Last Tuesday, Harry Potter Fandom, and the Warner Brother’s accounting department bid a very sad farewell to one of the most successful film franchises ever ($2 billion in profit total, so far for the first 7 films), with the release of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 2.

For over 10 years now these films have been an integral part of our collective popular culture and for good reason. The films have always engaged its audiences both young and old, with its coming of age tale about a young wizard who didn’t quite fit in and his misadventures at Hogwarts.

The big question most fans will probably have is whether this film will put a fitting bookend on one of the most beloved film series in recent history. The short answer? Yes it does.

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Guest Post by Matt Teszner

What have you been up to this summer? If your best answer is, “I bowl. Drive around. The occasional acid flashback,” then the Ambler Theater has just the right event for you! It’s the 5th annual Little Lebowski Fest on July 20th.

General admission runs as low as $10 general, $5 for members, but you might want to shill out for the fest’s Achiver tickets – $15 general, $13 for members – complete with a Little Lebowski t-shirt and a White Russian. A costume contest and prizes will round out your evening. Frankly, I’d love to see some in-character renditions of Donny and The Jesus. Think you can make that happen?

If their fest is anything like the events set up last month at the TLA, this is not something you should miss. The White Russians were flowing en masse, Philly’s own Chipocrite played the soundtrack to sweet 8-bit perfection, and Walter Sobchak was everywhere. I walked away with some “Abide” stickers, buttons, and a good old coffee liquor buzz, enough to piss on some stranger’s rug.

Does the event make you feel a bit out of your element? Check out the rest of Ambler Theater’s Summer 2011 film series, which includes Hollywood classics and “Menacing Summer Nights,” your ticket to big-screen viewings Pulp Fiction and Aliens! Check out their website for a complete listing of events.

Karate-Robo Zaborgar is this Sunday’s closing film of the Danger After Dark film festival, and is the newest film by Noboru Iguchi; director of such films as Mutant Girl Squad and Robo-geisha. The film, which is an adaptation of an old Tokusatsu series Denjin Zaborger from the 70s, is the story of a man and his transforming robot motorcycle on a quest to avenge his scientist father’s death.

Really, what more do you need?

The film is told in 2 acts or “episodes” essentially, with the first act featuring Yutaka Daimon in his prime. He is a master martial artist fighting an evil organization with his trusty robot sidekick Zaborgar. While avenging his father, he is also busy keeping the evil organization Sigma from using the DNA of prominent leaders to create a giant killing Mecha.

That is until he falls in love with one of the enemy’s female cyborg assassins.

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The awards won’t look like this. Sorry.

Check out that counter on the right. The Philly Geek Awards are a little over a month away, and we are still super psyched. Do you have your tickets yet? YOU SHOULD GET THEM.

And speaking of those awards, we’ve got some nominations in for Outstanding Achievement in Local Film Production, both Feature Length and Short Film.

I’m also thrilled to announce our new sponsors… Chevy, Neurowater and Easy Canvas Prints. We’re still ironing out the details with Chevy, but Neurowater will absolutely have a table setup at the cocktail hour, dishing out free beverages. As for Easy Canvas, they’ll be making the enormous Philly Geek Awards banner. Thanks guys!

As for those nominations, check them out below. See you at the awards! (more…)

This weekend marks the fourth annual Stroehmann Back on My Feet 20in24 race event.

The event has multiple races – one for pajama-clad runners, another that kicks off at midnight on Saturday, a relay for the plays-well-with-others types and then there are the lone ranger ultra marathoners. What’s a lone ranger ultra marathoner? These are the crazies who spend 24 hours running as many 8.2 mile loops around the Art Museum as they can.

Back On My Feet is an awesome Philly non-profit organization that promotes the self-sufficiency of homeless populations by engaging them in running as a means to build confidence, strength and self-esteem. The group has been doing its good deeds since 2007, when it was started by Anne Mahlum.

Although registration closed on Wednesday, volunteers, race course cheering squads and online donations are always needed.

If you have been following Geekadelphia’s Geek of the Week, then you already know all about Lis Boriss and her webcomic Broken Plot Device. For those who haven’t (and you call yourself a geek), Broken Plot Device is the story of Lizardbeth, her group of friends and the apartment building they all live in. The comic falls squarely into the Furry category as all the characters are anthropomorphic animals including as lion, a wolf and a dragon. It is a very funny, very cute comic that you really need to be reading.

But for those that prefer their comics on dead trees, Lis has just published her third Broken Plot Device collection, Epic Sharktopus. It collects the entire third year of the comic and consists of some of my favorite storylines, including the Attack of the Killer Robo-Rex toys, the return of Dr. Gaimen Washe, roller derby fun and Lizardbeth’s experience in artist alley at a comic con. (That last one hit a bit too close to home after my own time in artist alley at Wizard World a few years ago.)

Sure, you can read them online for free, but I have always found that webcomics, especially ones with continuing storylines like Broken Plot Device, read better in one sitting. You can really get into the characters and truly appreciate some of the best artwork you will ever see in a webcomic. Broken Plot Device vol. 3: Epic Sharktopus will make a great addition to any bookshelf and I highly recommend it.

Broken Plot Device: Epic Sharktopus [ Lulu ]

Matt Conant (on the left)

Have you ever had a conversation with someone and afterward, you realize just how geeky it sounded? Like discussing why it took the Empire so long to build the first Death Star, yet had the second one done in a couple years? Not that I ever had that conversation…

Anyway, now imagine someone records it and puts it on the web. That would be the idea behind The OverAnalyzers. Matt Conant, one of the producers and actors in the show, was nice enough to talk to me about being over analytical and The Angry Video Game Nerd.

Who came up with the idea (which is so simple, yet brilliant)?

The concept was the brainchild of James Rolfe. I believe he and Mike Matei had been watching a lot of Transformers and started laughing at the sudden but constant disappearance of Optimus’s trailer. So from that sprung the concept that one could try to find explanations for the inexplicable in pop culture. I don’t think we realized we’d go so far off track every time, or that it would be funnier if we never reached a solution.

How do you decide on a topic?

We have a top-secret spreadsheet of possible topics that we share through Google Docs and discuss over the phone and IM (I know, nerdy). Stephanie and Mike actually wrote out a couple of scripts, but as we got close to shooting, we realized it was going to end up more off-the-cuff than scripted, so we cut them down to bullet-point lists and make sure to hit the needed punchlines.

It naturally became kind of a blend of script and improv. So when it comes time to shoot, James will go through our spreadsheet of hundreds of possible topics and select the 5-10 he really likes about a week in advance, and we’ve got a week or so to cultivate them and make them really funny. (more…)

Like any good Philadelphian, any time friends or family come to visit me I take on the role of tour guide and host. The thing is, I’ve only been here a year and a half myself, so sometimes I’m not the best at pointing out all the cool stuff our fair city has to offer. Enter Lokadot (think “local” + “anecdote”, sorta rhymes with “rope-a-dope”) a free iPhone app aimed at visiting tourists and curious city-dwellers alike.

Lokadot serves up information on local attractions based on the iPhone’s built in GPS and offers plenty of options. You can tell the app whether you want it to auto play as you near something in its database, how often you want it to play new content, what kind of attractions to focus on, and how close you need to be before it points something out. In my experience wandering around the Art Museum and Center City areas for a few hours, the app did a spot on job of picking up where I was at and what was nearby. (more…)

In the mid-1990s, the zine Ben Is Dead dedicated three issues to forgotten pop culture relics of the 1970s and ‘80s. Given the moniker “Retro Hell,” these installments were written by a team of writers (including Darby Romeo and the late Bruce Elliott) all of whom came of age during the era.

Eventually, the issues were compiled into a book that served as a eulogy for a forgotten age. Although it is missing the pathos that Retro Hell explored, Gael Fashingbauer Cooper and Brian Bellmont’s new book Whatever Happened to Pudding Pops?: The Lost Toys, Tastes & Trends of the ‘70s & ‘80s is nevertheless a memory-jarring chronicle of a bygone age. (more…)

As the lights of the house in the Wilma Theater slowly died down, the crowd grew silent in anticipation for James Braly to take the stage. He emerged with his clean cut academic attire wearing a proud smile on his face. Thinking back to how happy and excited he was to be on stage, it’s hard to juxtapose it with the honesty and bravery that Life in a Martial Institution (20 Years of Monogamy in One Terrifying Hour) possesses.

James Braly’s 65 minute monologue flows up and down through waves of humor, heart, and conflict. Listening to him speak of his 20 year relationship with such honesty really impressed me, and I he took me through this journey effortlessly. He wears his storytelling craft like an armored suit; recalling intimate details about his near adultery, his home birth, and his never ending struggle to coexist with his partner.

I was able to ask James a few questions regarding his work, and he was very enthusiastic to reply.

Your tour is called Life in a Marital Institution (20 Years of Monogamy In One Terrifying Hour. The title speaks for itself. Tell me some of the personal challenges you faced while writing this.

The main personal challenge was the fear of the repercussions of telling (what I saw as) the truth—not that this show is a tell-all, but it uses reality as a departure point to explore larger themes. This sounds benign enough, until you realize it’s your life being used as that departure point. What would my wife say or do? My siblings and parents? My children? I decided nobody in the show could see the piece in development.

Even now, after it’s Off Broadway run, some people characterized in the show have not seen it—which is probably just as well; I have enough problems as it is. The other big challenge was, I had to carve a LOT of time from my schedule to write and rehearse and perform and market the show-while working enough as a speechwriter to fund a stay-at-home mother with two young kids (with a father writing and rehearsing and performing and marketing a show about them), not to mention fathering those kids in real life. (more…)

Plate of Love by Hanna Santhi

Hilary Sedgwick and Kenny Kim, two (recently engaged!) local creative types with a penchant for photography and design are the founders and creators of the Masterpieces Made Simple Gallery. The MMS Gallery is a showcase for everyday folks who capture great pictures with their mobile phones, with each showing focused on a particular theme. I caught up with Hilary and asked some questions about the project while she prepared for the next gallery opening… which focuses on food!

Tell me about the MMS Gallery! Where’d the idea come from? How did you get it started? How does it work?

The gallery idea came to life one night over beers. Kenny and I were sitting in Prohibition Taproom and we had been talking about technology and the iPhone; nerding out basically. I am not sure what the exact cause of the idea was but I know by the end of the night Kenny and I were trying to figure out what the next steps were to make this idea a reality. From working at O3 World, I knew there was an empty space in front of the office that was perfect to hold the gallery shows. All we needed to do was develop the brand, get the website up and try to generate some public interest to get the shows going.

MMS stands for Masterpieces Made Simple, but it was also a play on words. MMS was a nod to photos being taken with a mobile phone but reworked to honor the concept behind the gallery, the idea that everyone is an artist. As mobile technology continues to evolve, so does the medium’s relevance in the art world. Some would consider it a travesty to think of the mobile phone as a means to create art. We celebrate it. Moments that were once overlooked or bypassed because a person didn’t have a camera can now be captured and shared because of emergence of phone technology. It’s these moments that nurture relevance regardless of whether the person who captured it considers themselves to be an artist or not. (more…)

Since pretty much every DC comic has become irrelevant thanks to the September reboot, expect a lot more Marvel and independent books for the next couple weeks in the Comic Roundup. Not that that is a bad thing.

Fear Itself: Uncanny X-Force #1
By Rob Williams and Simone Bianchi

So far, the Fear Itself tie-in books have been a mixed bag. Some, like Iron Man 2.0 and Heroes for Hire, have been the kind of crap you wish you could return to the store. Others, like Journey Into Mystery and Thunderbolts, have been great reads that serve as integral parts of the larger story. But X-Force could easily be the best Fear Itself tie-in series yet. (more…)