Black Sheep (2006) is certainly an interesting film. It comes from New Zealand and certainly doesn't seem to be trying to break any stereotypes as there are quite a few well-defined ones in here. It's a horror comedy and while I can't say it's a genre I am familiar with this film does have a few scary scenes as well as a bit of entertaining humour.

This film is a lot like Resident Evil but with sheep. A farmer is experimenting with genetic engineering and when some environmentalists spill some waste from the facility they cause the sheep to start eating meat and attacking people. In addition whoever is bitten by a sheep turns into one. This leads to a race to survive and contain the outbreak for the protagonists. The humour is mainly provided by one of the environmentalist who makes a variety of new-age quips about their chakra and provides scented candles.

From the archives — a 1970s Robert Klein stand-up routine on anthropomorphism:

[credit: AshMCairo/furryne.ws]

A snap-shot of We Are Mongrels, from Broadcast

British digital TV channel BBC Three has commissioned an adult puppet series featuring anthropomorphic animals.

We Are Mongrels, a series of 8 x 30 minute episodes, follows the exploits of a country fox who decides to discover "the real wild life" in the city. He travels to the Isle of Dogs and meets up with a range of different characters including a "sexy" Afghan hound whom he falls in love with, a street cat, and a sarcastic pigeon from Blackburn.

2, The Ranting Gryphon

Furry stand-up comedian 2, The Ranting Gryphon, has announced he is to retire from comedy.

The American comedian, whose real name is Matthew Davis, first began contemplating his retirement after the failed assassination attempt on his life. During a visit to a London furmeet, someone tried to kill 2 by excessive alcohol poisoning.

In a statement published on his website, 2 said that the botched murder attempt was a sign from God that he should quit the profession and relax. He said: "I have spent most of my career ranting and complaining for virtually no reason. I have now seen the light and have decided to devote the rest of my life to the Lord. I have therefore taken the decision to become a monk and move into a monastery."

As a way of making penance, 2 has agreed to pay back double his usual appearance fee to all the conventions he now will not be attending.

Mark Allen's own promotion of the discount

Mark Allen has offered a discount for furries for his last performance of his stand-up show Mark Allen's Pet Project.

The show, which examines the relationship between humans and animals and involved Allen "Infiltrating" the furry fandom, is being performed at the Brighton Comedy Festival, in what is believed to be the last night of the show.

Tickets are normally £10, (£9 concessions) but furries are able to get a special price of £7. In order to get the special price, enter via TicketMaster, visit this link and enter the promotion code "snarf".

You can read my review of the show.

Promotional poster for "Mark Allen's Pet Project", when it was on in Edinburgh

Stand-up comedian Mark Allen will perform his Pet Project show for what appears to be his last time on 11th May.

Mark Allen's Pet Project is a stand-up show which Allen performed at the world famous Edinburgh Fringe festival, which covered the relationship between people and animals. It also involved Allen "Infiltrating" the world of the furry fandom via the use of a Dalmatian fursuit.

On his website, Allen wrote on 1st March: "It's been confirmed that I'll be performing Mark Allen's Pet Project at the Brighton Fringe on Monday 11th May 2009. It'll be at the new Fletch @ St Andrews venue and will probably be the last time I perform the show before I start working on my next bit of nonsense. If you want to see it before it's retired, you can book tickets on the Brighton Fringe website after Thursday 19th March."

Outside of the show, Allen also wrote part of a sex-based article for TimeOut magazine in which he covered fursuit sex in 2008. However, he noted this was a minority in the fandom.

Read more: The Chained Wolf reviews the Pet Project

As previously reported, Mark Allen's stand-up show concerning the human relationship of animals (including furries) is to end in a gig in May.

Luckily for me, I have had some correspondence with Mark after I spread the news of the show on The Furtean Times and other websites. He then mentioned that as far as he was aware, no furry has seen the show. Therefore, he gave me a copy of the show he recorded in London last October for me to review, from a furry perspective. So, here it is.

Leon Fauve - "the Welsh wuff" - is an art student in Wales (surprisingly), who recently found fame for his "FMV" series of videos.

FMV Explosion is a series of "Furry Music Videos" created by Leon, each of which is a combination of random furry videos put to music and sound clips. There are currently six in existence, with a seventh on the way!

• FMV Explosion
• FMV Explosion II - This time, it's Fursonal!
• FMV Explosion III - Furs of Fury
• FMV Explosion 4 - Furball
• FMV Explosion 5 - Fulla' Fursonality
• FMV Explosion 6 - Goodbye and Furwell
• FMV Explosion 7-ish - Final Bullet in the Dead Horse [Update: Leon released his work on the seventh due to lack of free time to finish it]

Following a recent rereading of C. J. Cherryh's Chanur novels, I did a web search to see what kind of fan pages existed that covered her work. One of the hits was Cherryh's own website, but among the other sites, there was this one that was... ahem... different. Take a look and you'll see what I mean.