If you missed seeing the Rosetta Destruction by Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko after its 2 year exploration, you can watch it again complete with all the commentary and analysis the leading scientists can bring to bare on the project. It was a magnificent run, and a huge amount of science was done, questions answered, every answer spawning 2 or more new questions. Watch the program and you might just begin to understand the vastness of even our local space here within the Heliopause, a tiny percentage of the distance even to the closest star.
Once more, the team from the Annals of Improbable Research handed out another year’s Ig Nobel Prizes last week. From the New Zealand team who got the Economic Prize for their research determining how to market things to rocks, to The Medical Prize winners who discovered that if the left side of your body itches and you look in a mirror and scratch the right side of your body the itching is relieved, this years winners share a trait in common with each other and all previous winners. First they make you laugh… and then they make you think. Mostly about how gullible some grant organizations may be, but every so often about the real-world problem that inspired the research in the first place. This is probably my favorite annual award in the world of Science.
This could be what it would look like if Studio Ghibli made a version of Legend of Zelda, and if that ever happened I would be in the theater on opening day! It was created by fan artist/animator/gamer
Matt Vince in the UK. Thanks to Tor Online for the heads up on this one.
The CG Society selected 2015’s Allegro’s Legendy Polskie Film SMOK (The Dragon) as one of the 10 best CGI films of the year. I have to agree that this is an amazing little film, and while it uses the visual medium to tell the majority of its story I was grateful for the limited number of English subtitles it needed to get the dialog across.
At long last the James Patterson book Maximum Ride is coming out as the Maximum Ride Movie to a limited number of theaters on Wednesday. The latest Tim Burton project, Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children, is on the big screen in wide release on Friday, another one I have been looking forward to for a while.
The fantasy/adventure Warcraft comes home this week for those who enjoyed it as much as I did. I can’t really speak for Cell, having missed it in the theaters, but it was based on the excellent Steven King book of the same name, so I have my hopes for it.
Anime has Chaika – The Coffin Princess Avenging Battle, which is a well done sword and sorcery warfare story. Maria the Virgin Witch is also about medieval magical warfare and how to stop it, with more adult themes. Seraph of the End: Vampire Reign has humanity on the edge of extinction, three guesses from what threat. The complete collection is a bit pricey, I will wait for a S.A.V.E. edition. The Labyrinth of Grisaia/Eden of Grisaia are two OVA series of about 5 episodes each that expand the story told in the original 13 episode anime series The Fruit of Grisaia. Mikagura School Suite: The Complete Series is another Magical Girls Combat School, this one oriented for the Yuri audience. The second half of Plastic Memories also becomes available this week, but I will wait for all 13 episodes to come out in a single box set before picking it up.