Get Environmental - "The Incident At Tower 37"

In just 10 minutes, the CG-animated short film (in HD) "The Incident at Tower 37" merges beautiful, evoking visuals with a crucial message about water conservation and saving the environment.

The movie was released in 22 March 2011, in conjunction with World Water Day and has won many awards in various film festivals.

"The Incident at Tower 37" starts with a special ops by a race of small, amphibious creatures against a man-built water station called Tower 37.

The purpose to their dangerous tactical maneuver? To release their main mode of survival - Water - which had being slowly siphoned off by the tower from their lake.

Inside the giant tower, a lone human steward does his comfortable but monotonous job manning the water station. He happens to meet the fish-like insurgents for the first time, and his ignorance turns into sudden realization of Tower 37's impact on its surrounding environment.

Hands All Over Maroon 5 - Live in Singapore 2011

Well, Red Dot Diva *wishes* she had pervy hands all over Maroon 5 on April 25th when they were performing live at the Singapore Indoor Stadium.

Alas, she was seated 11 rows away at PB10. Which wasn't too bad actually. She had reasonably good "landscape" view of the entire stage and luckily enough, there weren't many tall people standing in front of her.

The last time Maroon 5 was here was at the very same venue in 2008. Back then, Red Dot Diva was disappointed by their lack-lustre and brief 60-minute set. After all the anticipation built up for their first visit to the Red Dot Island, fans couldn't help but leave the stadium feeling short-changed.

Red Dot Diva remembers that the band was late coming on stage and then, played their songs straight-up with little frills that night in 2008. Despite lead singer Adam Levine, looking cool and very confident on stage, they had failed to connect with the crowd very much.

They must have learnt something important from that tour.

These Are Asian Werewolves, Lah!

Last Thursday night, a small cozy bunch of readers gathered at an East-side neighbourhood restaurant called The Garden Slug to give support to local writer J Damask's (@jolantru) digital book launch. The urban fantasy book is titled "Wolf At The Door" and published by Lyrical Press.

The Garden Slug was a snug little restaurant in a rather secluded location, so Red Dot Diva was quite surprised to see that there was already a rather busy group of diners on a mid-week.

It was definitely very nice to meet J Damask for the first time that night. Damask was really excited about the book's launch and admitted that she was nervous and happy at the same time.

An Earlier STGCC

Just today, Reed Exhibitors, the organizers of the Singapore Toy Games and Comics Convention, announced that the convention will be held in August 2011 instead of December, like last year.

This was met with a very mixed reception, with some people groaning that it's way too early. And one person even commented that it would be too close to the month of Ramadan/ Hari Raya Puasa.

Others were happy to have it moved back to August - the same time as the original convention in 2009 before Reed took over.

The other interesting thing is that STGCC 2011 is now only held for two days on 20 and 21st August (Sat/ Sun) at the same Suntec Convention halls.

Will this downsizing mean fewer guests? Less panels/ programs? Less diversified offerings? More focused program scheduling? Back to more anime-centric events?

Red Dot Diva is getting curious about what STGCC 2011's direction will be. She would love to get her geekette on in August, but she also knows for sure that if the convention ends up being more than 70% anime-related, she'll probably just be 'popping in and out' that weekend. Anime is just not her thing.

Guess, one can only be patient for more official announcements.

While waiting for more news, one can go RSVP on the STGCC 2011 Event page and stay tuned for a surprise!

Adventures at WonderCon - Part I: Archaia Panel

Wondercon exhibit hall , pic by Doug Lowder

Not being a major superheroes-genre graphic novel reader, Red Dot Diva particularly enjoys the original offerings that Archaia publishes. The stories are creative and not too mainstream, and the art usually bold or unusually beautiful.

Of course, it also helps that they have an equally beautiful bunch of people working for the company. ;)

So, it was not surprising at all to see Archaia garnering 9 nominations for this year's Eisner Awards!! (Check out the announcement here!) They have become an indie publishing company to really look out for.

Truly Bloody, Magically Lucid Interview With Michael McMillian

@calowder and Michael McMillian at Wondercon

Since Red Dot Diva lacks the supervillain ability to simultaneously own rich financial bounties and astral project to be at two places at one time, she has to rely on fantastic, equally geeky friends to stalk cool folks at various conventions.

SF-based friends @calowder and @douglowder were at Wondercon last weekend and enjoyed themselves tremendously. They also took up the Red Dot Diva Perv Challenge, and managed to get some very cute and interesting interview footage with actor/ comic writer and creator Michael McMillian!

Ssshhhh... There's A Conspiracy Happening in Space, MN....

Small town conspiracies are usually creepy. But they can be such good stories if told adeptly. Red Dot Diva wonders if anyone remembers "American Gothic"??

One such tale of dark schemes called "Space, MN", is currently in the works. It is set to be published by Arcana Comics in the graphic novel medium.

The writer-creator of "Space, MN" is Shawn Depasquale. Red Dot Diva got to know Shawn when he was the letterer for the covert-spy-mage comic series, "Lucid", published by Archaia. She also interviewed him last year for his work in "Lucid". (Do check out the previous interview with Shawn on the sister blog, ZQBiceps!)

From the sneak peaks she saw, "Space, MN" starts off unexpectedly and suspiciously enough with a bloodied cat. Yep, one heard it right - a kitty-cat. That progressed soon enough to a quick introduction of some apparently key characters - a cop, a reporter and a politician.

But Red Dot Diva thinks it's best to let the comic's creator tell us what "Space, MN" is essentially about. Right?

"NCIS" - Mystery Bf No More

NCIS Agent Ziva David's (Cote de Pablo) romantic liaisons have always been rather mysterious. There was the one with Ziva's Mossad partner, Rivkin. That didn't end too well as he ended up being killed by Special Agent Tony DiNozzo (Michael Weatherly) at Ziva's apartment.

The unfortunate event caused a huge rift between the two bickering colleagues and saw Ziva being "returned" to Daddy in Israel.

When Ziva was rescued from Somalia and came back to NCIS, several hints about an American boyfriend was made throughout the last two seasons. He has been so cryptically referred to that Red Dot Diva began to half-wonder if Ziva was just pulling a long-drawn prank on Tony, or if a boyfriend truly existed. And if he existed, will he ever make an appearance at all. (Just count how many equally mysterious "face-less" red-heads there were in Gibb's life!!)

Well, NCIS Fans -- wonder no more.

Archaia Goes Greek with "Immortals"

As a child, Red Dot Diva was besotted with the various stories from Greek mythology. They were abridged versions, of course, but whenever she saw a book about them at the old National Library, she nabbed it.

Not only were there all these weird and interesting gods, monsters and creatures, their world saw various heroes going through such wondrous and marvellous adventures that became fertile ground for Red Dot Diva's imagination.

When she grew up, she appreciated how hunky those Grecian warriors actually were. Which of course, added much meat to that growing imagination. Heh.

The epic blockbuster "Troy" in 2004 was a really good attempt in bringing back some Greek into Hollywood. Who can forget Eric Bana's gallantly sacrificial Hector? Red Dot Diva can't say the same about the recent Grecian heroes movie "Crash Clash of the Titans" though, which was an awfully loud let-down. BTW, no need to draw "300" into the comparison, because in Red Dot Diva's case, all those abs just simply blinded her sense of judgement. *g*

Lion City Pride in "Rango"!

RAWWwrRRRRrrr!

When it comes to noteworthy geekism, Red Dot Island somehow manages to take things to a level worthy of a whole lot of Singa-pride.

Thanks to ILM Singapore, who recently gave that geek-level a boost with "Rango" - an animated feature film by Paramount Pictures/ Nickelodeon and directed by Gore Verbinski (he who is famous for the "Pirates of the Caribbean" movies). The computer-animated movie is a Western comedy about an over-imaginative, metrosexual pet chameleon (voiced by superstar Johnny Depp) turned small town sheriff-hero, via some dusty spiritual journey.

With ILM Singapore's key contribution in "Rango", the animated movie is about one-quarter made in Red Dot Island!! Wooohooo! (And if one is wondering, Red Dot Diva is 100% made in Singapore. But that's another story....)

Meeting Michael McMillian at Planet Comicon

Michael McMillian, pic by Sheree Miller

So...  there was this cozy comic con called Planet Comicon held at the Overland Park International Trade Center, Kansas last weekend, where a bunch of celebs and comic creators were there to meet their KS fans.

Some of the guests included Star Wars folks like Daniel Logan, Ray Park, Tom Kane, comic writer fan-fave Gail Simone, the "Bionic Woman" Lindsay Wagner.

By listing some of these guests on this blog post, Red Dot Diva knows that she's making her Twitter friend @JWalkIV consider some more regretful self-flagellation. He has been living in KS and didn't know about last weekend's convention!!

Guess @JWalkIV might have to work harder at next year's Planet Comicon so that he can bring in the convention news "live" from Kansas!

One other well-known guest who attended Planet Comicon is KS homeboy, Michael McMillian - actor from the wildly popular HBO TV show "True Blood" , and now, a comic book writer for "Lucid" and the latest "True Blood" graphic novel series.