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Things to Do: Movies, and Cory Doctorow in the Metaverse

Avatar finally comes out this weekend! The trailers have been amazing, the interactive app has been fun, and the hype has been overwhelming. I have pretty much been waiting all year for this film, and I am glad it is finally time to watch it.

Also showing on the big screen this week is RiffTrax: Christmas Shorts-Stravaganza, with special guest Wierd Al Yankovic. The program is live on the 16th, with an encore replay on the 17th; feed your zip code into each date to find the closest theaters to you.

Appearing live in Virtual Reality this week is Cory Doctorow on Copper Robot, doing a real time interview in the Second Life Seaside Theater, over at World2Worlds Island. That happens on Wednesday, the 16th, 8PM SL time (11PM EST, since 2nd Life time is California time). If you already have the free 2nd Life software installed, this is the SLURL that will launch it and take you straight to the event. If you are trapped behind an office firewall and can’t get into the metaverse, you can watch it in real time at Copper Robot, or grab the podcast after the event to listen to at your leisure.

Next week brings both The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus and Sherlock Holmes to the big screen. I’m going to have to see each of them, and maybe swoop back for a second pass at Avatar.

Things to Watch: DVDs

The pick of the release week is the first in a series of movies; the name of this one is The 20th Century Boys 1: The Beginning of the End. It has been making the film festival rounds, and has been doing killer box office back home. With luck, they will be releasing the remaining two films in this set here soon.

I can’t believe they allow them to keep making these things, but as long as they do, I will keep buying them: Robot Chicken Season 4 is coming out Tuesday. In case you have not added any of these to your collection yet, they are also releasing season 1-4 as a box set. This is some of the most sick and twisted humor available today, from the minds of Seth and Seth.

In the Anime department, two old favorites get released in HiDef this week; Samurai Champloo: The Complete Collection, and Basilisk – The Complete Series. Each of these is an incredible job of storytelling in their own very different ways, with some of the best animation you have ever seen. Hell, even the soundtracks are world class. If you were thinking these are both historical action/dramas from the Shogunate period, one involving Ninjas and one Samurai, you would be right. They have a break with reality in the mystical and martial arts powers wielded by some of the combatants, and that is enough of an excuse to allow me to list them here (that’s my story and I’m sticking to it).

Previously unreleased Anime for this week includes El Cazador de la Bruja – Season 1 Part 2, which is even more interesting because this is the third series of Bee Train’s Girls With Guns set. Noir and Madlax were the first two series in the collection, which should tell you where this one is coming from. There is another Bleach volume out (number 23), but as usual I will be waiting for the box set before adding it to the permanent collection.

For another live action, we have Chai Lai Angels: Dangerous Flowers, the Thai version of Charlies Angels from the creators of Ong-Bak. Chai Lai translates to “gorgeous”, and this action-comedy has plenty of both (action and comedy).

There is a documentary hitting the shelves Tuesday as well that I thought was worth a mention: Fallen Idol: The Yuri Gagarin Conspiracy. They got the story pretty close to the way I heard it, so I suspect this will be worth watching.

Tweet Klingon, History Game, Dolls Do Stripes

There are some days when your native language just won’t express what you have to say in satisfactory manor. For those occasions, you can just Tweet in Klingon, and have the same sounds you get when you hear a Sysop yell at his/her server farm in Spoken *Nix (Ch’Mod! Mk’Dir!) echoing through your posted environment.

You might rather play a Toy Building Game over at the History Channel web site, or for a different kind of silliness, enjoy the Dresden Dolls doing this White Stripes cover (complete with the trangender costuming as a visual aid for those in the audience slow to pick up on the parody). Whatever you choose, I hope you have fun this holiday!

( translation, * = LInix, Unix)

Murmurs, Rocks, and Apprentice’s

CBS has decided to try out a Time-Travel pilot for a new series called Murmurs, from the guy who wrote the new Bionic Woman. The premise centers around an organization called The Commission who’s job it is to keep history from changing; think Time Cop.

If you like your shows outdoors, you can enjoy rocks falling out of the sky as the Geminid Meteor Shower peaks on the 13th and 14th (it has already started). While it may be a bit cold for viewing in some places, that does help clean things out of the atmosphere.

Finally, the first trailer for the new version of the Sorcerer’s Apprentice is out, and it might just be a fun film.

Harry Potter Event Saturday

Like they did with Terminator Salvation, the WB Insider is having a Harry Potter Event online on Saturday, December 12th (3PM EST). You drop the Blu-ray DVD you bought into your internet connected BD enhanced player, and log into BD-Live; that will allow you to hear them respond to questions, kind of like a real-time Comments On function. You will also need a computer logged into their web site if you want to ask questions of your own to Daniel Radcliffe and the director while watching the latest movie.