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The definite winner this week is Captain America: The Winter Soldier, and I am more than ready for the next chapter in this franchise. There are a double handful of lesser works also available this time around, including The Pirate Fairy from Disney, Jinn from Exxodus Pictures, and Under the Skin, the other film that Scarlett Johansson stars in this week, noticeably more mature than the first. For the serious Trekkie you also want to be aware that Starship Farragut: Conspiracy of Innocence also should become available this week, the next in the series of Fan-built Federation movies. I have not been able to confirm that last, but I am hopeful.

The top of the movie list this week is the Keanu Reeves remake of 47 Ronin, the latest in a long line of films, TV shows, plays and operas based on this historic true story. This is the first time I am aware of that it expanded this deep into the realm of Fantasy, but I thought the dragons were a wonderful choice. If you are more in the mood for an indi production, Knights of Badassdom is about a bunch of LARPers who accidentally summon a succubus from hell while playing in the woods. As you might expect from the description, this is a comedy/horror film, with several of my favorite actors in it.

I couldn’t find any real genre in TV except for re-releases, but Psych: Season 8 certainly comes close, considering the massive number of pop culture references the show manages to cram into every episode. This was the final season for the show, so it includes the series finale.

In western animation we have The Pirate Fairy, another adventure in Never Never Land from the gang at Disney.

In Anime, Ebiten: Complete Collection pokes fun at the art form itself, with a rabid group of anime fan girls with tenuous grips on reality, a maid on a secret mission, a Neko faculty adviser, an ass-tronomy club full of robots, aliens, and telepaths (and one poor guy who actually thinks it is a serious astronomy club), and more twisted anime parodies and allusions than you have probably ever seen collected in one place before. Expect to see the barrier between fantasy and reality shattered every 5 minutes or so. Then in Happiness: Complete Collection, the classes for magic users and non-magic users are kept completely separate until a gas explosion destroys the magical building and they have to combine the classes. Rest assured chaos and comedy ensue, as the two groups try to adjust to each other.

If you don’t already know who the band One OK Rock is, you have a wide range of music to explore and enjoy as you find out. They are doing an extensive tour of the US in the next several months, including the Warped Tour across much of the continent. Out of the small handful of tracks I am sharing today, the first one is called Clock Strikes from their 6th album in March of 2013, the second is No Scared, and the 3rd is Deeper, Deeper. That gives you 3 examples out of 3 dozen; this selection of tracks is just the tip off the iceberg, as the saying goes. The lead singer is Taka, and he is amazing. Enjoy!

Have an old Pentium III or Pentium 4 gathering dust because you can’t stand the 20 minute wait while it slowly boots an obsolete version of Windows? You can now turn it into a fast (or at least faster) useful machine again using Legacy OS 2.1, a Boot From CD (most of the computers from 2000 to 2006 didn’t have DVD drives in them, so a bootable CD is your best Live Disc option) Linux build. The latest version was released earlier this week, and comes with over 200 software packages ready to run right off the disc. That includes all the usual web tools, media players, office software, and everything else a modern computer should have. Of course, after you have tested the Live version to make sure it recognizes and can use your hardware properly, you can always install it to the computer’s hard drive and get it to run even faster, as well as be able to update or add new software, if you like. Another variation this Australian build came out with last October is Legacy OS 2.1 Gamer, with over 100 classic games, including the Open Source version of Doom. It is always good to make something useful and fun again, and this project does that nicely.

I picked up Terry Pratchett’s Raising Steam when I was in the UK for the Doctor Who 50th Anniversary celebration last November, it is a wonderful book you really ought to read. Now they have put together a great little collection of the characters and objects from that story as PDF files that you can download, print, cut out, and fold into their 3D likenesses. Hop on over to Raising Steam 3D and get your free downloads, so you can create your own collection. Thanks to Jenn for the heads up on this one.

The short list of nominees for the 2014 Arthur C. Clarke Award for best novel has been announced, and I am sorry to say I haven’t read any of them; time to go hit a favorite bookstore. The titles that beat the other 115 titles to actually make the final cut are:

God’s War by Kameron Hurley (Del Rey)
Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie (Orbit)
The Disestablishment of Paradise by Phillip Mann (Gollancz)
Nexus by Ramez Naam (Angry Robot)
The Adjacent by Christopher Priest (Gollancz)
The Machine by James Smythe (Blue Door)

The award will be handed out as part of the SCI-FI LONDON Film Festival which runs from the 24th of April to the 4th of May this year.