The Killers and Voltron Vehicle Force

As before, nothing to do with each other, just what's on my mind.

The Killers' new song, "Human", has some of the sparkling synthesizer sounds of their great first album; unfortunately, it also has the vocal and lyrical pomposity of their terrible second album. In the end, band and fans alike lose.

And there's only five weeks left until the release of the Voltron Collection 6 DVD, containing the earliest Vehicle Force episodes; I always liked the Vehicle Force episodes a lot better than the Lion episodes.

Silverhawks Volume 1 DVD

An underrated 80s TV space opera cartoon finally becomes available for old fans and a new generation. Picture and sound quality are excellent, the better to appreciate the painterly color scheme worthy of classic Disney and the superlative score by Swiss composer Bernard Hoffer (who also did the equally excellent music for Silverhawks' sister show, Thundercats.) The one disappointment is the behind-the-scenes feature. It's only ten minutes long, and while Maggie Wheeler gives a fun interview (she considers Melodia to be "the first of my famous annoying characters"), the other surviving cast members, Peter Newman and Larry Kenney, are very much missed, especially considering how good their interviews were on the Thundercats DVD feature. Still a worthy addition to any animation fan's collection. No word yet on if or when there will be a Volume 2 collecting the remaining episodes.

Fringe: New J.J. Abrams show

I missed the first two episodes, because I'm completely out of the loop for the new TV season. Thank goodness for Wikipedia (now where's my money, Wikipedia?) Saw the third episode last night. Not bad, but not great either. The show's about an eccentric research scientist (John Noble), his grown son (Joshua Jackson), and an FBI agent (Anna Torv) trying to blow open a conspiracy that appears to be funded by a mega-corporation. Noble is an excellent mixture of endearingly childlike and creepily sociopathic, but Torv is wooden and Jackson (looking five times as old as he did in his Dawson's Creek days) is incredibly annoying. But there's real potential here. The first thing they need to do is kill off Jackson's character as a sweeps stunt.

Delta Goodrem and Silverhawks

No connection, they're what's on my mind and I thought they'd look funny together in the same phrase.

Seriously, though, Delta Goodrem's "In This Life" is a great syrupy guilty pleasure of a pop song (and thankfully free of pseudo-punk and/or pseudo-hip-hop posturing). And the first set of Silverhawks DVDs is due in only three weeks.