The BBC is planning a church-sanctioned contemporary version of Christ’s Passion for this year’s Easter.  Included is a procession through Manchester which will feature songs by New Order, Oasis, and New Order.  (In case you were curious, Jesus will be singing “Love Will Tear Us Apart”, “Blue Monday”, and “Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now”, to name a few.)  I’m not quite sure what to make of it, but I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t even slightly intrigued.  Via

Mark this day on your calendar: February 7, 2006.  The mighty Bandoppler is returning and you know what they say… third time’s the charm.

I've been looking for a new anime series to get excited about, and Eureka 7 looks promising -- it's produced by Bones, the same company that did Cowboy Bebop: The Movie and RahXephon, and features mecha designs by Shoji Kawamori (Macross Plus, Macross Zero). The series' English site is pretty bare, but it does have a lengthy trailer that looks good (just ignore the awful English narration at the beginning).

Crapfilter interviews Jeff Cloud, the owner of Velvet Blue Music.

When I was a kid, I loved those Spiderman shorts they’d play during “The Electric Company”.  However, I think it’s pretty safe to say that this live-action Spiderman series from Japan circa 1978 (fan-subbed, of course) puts “The Electric Company”‘s version to shame.  I mean, it has a freakin’ giant transforming robot, for crying out loud!  Many thanks to Twitch for pointing this out.  God bless ‘em.

Joss Whedon speaks out on the recent Firefly revival attempt.

New stuff from Map and The Dark Romantics can be heard over at the Lujo Records website.  The Map track is quite nice, sounding much stronger than the band has in the past (especially in the vocals), and ending with a lovely synthesizer flourish.  The Dark Romantics feature members of Denison Marrs and The Party People, and good ol’ rock n’ roll with a wee bit of glammy flourish thrown in.

In case you didn’t know, there was some hubbub surrounding End Of The Spear, a film based on the true account of 5 missionaries who were killed by the Waodani Indian tribe in 1956.  The movie was widely supported in Christian circles—until folks found out that one of the lead actors, Chad Allen, was a homosexual and had spoken out in support of gay marriage.  However, as Christianity Today reports, the filmmakers did not know that Allen was gay until after they had already offered him the job, and felt honor-bound to respect his contract.