For those of us not in one of the 5 cities it opens in today (and it is worse then that; only a single theater per city!), here is the Japanese trailer for the Goro Miyazaki version of Ursula K. Le Guin’s Tales of Earthsea. The other killer movie out today, Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, is in every theater in North America, so at least we only have to wait to see one of them.
As it often does at this time of year, it will be raining rocks tonight and tomorrow morning, during the peak of the Perseid meteor shower. It should be good viewing everywhere without a lot of cloud cover, since it will be a moonless night. This is the main event, but not the complete show; while the peak is tonight as we hit the densest part of the cluster, from beginning to end takes a week or two to go through. You can see some good pictures already from this years presentation over at the National Geographic site, and Space Dot Com is reporting a quite bright fireball over Alabama the other night. The peak from the US East Coast is 3PM this afternoon to 3AM tomorrow morning, while the UK should be local midnight to dawn tonight. If you are looking for a list of other meteor showers to catch this year, Stardate has a short list of the good ones, and as always Heavens Above can be configured to inform you about anything interesting to watch in the sky at your location. Happy viewing!
There are times when the world hands you a new twist on an old favorite. In this instance, it was caused by the mashup between Libraries and the Old Spice adds. One of the variations came into existence because someone read about the Old Spice add campaign response to fans, and created a meme that got retweeted often enough to catch their attention so a response was created. The second instance is even more fun; someone else uses the basic style of the commercial to create a direct appeal for libraries (thanks, Scott). While watching these I kept hearing the chorus to that song; The futures so bright, I gotta wear shades.
This is the best August movie this year: Scott Pilgrim vs. The World. This is an epic Comic Book classic, and should not be missed; it hits the theaters this weekend. Also this weekend, Tales from Earthsea is the US release of a Miyazaki animation of an Ursula K. Le Guin classic story. Except this time it is Goro Miyazaki, son of genius filmmaker Hayao Miyazaki, in the directors chair. The bad news; it is only hitting 3 theaters in the entire country.
I have been waiting for a decade or two to be able to add Max Headroom: The Complete Series to my collection. Depending which web site you believe, this will either be available the 3rd or the 10th of August, but that is a small detail compared to the 1984 to 1987 initial programming dates. As near as I can tell, this box set is only the 14 episode US TV series, which was much wimpier than the original BBC4 TV Movie, and completely different than the BBC TV series. But it is more Max Headroom than has ever been previously available, so it is a great start! Set your TVs for 23 minutes into the future.
On the Movie front, Clone Hunter looks to be an easily forgotten film presentation, but our only option at the moment. I suspect I will pass on this one.
Master of Martial Hearts, the complete series is almost more of an OVA, weighing in at 5 episodes. The 11 women protagonists battle it out for a shot at The Platonic Heart, which is a jewel that can grant wishes. With the tag line The Gloves Aren’t The Only Things Coming Off this series is not designed for younger viewers. Also out this week, Project Blue Earth SOS the complete series is a tale of alien invasion, now in a low cost S.A.V.E. version.
If you are a fan of stop motion animation in general or Robot Chicken in particular, you might want to check out another Adult Swim title, Titan Maximum season 1. This one is a Giant Mecha parody.