased at Wal-Mart and the shirt, shoes, and pants came out my son’s wardrobe (tan utility jumpsuits for four-year-olds apparently aren’t a regularly stocked item at most department stores, so we had to make do).

The whole think took about 1-1/2 days to assemble from first tinge of panic to the last coat of paint.

More pics after the jump…

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Wow - I’m surprised I haven’t come across this before. Being both FIlipino and a sci-fi geek of the highest order, this seems like a publication custom-designed for my consumption. The Philippine Speculative Fiction Sampler is just what it sounds like - a free, online sampler platter of sci-fi/fantasy writing from the land of my forebears.

I haven’t read any of it yet (hey, there’s a limit to how much I can slack off at work) but it looks pretty promising. The Cory Doctorow at Boing Boing gave it a nod, so it can’t be all that bad, right?!?

Considering Star Trek actor George Takei’s recent gay antics, perhaps wrestling references are inappropriate.

At any rate, I continue to marvel at William Shatner’s insane rantings regarding the spat between himself and Takei - as I understand it, tensions have existed between the pair for years, but Takei’s recent wedding seems to have put a spark to the powder-keg. Ever since Shatner’s invitation (or lack thereof, depending on who you ask) to said wedding, Shatner’s been on a warpath to discredit Takei, and now it seems he’s going to vent his spleen on his new talk show Raw Nerve.

“George has been mean to me for a long time — I mean, decades and decades,” Shatner insisted. “I’m not mad at him. I’m just annoyed that he keeps saying mean things about me … I just wish he’d stop.”

Of course, Takei may not have any reason to stop his alleged bad behavior, what with Shatner taking new swipes at him in the form of old “Star Trek” stories.

Shatner reminisced about one exchange he shared with Takei after learning the Sulu character would get his own ship. “I remember saying to him, ‘George, you’re going to be on another starship and all the action takes place on our starship; aren’t you going to be missing that?’” Shatner recalled. “He said, ‘Yes, but I’ll have my own starship.’ I didn’t want to remind him that this was fiction and not reality. I didn’t want to destroy his world.

On the off chance that Takei’s world remained intact after hearing that, Shatner then offered his former friend the chance to hash it out on his talk show.

Like, omigod, dude - let it go. One of you two is being seriously obsessive - and it’s not the gay Asian guy.

I don’t normally post this sort of stuff, but there are probably more than a few of you who would jump at the chance to pick up a few of Criterion’s pricey (but not overpriced - let’s get that straight) offerings. From now until November 25th, every in-stock item at Criterion’s website is being offered at a hefty 40% discount. For the record, that includes every Akira Kurosawa film they currently offer. Other choice offerings include Hiroshi Inagaki’s Musashi Trilogy (ahem), Wong Kar Wai’s In the Mood for Love, the Yasujiro Ozu box set, and what I consider to be the best Samurai film ever made (yes, even better than Seven Samurai), Masaki Kobayashi’s Hara-Kiri.

Don’t drag your feet, peeps…

The live-action Robotech adaptation being produced by Hollywood power mogul (yes, that’s facetiousness you detect) will be scripted by Smallville writers Alfred Gough and Miles Millar. So speaketh Aint-It-Cool-News. I’m not a big fan of Smallville, but since it’s apparently been on television since I was six, those guys must be doing something right. Personally I think Joss Whedon needs another film gig (nudge-nudge), but hey - whatdoiknow.

After shitting all over poor Voltron earlier this week as I dismantled some wingnut’s death-knell announcement of anime as a genre, I felt kinda bad. As bad as Voltron was (is), it provided me lots of after-school shits and giggles and was pretty much all we had to watch at the time, anime-wise.

Sorry Voltron - didn’t mean to be so harsh. Call me sometime. We’ll grab a pizza. Not this weekend, though, ’cause I got plans. Or next weekend - tell you what, why don’t I call you. ‘kay?

(via Boing Boing)

To celebrate the 40th anniversary of Japanese comedic everyman hero Tora-San, Shochiku is re-mastering and re-releasing the entire stable of Tora-San fims (some 40-odd flicks) with English subtitles. No word on Region 1 release dates or anything, but this is good news for Tora-San fans outside of Japan.

The series stretched to 48 installments until Atsumi’s death in 1996. All but two of the films were directed by Yoji Yamada, also known for the gentle realism of his family dramas, and for the trilogy of understated period films initiated by “The Twilight Samurai” (”Tasogare Seibei,” 2002).

It is appropriate to view these films in the context of an anniversary, since the Tora-san series was calculatedly nostalgic from the start. Even in the late ’60s, the Japan it described was an anachronism, and the films were basically salutes to the close-knit suburban communities that had disappeared due to war and redevelopment.

Indeed, the Tora-san films may be interpreted as Shochiku’s tribute to its own work in the prewar and early postwar years. The blend of pathos and humor recalled the bittersweet flavor of the shomin-geki, or drama about the lower-middle classes, of which Yasujiro Ozu was the most distinguished exponent. That connection was made explicit by the casting of Chishu Ryu, Ozu’s regular star (most famous to Western viewers as the father in 1953’s “Tokyo Story”) as the priest of Tora-san’s local temple.

Actually, I think his words were ‘Arrrr, they be fine - matey! Pass the grog and raise the mizzenmast!’…but can you really trust a pirate? I mean, can you ?

All the 24 crewmembers on board the Chinese fishing ship, which has been hijacked by pirates off southern Somalia, are “fine”, a pirate leader told a radio station in the Somali capital Mogadishu Friday.The pirate leader, who did not identify himself, told Shabelle radio that his group abducted the Chinese ship some 48 km off the coast of southern Somali port city of Kismanyu, 500 km south of Mogadishu, late Thursday afternoon.

He claimed that they seized the vessel because it was fishing in Somali territorial waters and said the crew would be “put before the law and punished accordingly”.