* Official – she’s being produced with the full support of the studio.
* Studio Scale – at 19 inches, she’s exactly the size a filming miniature would likely have been.
* Film Quality – making a film-worthy model is about more than size. We’re making sure our Serenity has all the details a Hollywood model maker would want on their filming miniature before it went in front of the camera.
* Artisan – each ship will be handcrafted by a professional special effects model maker right here in the U.S.
* SFX – she’ll come with a sophisticated lighting effects package and maybe another surprise or two.

Assuming you agree that naming her the “Official Film Quality Studio Scale Serenity Artisan Replica, SFX Edition” is a bit much, we’d love to hear your suggestions.

Head to fireflyshipworks.com and give them your suggestion. How often do you get to name a spaceship?

OK, not all the publishing companies. Baen Books, as always, was ahead of the curve with a sensible and attractive pricing plan from the very beginning. But I almost have to throw them out when complaining about publishers; they keep throwing off the curve. Meanwhile the rest of the publishers priced their ebooks high and huddled together, hoping that it wouldn’t catch on.

Then Amazon shook things up with the $9.95 New York Times Bestseller ebook pricing. Suddenly that seemed to be a better deal – it certainly helped drive sales of their otherwise overpriced Kindle – and we saw a chink in the pricing wall.

Now it’s spreading, and I hope it continues. eReader.com, one of the oldest ebook retailers, has changed their pricing structure and they’re going Amazon one better. Now all new books start at $9.95 or less the first week of their release. After that the books revert to the publisher’s list price but will not exceed $12.95. Read that again: will not exceed $12.95. And you can still earn 15% Reader Rewards, rebates which can be applied to future purchases.

This is, frankly, huge. Even Amazon’s Kindle store has plenty of books over 20 bucks. But now eReader (recently purchased by Barnes and Noble) has committed to selling every book, no matter the cover price, for under 13 bucks. And New York Times Bestsellers will continue to be $9.95. I’m guessing it’s B&N’s way of making sure Amazon doesn’t become THE ebook retailer, but whatever their reasons are it’s much closer to what I’d consider reasonable and I immediately celebrated by buying a book I hadn’t planned to pick up until its paperback release (WWW: Wake, by Robert J. Sawyer,$12.95, down from publisher price of $24.95).

Now, the caveats. I don’t know if every book you want is available through eReader.com. I’m not sure why similar pricing hasn’t been applied over at Fictionwise.com (now also owned by B&N) where WWW:Wake is still full price (minus various rebates). And since being taken over by B&N both companies have started enforcing geographic restrictions on applicable books so that if you’re outside the U.S. or Canada, you can’t buy many ebooks that you could have bought a few weeks ago. Which, again, is pretty silly. Amazon will ship the physical book to different countries, what makes the ebook different? Publishing companies need to re-evaluate the licensing contracts they’ve been using since Gutenberg and look at making them more global. But that’s another battle.

In honor of their 25th anniversary and their new album “Back From the Dead,” just released last month, Spinal Tap is asking the fans to get involved.

David St. Hubbins, Derek Smalls and Nigel Tufnel of Spinal Tap are inviting fans to create an original video to be posted on YouTube for one of the following songs off of their album BACK FROM THE DEAD — Hell Hole, Warmer Than Hell, Big Bottom, Stonehenge, Back From The Dead and/or Short & Sweet. Judging the contest, will be Colman Hickey, who created the classic video for Tonight I’m Gonna Rock You Tonight using characters made of Legos.

One lucky winner will receive an autographed, limited edition Spinal Tap prize pack!

No idea what the autographed prize pack consists of, but what the hell. More details available at YouTube and you can see a sample contest entry here.

Also they’ve produced an official Spinal Tap iPhone app. Listen to music, watch videos, get the latest Tap news, and see what other fans are writing on their wall. Free app, but it looks like you’ll need to be connected to get anything from it so put it on the phone or keep your iPod Touch near a wifi connection.

If you haven’t picked up the new CD “Back From the Dead,” you should. Amazon has it for just $10.99 and you get 19 original songs, a one-hour DVD, and a “unique pop-up diorama package that unveils three 12-inch action figures (courtesy of Sideshow Collectibles) of the band along with a proportionally sized Stonehenge.” What’s not to love?

Season one of Joss Whedon’s controversial series Dollhouse will be hitting the streets on July 28, but you can win one a week early. All you have to do is tell me this:

Why would you hire a doll?

Please keep comments under 50 words or so, and relatively PG-13. Otherwise, go wild.

Entries must be received by midnight EST on Friday, July 17, 2009, and there will be two ways to win. First, I’ll select the best 10 and put those up for a vote, winner gets a DVD set. And I’ll select a name at random from all the entries for the other set. Winners will be announced Tuesday, July 21, so folks going to Comic-Con will know if they should be trying to buy one or not…

This is for the regular DVD, not the Blu-Ray, and winners will receive their prizes a week or so after the release date (they won’t be shipped to me until then). Must be over 18 to enter, one entry per person, U.S. and Canada only. Your information will be used only for this contest and will not be saved or given to other parties.

And don’t miss my mini-review of the set here.

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Good news! I can tell you about most of the upcoming Dollhouse DVD set!

Bad news: reviewers only get the first 3 discs with the aired episodes, but not the final disc with the extra goodies. So I can’t tell you about the unaired episode 13 “Epitaph One,” or the original unaired pilot, or the features, or the deleted scenes. FOX wants to keep those under wraps until the release date and I can understand that even as I secretly hoped their shipping department would mistakenly send me the wrong disc. But I did get to listen to the commentaries from creator Joss Whedon and star Eliza Dushku, and those were well worth it.

The show

The Dollhouse is an illegal underground company spoken of in whispers, where you can hire an attractive young person for literally any purpose you can imagine. These people, known as “actives,” have had their memories completely removed so that they can have new memories and new personalities imprinted in them to order. Actives can temporarily become perfect lovers, thieves, assassins, companions, detectives, whatever the very well-heeled clients want, and afterward their new identities are stripped away again so they’re ready for the next engagement. Only, one of them is starting to remember…

Dollhouse stars Eliza Dushku as Caroline/Echo; Harry Lennix as Boyd Langton, Echo’s handler; Fran Kranz as Topher Brink, the amoral genius behind the Dollhouse tech; Olivia Williams as Adelle DeWitt, the boss of the place;  Reed Diamond as her creepy chief of security Laurence Dominic; Enver Gjokaj as Victor; Dichen Lachman as Sierra; and Tahmoh Penikett as FBI agent Paul Ballard. Regular guest stars included Amy Acker as staff physician Dr. Claire Saunders and Miracle Laurie as Mellie. The series had an uneven start, with the first episodes being mostly standalones that simply showcased what actives from the Dollhouse are hired to do with only a passing nod to any ongoing story arcs or show mythology.

The commentaries

Now, there are three types of DVD commentaries. There’s the one where the people talking get caught up in the show and forgot to comment on anything, but I’ve rarely seen that on a Whedonverse DVD. Talkative bunch, they are. Then there’s the type where the commentators are just having a blast, reminiscing and cracking each other up and offering funny little behind the scenes moments. That’s what Joss and Eliza do in their commentary on the aired pilot episode, “Ghost.”

“Ghost” sets the stage for the series, with an active named Echo (Dushku) being sent out on various assignments while an FBI agent searches for the woman she used to be. Joss is in full goofball form, Eliza is keeping right up with him, and they joke about sexing it up for the network, Eliza’s shirt-dress, Amy Acker’s “mood scars,” the problems of writing hostage negotiation scenes without the slightest idea how they go, why things seem to go wrong in the Dollhouse every week, and much, much more. I’m wildly tempted to just transcribe the whole thing but I’ll control myself and stick with my favorite line from Joss about the broad strokes of the plot:  “Subtlety is for little men.”

You don’t get a lot of introspection about the complex themes of the show but it’s great fun to hear them point out some of the same incongruities that the fans did. There’s also a moment in the end when they say something about the people in the closing “Alpha” scene that I don’t recall as ever being mentioned in the show, so watch for that and let me know if I’m right.

Then there’s the third type of commentary, where the creator of the show tells us exactly what he was thinking, what effect he was going for, what moral questions he was asking, and how the show was crafted. That’s what Joss gives us in “Man on the Street.”

“Man on the Street” is the 6th episode and teh one where the show really took off. Joss wrote and shot it like a second pilot and it feels that way, giving us a very different show than we’d previously seen. From this point on every episode moved the plot forward with secrets and hidden agendas and wheels within wheels, and a headfirst dive into the moral complexities of using human beings.

The show itself is packed until you can’t believe they fit it all into an hour minus commercials. Every moment contains a revelation or development, every action has several layers of meaning, and everyone involved has a story to tell. And so does Joss. I thought this was similar to his non-stop, detailed commentary on Firefly’s “Objects in Space” in the way he explains how carefully they presented the story to evoke specific expectations in the fans which would be dashed to the ground moments later, such as the love scene between Ballard and Melli:

“They are clearly into each other,” he said. “And he wants her to help him, and she believes him. This is a huge thing. What it is, of course, is me saying ‘I’m going to kill her now.’”

And he talked about the moral aspect, the most troubling and interesting aspects of this show. Fans have been discussing the competing issues of the Dollhouse and its employees, clients, and enemies, and while he doesn’t provide any answers, he does address the questions head on. Is it right to sell people if they’ve previously agreed to be sold? Once a person has agreed to let their body be used, does it make a difference who’s using it? If you don’t remember what happened to you, did it really happen? What makes a person want to rent another human being? What person would consent to be rented, and why? And when you take away a person’s memories, is there anything left?

“Man on the Street” was the first episode to tackle these questions head on. Interstitial clips of a news feature on the “urban legend” of the Dollhouse tell us what the public  thinks of the idea, and we see a schlubby Internet mogul (played beautifully by Patton Oswalt) with a very good reason to hire an active. The episode mixes political correctness and layers of moral entanglement and the fact that they can do that is, according to Joss,  “what scares me about the show and is absolutely what makes it worth making.”

The extras

As I said I haven’t seen the extras so I can’t comment on them. And I don’t know if the screener copies I have are identical to what you’ll be buying, so the fact that I couldn’t find any easter eggs may not mean that you won’t (I’m hoping for bloopers, me).

I can tell you that the final episode, “Omega,” which aired without a promoted scene that was cut for time, is presented here just as it aired. Hopefully the deleted scenes feature will include the missing Sierra/November bounty hunter segment.

The stats

The regular Dollhouse DVD is presented in widescreen format with English and Spanish 5.1 Dolby Digital plus English, French, Spanish and Portuguese subtitles. The Blu-ray version is in 16×9 aspect ratio with English 5.1 DTS HD Lossless Master Audio.You get all 12 episodes, with the two commentaries I described above. Then you get the never-before-seen episode “Epitaph One” with commentary by writers Jed Whedon and Maurissa Tancharoen, the original unaired pilot “Echo,” deleted scenes, and the featurettes  “Making Dollhouse,”  “Coming Back Home,” “Finding Echo,”  “Designing the Perfect Dollhouse,” and  “A Private Engagement.”

Dollhouse Season One goes on sale July 28. You can preorder it from Amazon now ($31.99 for the regular one, $48.99 for Blu-Ray), or if you’re going to the San Diego Comic-Con you can get a limited edition copy with a note from Joss.

And there may be other ways to get one, he said foreshadowingly…

All photos (C) Fox Broadcasting Co.

Starting Aug. 10 ABC will publish chapters of Richard Castle’s “Heat Wave” as they air reruns of the show, leading up to the season premiere in late September. The book will reportedly include elements from the shows — which makes sense, given the premise, that he’s following the cops to get story ideas. The book itself will be published September 29 by Hyperion.

There’s one problem with stuff like this: what if the book by this fictional bestselling writer sucks? No one’s saying who the real author is. Personally, I hope it’s Nathan. Look for these to show up on Fillion’s autograph lines real soon.

Dollhouse Season One will be available on DVD and Blu-Ray on July 28, but if you’re going to the San Diego ComicCon you can get one the week before. Even better, it’ll be a limited edition, numbered, with different packaging (see above) and a note from creator Joss Whedon. Only 5,000 will be produced. Sweet!

If you’re going to the con, stop by the Fox Store on Monday, July 6, starting at 10 am PST. You’ll need to take your order confirmation, plus a photo ID to the Fox booth (#4129) starting Wednesday at 6 pm. If you’re not going to the con but you have a friend willing to pick it up for you, you’ll need to provide your friend’s name and e-mail address when you place your order. Only one per customer.

They’re not cheap, mind you. $49.95 for the regular set, $69.95 for Blu-Ray.

Click here for more details!

If that’s too rich, or if you don’t have a way to pick up a ComicCon one, you can order the regular edition from Amazon for just $31.99 (or $48.99 for Blu-Ray).

And check back here, within the next few days I’ll be posting a mini-review and telling how you how you can win a free Dollhouse Season 1 DVD.

Inkworks, the company that brought us great trading cards for Buffy, Angel, Firefly and Serenity, went under last March, a victim of the lessening economy. Which is  a damn shame. They made some great products, and president Allan Caplan really enjoyed his work.

If you’re still looking for those last few cards to fill in your collection, apparently their remaining stock was purchased by Factory Entertainment, a company that has been selling cards through eBay for a few years now. They’ve created a site to list their inventory at inkworksarchive.com, but everything there (plus lots more) gets sold through their eBay store. No Firefly cards, not a lot of Serenity, but plenty of others from their biggest franchises.

For a look back, check out my interview with Inkworks’ Allan Caplan from 2006.

Freakin’ Tank Girl’s costume.

This is Tank Girl’s Costume from the 1995 movie Tank Girl which was Based on the British cult comic-strip. Tank Girl (Lori Petty)our heroine fights a mega-corporation, which controls the world’s water supply and this costume is featured in the final battle scenes. The outfit is comprised of two sock elbow pads, chaps, custom vest, bulls-eye t-shirt, choker, and red shorts. All of the items are tailored to fit the petite 5′8″(173cm) actress. The pieces are all in good condition.

Huge fan of this comic, the movie, and Lori Petty. The only thing better would be a costume with two big missle-head bra cones on it, but one must be prepared to settle for what’s available.

Which is freakin’ Tank Girl’s costume. Tank (presumably) not included.

The Mummy with braces was featured on the hit Joss Whedon tv show, Buffy: the vampire slayer. In episode 4 of the second season entitled “Inca Mummy Girl,” a male student tampers with the mummy’s plate and awakens her. In turn she mummifies him and leaves him in her sarcophagus. Measuring approximately 5ft 5 inches tall,(165cm) the foam over plastic mummy is outfitted with a brown and green burlap wrap, Necklace, braces and a full head of hair. What every modern day teenager would look like had they been mummified. The mummy is in fairly good condition.