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The Legend of Tarzan will be on the big screen in a matter of hours, and I am looking forward to seeing how they did with this iteration of the classic Edgar Rice Burroughs franchise. I have noticed that VR has broken out into two separate camps, the passive (it plays and you watch it, turning your head to get your preferred viewpoint) and the interactive, where you get to make choices that change the experience by clicking on things as you go along. All the movie 360 modules I have seen fall into the passive camp, which makes sense since almost all of the movies I have seen have also been passive experiences. There are a few rare exceptions like Rocky Horror, where you attend the film with the dialog memorized and a bag full of props including toast and squirt guns and newspapers, but the mind boggles when trying to imagine how you would program those choices into a VR environment. Here are the first two passive Tarzan 360 segments, strap on your headsets and enjoy; and remember, it is early days yet for the film industries VR experimentation. I fully expect them to get interactive in no more than a decade, as they slowly figure out just what you can do in this kind of a story telling environment.

We have two choices this holiday weekend, both film treatments for classic books, and I may need to hit both. The Edgar Rice Burroughs classic The Legend of Tarzan is the first new movie from that franchise in quite a while, and I will definitely be in the audience for the reboot. Hopefully it won’t get killed off by active studio suppression the way John Carter (of Mars) was. Then Roald Dahl’s The BFG is brought to life by Disney Studios, geared to a more family friendly audience. The only real question in my mind is whether I do them back to back with a dinner break in between, or hit Tarzan on Saturday, The BFG on Sunday, and the fireworks on Monday.

Kung Fu Panda 3 almost had this week’s western Movie and TV section to itself, and is coming out both as a stand alone film and bundled either with the first two films, or with them and three other discs filled with all the KFP Short Films they have spun off, depending on where you shop. I consider the Kung Fu Panda trilogy one of the finest animation series ever made, an excellent story self contained in each movie forming an arc that ties them all together, combined with some of the most beautiful animation work I have ever seen. It is in multiple styles, each one used to tell a different aspect of the story, and it was created by teams of animators working in both China and the US. The really exciting part? We are only half way through the project, there are a total of 6 films planned to tell the complete story. The other film coming out this week is Elstree 1976, a behind the scenes look at the teams who have worked on Star Wars.

In Anime, Den-noh Coil: Collection 1 i the first 13 episodes of a story about young people who have spent their whole lives wearing augmented reality glasses, tying them into layers of the world not available to the un-enhanced. But when they end up in Daikoku City, the e-space turns sinister, and some people may have already died trying to figure out what is going on there. Hakuoki: Demon of the Fleeting Blossom: Wild Dance of Kyoto takes place in historic Kyoto, where the Shinsengumi battle for control of the country with the vampire-like Ronin, and a woman may hold the key to victory in the form of an elixir that grants superhuman speed, strength, and healing. Selector Spread Wixoss is the next dozen episodes of the Selector series, as Ruko fights for answers and to rescue her friends inside the game. Yurikuma Arashi: Complete Series is a story of love, loss, and bear attacks featuring the heavily armed women who attack them. It takes place in a parallel time line where humans share the planet with sentient bears with a taste for human flesh. Finally we get One Piece: Collection 16, bringing us episodes 373 through 396 of the continuing pirate saga.

The new Hello Sleepwalkers release is Planless Perfection, which they rolled out back in March, and the VR style 360 degree song posted first is from that album. I recommend putting on your VR headset and best set of headphones for that one; being surrounded by the band while they play is quite a nice effect. The second track here, called something like the collapse of the Myth of Huai, is also from their latest realease. They are probably best known for doing the OP for the first season of the anime Noragami, which is a fun little show about an unemployed god; that track was on their 2014 album. Finally, again from Planless Perfection, a slight change of pace with their song Breaking Dawn.