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What could be more silly than a Ukulele Orchestra doing rock? Perhaps a Kazoo Band, but not much else to my mind. So here are a few silly Ukulele songs to hold us until I can gather together a few of the other tunes.

The interesting film hitting the big screen on Friday is The Warriors Way, the story of a ninja assassin who refuses to murder a child. He had to flee the country with the kid, and ended up in a wild west town filled with misfits, renegades, and outlaws. But before long, his past catches up with him, and it’s Ninjas versus Cowboys for an adrenalin filled conflict. If you are looking for something bit more sedate, Dead Awake will also be out this weekend. If you would prefer your science fiction with a side of strange, Maximum Shame will be in limited release, and still looking for wider distribution.

There are actually a few good movies being released on DVD this week. In the just for fun category we have the Sorcerers Apprentice from Disney, starring Nicolas Cage. While I wouldn’t hold my breath waiting for this to win any awards, it has a blend of humor and adventure that makes it worth your time to watch. In a noticeably more serious vein, Valhalla Rising has won an assortment of awards at film festivals around the world. It is a story of slavery, escape, and loyalty in 1000 AD, although it seems to have something to say about religious violence as well.

Then we have a couple of silly movies related to each other. I am sure I don’t have to explain what The Twilight Saga: Eclipse is about, but the one I will be adding to my collection is its companion piece, Vampires Suck, the extended Bite Me Edition. Strangely enough, the Twilight flic doesn’t seem to be targeting Tuesday for its release.

I didn’t see much in the way of US TV releases this week, but China’s Demi-Gods and Semi-Devils appears to be worth a look. It is based on the Buddhist 8 non-human races for the make up of its cast, and the novel was serialized monthly for years before this rather complex story line was rendered for television.

There are two anime releases this week, each of which completes the season for its show. Hell Girl: Three Vessels – Collection 2 is the final 13 episodes of season 3, in which we learn Ai wasn’t as dead as she seemed to be at the end of season 2 (and just exactly where do ghosts and spirits go when they die, and how do they come back from there?). Her assistants had been having a peaceful afterlife until her return, and she has taken up possession of a schoolgirl (in the exorcist meaning of the word) to stage her Earthly operations from.

The other release is Birdy the Mighty: Decode 02, continuing the new adventures of Birdy the Mighty, a lethal interstellar federation agent who is more dangerous to innocent bystanders than the extraterrestrial terrorists who’s stolen weapon threatens to destroy all life on Earth. If you saw the OVA series from the previous century, you know what I am talking about. If you missed it, watching any episode of Dirty Pair will give you the general idea; some people just need to pay a little more attention to keep the collateral damage down to a reasonable body count.

Dragoncon is one of the biggest media parties every year, based solidly in Fandom from its origins to its current incarnation, and encompassing one of the largest collections of creative folks from the US. One aspect of that creativity is expressed within the AMV or FMV competition, an event many cons have taken up. In its simplest form an Anime Music Video or Fan Music Video contest encourages you to take some video footage, either created by you or extracted from a favorite show or film and give it a song for a soundtrack. It rapidly gets more complicated than that, as you select the best scenes, try to match the lip movement to the song lyrics, and finally try to tell a unique story from these component parts. But even if you only achieve the first level, you have created something that has never before existed, which is always a good thing. I should also mention that the source laws for fair use have changed this past year, so you are allowed to rip your video segments directly from the DVDs if you want to now.

The DragonCon AMV 2010 is now over, and you can see the winners at that site (and maybe one or two at the end of this post). But the competition for 2011 just got serious this past October 1st, when the Fandom Music Video Awards went live. They are accepting contest entrants in three phases, or rounds: October 1st to December 31st, now underway, January 15th through April 15th for round two, and May 1st to July 31st for round three. Each round shall have its winners, and the finalists will be part of the con itself. The first video in the next segment includes some rules, hints, and trips. The others are a few of last years winners, starting with the Best In Show winner Building Steam, made from video from Steam Boy and the soundtrack being Steampunk band Abney Park’s Building Steam. Good Luck!

This one comes as Webisodes, which is rapidly becoming the norm as the various flavors of multimedia converge. And some of the folks involved have had a hand in blurring the lines between the various media delivery types for previous shows, like the narrator Amanda Tapping who launched the first episode of Sanctuary online, with the numbers of viewers convincing Sci-Fi to spring for an actual season of the show. So now the Steampunk story of Riese: Kingdom Falling can be enjoyed online, and again there is a good chance the numbers will determine whether the program makes the jump to regularly produced series. Another example of this style of programming launches its web site today; The Minds Eye Series also has a lot to offer. That one is Fantasy rather then Steampunk, but both of these shows bypass typical Big Media companies (at least the worst aspects of them) and bring their stories straight to the audience to see if they can win a big enough share to survive as a series.

I had to grin when I noticed an actor or two as well as some of the production staff was coming from the Sanctuary team as well, and those who were not were equally professional. They are not the first group to do this style of Pilot creation, but they have had more success at it than most. The principle here is to do two contradictory things, and do both of them so well that you create an audience for the show that makes the network eager to add it to their lineup. First, you must create an episode so compelling, and a cast of characters so interesting and engaging, that the audience cannot wait to see what happens next. Second, you must do it while spending as close to no money as possible while having the highest production values.

One of the tricks that actually allows you to accomplish both of these goals is to only shoot the action scenes with the least amount of FX, substituting narration for the bits you don’t have the budget to film. This allows you to concentrate what budget you do have into costumes, props, background, cinematography, and the other details that show the quality of the finished product you intend to achieve. The narration segments must move the story forward with whatever visual footage can be put together that infers, rather than shows, the events being described. This technique has previously been used to bridge missing segments in archival footage (like many Doctor Who stories from the 60s and 70s), but now folks have figured out it can be used to present new offerings as well in an effective manor.

I do appreciate that this is the first actively SteamPunk TV program I have run across so far, and I intend to support it. There are SteamPunk precursor programs, like Legend, Brisco County Junior, or Wild Wild West, each of which took place in the right era and depended on scientific development (and sometimes SuperScience) in order to resolve their plotlines. But this is the first time I have watched video that had many of the protagonists wearing brass goggles with leather clothing of a distinctly SteamPunk flavor, and I am seriously looking forward to more episodes of this series.