IIt seems a mere two years after the Titanic tanked, Canada had its own Love Boat-like tragedy. On May 29, 1914, the luxury liner the Empress of Ireland sank in the St. Lawrence River. Amazingly, 1,012 lives were lost (they didn’t have the lifeboat thing down-again).
Now, this obscure story is being told in detail, in the exhaustively researched Journey to Oblivion: The Empress of Ireland Story, which is being distributed on video by the NFB.

The 80-minute doc, directed by Alain Vézina, does offer some intriguing insight into this bizarre and largely untold bit of Quebec history. The filmmaker adeptly leaps between archival footage, interviews, animated segments and underwater photography while relating the landmark disaster.

Yet more Japanimation of the very best kind has been unleashed by the fine folks at Rhino. Battle of the Planets: Volume 5 features two spellbinding adventures of the G-Force: “The Jupiter Moon Menace” and “A Swarm of Robot Ants.” The latter offers up a fascinating premise, seeing as the ants our heroes are attacking turn out not to be ants, but rather robot ants. (Sadly, this clever catch is something the title of the episode gives away). Also, the villain turns out to be someone other than Zoltar, opening up new nemesis possibilities for our feathered protagonists. Bring on Volume 6! :

-Matthew Hays