With VHS currently going through a renaissance, it was only a matter of time before someone documented the format’s journey from almost complete extinction to its newfound cult status. In fact, there are no less than 2 documentaries currently tackling this subject right now, Rewind This and Adjust Your Tracking.

Adjust Your Tracking will be having its Philadelphia Premier at PhilaMOCA this Saturday, May 25^th with filmmakers in attendance. 

Adjust Your Tracking was successfully kickstarted almost a year ago and is now just starting to tour the festival and convention circuit. The film is a great look at not only the origins of VHS in the 70s, but its rise and eventual fall due to the arrival of DVD in the late 90s. However, where this doc truly shines is when it comes to chronicling the formats newfound status as the vinyl for cinephiles and the people who obsessively collect it. Continue Reading…

I will fully admit to being a fan of The Fast and Furious Franchise since I saw the first film back in 2001. While some folks may try to intellectualize and discount the films based on their apparent shortcomings, this is a series for those that are there to both rejoice and revel in their strengths and have a whole lot of fun while doing it. While they did struggle to find a focus during the first 3 films, once they got to part 4 they have only gotten bigger and better with each installment thereafter.

Fast & Furious 6 picks up a few months after Fast Five with the birth of Brian O’Conner’s (Paul Walker) son. Everyone is still living the good life in countries without extradition after the heist from the previous film that netted them about 100 million dollars. That is until Agent Hobbs (The Rock) shows up to let Dominic (Vin Diesel) know his girlfriend Letty (Michelle Rodriguez) who died in 4 is still alive and working for former Special Ops soldier Owen Shaw. Shaw also happens to be the leader of a unit terrorizing London specializing in – you guessed it vehicular warfare.

Of course, they get the whole crew back together this time teaming up with Hobbs and are off to London. Their mission: to get Letty back and take down Shaw earning full pardons in the process for all previous crimes, thus allowing them to return to the US. Things get complicated and rather bad soap opera-ish when we find Letty is suffering from selective amnesia and no longer remembers who she is.

But don’t let that discourage you, after all plot is purely secondary in these films. Continue Reading…

Welcome to another exciting edition of the Geekend! There’s not a whole lot going on this weekend, which is probably a good thing – I’m sure you’ve got half a dozen barbecues to go to for Memorial Day weekend. But in case you don’t, here are a few things going on around town that you can geek out over.

Friday, May 24

If you’re looking for something on Friday, you can check out the monthly Hot Spots and Storied Plots at the Laurel Hill Cemetery. The walk starts at 10AM and costs $8, and “will include many of the marble masterpieces, stunning views and legendary stories that afford the cemetery its WOW factor.” Check it out if you’ve got the day off and want to start your long weekend off right!

Friday night, you can check out some comedy at the Shubin Theater. First is Sketch Comedy: The Flat Earth at 8:30PM for $14. This is followed by Variety Comedy: The Grimacchio Variety Hour at 10PM for $14. This variety show “pays tribute to classic shows like Colgate Comedy Hour and The Carol Burnett Show.” Continue Reading…

Close To Good, a favorite local band of us Geekadelphians (and features former Geek of the Weeker Kevin Ragone), recently teamed up with local chiptune musician Apoc. You might have caught Apoc at PhilaMOCA, as he’s a regular at the 8static open mics.

Apoc and Close To Good have released a new single, Solstice, and are planning to collaborate moving forward, and we’re pretty damn psyched about it. Seriously, just check out the video above of them playing the song together.

You can listen to and download the new song over on Close To Good’s official website. Kevin put together a fun microsite for the track that I think you’ll all get a kick out of.

Can’t wait to see more from these guys!

Philly is a hotbed for indie game developers. Graycode Software has recently released a brain-busting brilliant puzzle game based off of japanese crossword puzzles. In order to wrap your head around NonoCube, think of it kind of like Soduku crossed with Minesweeper.

I got a chance to play the game and it really does force you to think in a different way. Most iOS and Android games ask you to have fast fingers or knowledge of physics trajectories in order to win. NonoCube take a bit more thought and spacial awareness. The numbers on the cubes give you a hint as to how many blocks you need to remove in a column or row. When you add up all the evidence, the blocks needed to be removed become oh so obvious. The first few levels acclimate you to this way of thinking, but they quickly ramp up the difficulty. You have four tools at your disposal to shield and destroy blocks. They work well with the touchscreen controls on the iOS.

The most important question though has yet been asked. Is the game fun? Yes! It is a welcome break from frantic endless running games and poor attempts at shooters on your iPhone. After a few levels, you find yourself absorbed in a zen-like trance where the only things that exist are blocks and numbers.

So, NonoCube, get it. It comes in both free and paid versions, but it is only $1.99 for the paid version so please feel free to toss a few bucks to the brilliant  local geeks behind the game. They’ve done something special and turned mind bending puzzles into something enjoyable for everyone!

Also, you might want to try your own logic and luck to win a copy of the “Platium Pack.” This adds even more migraine enducing puzzled into the mix. You can win a copy through June 1st by guessing the number of total blocks used in the “Normal Mode” of the game. You have two options to enter.

1.     Following @NonoCubeGame on Twitter and tweeting a guess to the account.

2.     Liking NonoCube’s Facebook page and submitting a guess in the contest thread.

Hint: The largest possible NonoCube puzzle dimensions are 9 x 9 x 9 (or 729 blocks).

Best of luck!

Men of Philadelphia, listen up.

Can anyone think of even one instance in which whistling, barking, or making a lewd comment at a woman in public has actually been effective? A select handful of Hollywood movies may tell a tale to the contrary, but the reality is that no woman going about her day is going to fall madly in love–or lust–with you simply because you emit some sort of Neanderthal noises in her general direction.
In fact, catcalling goes beyond simply being a mere ineffective tool: it is actually a form of harassment.

Dubbed “street harassment,” such behavior has historically been effective at only one thing: making targets feel every emotion from embarrassment to anger to apprehension. When you are attempting to enjoy a leisurely stroll or walking to work, being more or less forced to elicit such emotions puts a damper on your day. And over time, those daily dampers can fester and pile up into long-term emotional scarring and an overall negative outlook on human nature.

Fortunately, several local activists have united to fight back. Or, more appropriately, “Hollaback.”

HollabackPHILLY is a campaign aimed at reducing street harassment and educating people on its effects. While the organization has many tools in its arsenal, including testimonials and a place for donations, perhaps its most prolific tool is a comic entitled Hollaback: Red, Yellow, and Blue. Containing input from Hollaback activists Rochelle Keyhan and Anna Kegler, the comic is largely the brainchild of local Philadelphia artist Erin Filson.

Filson, whose work also includes the webcomic The Adventures of Ranger Elf, saw the comic from conception to an actual living and breathing entity. A gofundme campaign started by the three women aimed to raise $5,016 for production costs. The project wound up raising over $8,200 in two months, well above the desired total.

As a result of the fundraising effort, Hollaback: Red, Yellow, and Blue was able to be put into production and will be introduced to the public at a May 25 launch party to be held at Locust Moon Comics. Additionally, Filson, Keyhan, and Kegler will appear at Wizard World Philly to further promote both the book and the campaign.

Geekadelphia recently sat down with Erin Filson to discuss her work with the campaign, her own history in art and comics, and, of course, whether she prefers Star Trek or Star Wars. Continue Reading…

Last December, Rob Perdue introduced us to Shadow of the Gauntlet, a science-fiction/fantasy novel written by local author Casey Caracciolo that was seeking to get funded on Kickstarter.

The goal was to raise enough money to self-publish the book, which Caracciolo described as: “Sci-Fi + Fantasy + a dash of Comics and Anime = The Shadow of the Gauntlet. I’m talking robots, dragons, and fireballs shooting out of people’s hands…”

I don’t know about you, but that just sounds too cool not to read. So lucky for all of us, Caracciolo reached his funding goal and is going to be publishing the book this June.

And for those of us going to Wizard World Philly on May 30 as Caracciolo is all set to debut Shadow of the Gauntlet at the show for everyone to enjoy with a book launch to follow at Triumph Brewing Company in New Hope.

So if Shadow of the Gauntlet sounds like a book you might be into and you’re heading to Wizard World (and what self respecting geek isn’t?) then make sure you stop by table #830 to pick up your copy.

I know I’m going to.

Shadow of the Gauntlet [Kickstarter Page]

 Adjust Your Tracking is having its Philadelphia premiere at PhilaMOCA this Saturday @ 8pm and in anticipation for that I chatted a bit with co-director Dan Kinem about his documentary and the resurgence of VHS as a format. I really enjoyed chatting with Dan not only about what went into putting together this great doc on the format, but what he thought about the recent resurgence of VHS as well. I hope you not only enjoy this interview, but also decide to check out the documentary as well this Saturday!

First off, why make a documentary about what many consider to be a dead technology?

Well, I don’t personally consider it dead. It can’t be dead if there are still so many movies you can only get on VHS. Without the format, the collectors, and the documenting of said format, so many interesting pieces of film and video history would be lost forever, so I think this documentary HAD to be made.

This is a subculture of film fans and a movement in film culture that deserves to be filmed and explored. I think many think VHS is dead solely because they don’t appreciate movies enough or don’t care to do the research.

DVD is great, but it will never replace, or “kill,” VHS.

So, what do you think is behind the recent renaissance of VHS? I know some folks collecting weren’t even alive when the format was in its heyday?

Well, I don’t think you needed to be alive during its heyday to appreciate it.

No matter how old someone is, a lot of their early experiences involving film were on VHS and people want to remember that. I think that is the main driving force in the resurgence: nostalgia. People don’t want to let go or forget their youth. But I also think people are remembering what made VHS so good, and that’s the amount of interesting material that was released.

It is almost like digging for treasure trying to find weird and cool movies and videos that not many people know about.

You funded Adjust Your Tracking via a kickstarter that ended almost a year ago, now were you already in production, because you actually completed the doc pretty quickly considering?

Well, we were already in production at that point, but not super deep into it. We hadn’t done a ton of interviews before the trip around the country. I just tried to pack as many interviews into the budget and time as I could and then when we were done filming we just edited as much as we could in between being full-time college students.

I think when people see the final product they will be amazed at how much was done for so little money. I don’t think we spent over $4,000-5,000.

I of all people know film collectors can be an eccentric bunch, are they any stories you can share about some strange interview or incidents during the shoot?

There were countless crazy incidents that happened while shooting the movie. A whole documentary could be made just about filming this documentary.

We got lost on top of a mountain looking for bigfoot, nearly died multiple times, met some of the best people I’ve ever met, got yelled at at video stores, happened upon a bull testicle festival, and saw some of the most impressive VHS collections around.

The film will show off some of that, but the behind the scenes extras will attempt to document the rest of it.

Continue Reading…

Guest Post by Bryan G. Yanez

Let’s be honest, who hasn’t imitated a light saber battle while sounding off a low saber hum? Well these Drexel students have taken it one step further.

Dragon Jedi is an official Drexel organization that holds weekly meetings demonstrating how to choreograph a light saber battle. The organization uses a system of numbers and letters, which correspond, to different attack zones to aid in the creation and development of the light saber battles.

This organization got its start from the local Jedi organization scene here in Philly. Steven Fox, a Drexel student, would practice techniques he had learned from PA Jedi with other students that had interest in the activity on campus. The small group that practiced on campus quickly gained the attention from other Drexel students.

Steven Fox, alongside fellow Drexel student, Sam Hardy worked together to establish their group as an actual organization on campus. The perks of becoming an organization led them to buy supplies, like new sabers and reserve space to practice and choreograph their battles. The practices they host welcome beginners and veterans to learn or improve upon a choreographed battle.

After working on a routine for a little over an hour the group presents a piece of what they worked on to their peers. The end result is some constructive criticism, encouraging compliments, and live experience. Dragon Jedis’ hard work on campus translates to attending a variety of conventions. At the different cons they can be seen performing their routines decked out in their Jedi gear.

This organization welcomes anyone interested in joining or becoming involved. Dragon Jedi can be found practicing from 8pm to 10pm on Tuesdays and 7pm to 9pm on Fridays in Drexel’s Main Building. The best way to keep up to date with Dragon Jedi is through their Facebook group.

So as Dragon Jedi says, “The flames of many form a flame of one. Dragon Jedi! Dragons Hooo!”

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Greetings! Welcome once more to the Comic Roundup, where there is no such thing as a bad comic book; just comics you couldn’t pay me enough to read twice. This week I review Miniature Jesus from Ted McKeever and Image, the latest Unleashed tie-in miniseries Hunters: The Shadowlands and the second issue of Jirni from Aspen Comics.

Jirni #2 (of 5)
By J.T. Krul and Paolo Pantalena

Last month I reviewed Jirni #1, Aspen’s latest “10 for 10” offering and fell in love with the book. It was the perfect mix of fantasy, great storytelling and awesome artwork that really hit a home run with me. So my expectations for issue #2 were high, but damped somewhat. I’ve said before that I feel a great first issue is easy, but a great second issue can be next to impossible. And while Jirni #2 didn’t quite hit it out of the park, it definitely got on base.

For me, the problem with the second issue is that the story felt a bit formulaic and that the main overall plot of the series was left treading water. Krul uses a fairly standard fantasy plot device that any fan of the genre has seen a million times over that seems ho-hum compared to the first issue. If this was a monthly series, it would have been fine. But for a 5 issue miniseries, each chapter needs to have a bit more meat on it and have more heft than this.

On the plus side the art by Pantalena is just as good as the first issue. He seems to be getting better as he becomes more comfortable with the cast and Ara in particular. Drawing a fantasy series is not an easy thing to do but Pantalena seems to be having no problem whatsoever.

Don’t misunderstand; Jirni #2 is still a great comic worth your hard earned time and money and I shouldn’t be surprised by being letdown after loving the first issue so much. But I hope the next issue has a bit more originality and story to it or Jirni could be in trouble. Continue Reading…

I’ve been using the new BlackBerry Z10 and its proprietary BlackBerry 10 operating system for the past few weeks now. For the record, I’ll admit that I didn’t expect to like the device nor its software in the slightest. In short, I was wrong about this.
Continue Reading…

I know, I know. Last week we gave you a great game for the outdoors, and then it rained for days. Lesson learned. This week, let’s dial it back a bit with a new project from Geekadelphia favorite Jason Tagmire.

Tagmire’s heavily involved with the local IGDA, and his publishing company Button Shy has ties to other Geekadelphia Kickstarter alums like Island Official games. It’s all in the family here, folks.

This week we’re turning the spotlight on Tagmire’s Storyteller Cards, a deck of playing cards designed to spark creativity in writers, game masters, teachers, and creatives of all stripes:

Storyteller Cards is a deck of 54 playing cards that each feature 4 unique elements. There is a CHARACTER, holding an ITEM, completing an ACTION, in a LOCATION. Each of these elements can be used to create something new, get you out of a mid-project slump, or just to have some creative fun with family and friends.

The cards also feature additional icons in the corners to help you dig a little deeper into storytelling, creating, and gaming. The icons represent a RANK, SUIT, MOOD,SEASON, LETTER, and COLOR. There are a few more surprises within those icons, but we’ll get into all of that later.

Now, how can I use these cards? There are so many ways. It just depends on what you are doing.

• ARE YOU A WRITER that needs a location for a scene or just a character to spark a new adventure? Flip a card and you’ve got one!

• ARE YOU A DUNGEON MASTER running a modern day RPG and you need a special item for your party? Flip a card and you’ve got one!

• ARE YOU A TEACHER trying to encourage your students writing skills? Pass out a card to each student and let their imagination finish the story.

• ARE YOU JUST LOOKING FOR SOME CREATIVE FUN? Flip 5 cards and craft a scenario using an element from each card. Pass the cards to the next player to continue the story. Keep passing, it’s a blast!

There are so many more uses for Storyteller Cards, many of which you will come up with on your own. We also have a whole bunch for you in our Storyteller Pads and Storyteller Manual.

The project is well on its way to reaching the $10,000 mark, but stretch goals are already starting to take shape. What will you create with your Storyteller Cards?

The Project: Storyteller Cards: A Playing Card Deck to Inspire Creativity

Creators: Jason Tagmire

Sweet Spot: You can snag a deck for just $10, but pledging at the $25 level will allow you to grab one of three distinct kits with additional rewards for artists, directors, and teachers.

Funding Deadline: June 9th, 2013

More Info: Read all about the cards and see some of the great Campbell Whyte illustrations over on the Kickstarter page, and learn more about Button Shy over on the website.

Every Monday Geekadelphia features a Kickstarter created by local Philadelphians. Check ‘em out and support our local geek scene. If you have a project that you’d like featured on site, contact [email protected]