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Something to Watch: DVDs

In live action movies, Salt tops the list this week, in a twisted flic fully worthy of Philip K. Dick. I was a bit surprised when I first found out he didn’t write this one, as he has written so many like it. Also released for the younger crowd, Missy and the Maxinator is a live action kid-as-superhero film in which the teachers are out to take over the world.

There is only one live action TV entry this week, but it is an important one: Caprica: Season 1.5. This series was more like reading Sci-Fi than watching it, something you constantly had to think about and extrapolate from in order to understand. It dealt with some of the most important issues our current technology raises today, and did not sugar coat them or spoon feed the audience with a preprocessed answer. Unfortunately, most of the American audience wanted to be entertained, not educated, and the same non-Sci-Fi aware powers at the Sci-Fi Channel who brought you the WWE made sure to kill it without even letting all the episodes air. I am still waiting for an explanation of what mindless muscle boys beating on each other has to do with science fiction when it occurs outside of a Mad Max franchise.

For western animation this week we have the return of Futurama: Season 5, and I just want to say I am very glad that Comedy Central decided this program was worth financing for another round. If anything, this season was more outrageous than any previous, since they didn’t have to strictly follow broadcast television guidelines. I am hoping for many more seasons like this one.

The one new anime offering this week is the Bleach – Season 7 Uncut Box Set, Bringing us up to episodes 122 through 133 of this spirit world combat sequence. To put that in perspective episode 300 just aired on Crunchyroll and in Tokyo last week. That means there is a gap of years between what you can add to your collection here and what the actual current episode is. I am going to use this as a contrast and compare opportunity; If I watch the seventh season and follow it with the current season and do not feel like I am missing anything in between, that would be a good indication that the writing has gotten stale and the storyline is static. If I am missing some names of people and spirit realms but the action and structure of the two seasons are consistent with each other, that would indicate they settled on a formulaic structure and are only plugging in the villein du jour for the story arc and telling us the same tale over and over. If, on the other hand, it becomes obvious I am missing something fundamental in the relationships of the characters and the nature of the struggle they are involved in, that tells me they continue to evolve the underlying concepts and personalities, and perhaps this series could be worth continuing to follow and support. One thing is undeniable whatever the verdict; this anime has had some of the best J-Rock music of any series, and I will post on that soon.

The other anime release this week is a re-release in a cost effective package; Tenchi Muyo! GXP- The Complete Series [Viridian Collection], which will run you less than $30 for all 26 episode. This is one of a fistful of Tenchi series (and Tenchi isn’t even the main protagonist in this one, but all the other details are there), and for the most part they involve our hero being an unlucky klutz who gets dragged into serving on the galactic police by mistake, usually as bait in a trap. Except for the series of time-travel movies in which he was an unlucky klutz, or the sequence of Magical Girl tales in which he was an unlucky klutz, or the… you get the idea. The other detail which is always true is there are four (sometimes 5) girls doing the Romantic Interest part, and one of them is always a galactic police officer, and one is always the dread pirate Ryoko. If you are looking for something profound and beautiful, look elsewhere; this one is just silly fun, but it is very GOOD silly fun.

Cosplay Moments

Just a few videos I have enjoyed with some tasty Cosplay this year. Some of the best creativity I know goes into creating costumes, whether for Halloween or Comic-Con or Movies. I figure it is worth a pause every so often to enjoy the better ones, and the first two in this set are from Mahalo, who seem to mostly be involved with food but have enough clothing awareness to be able to put together quality Cosplay collections.

Killer Machinima Music

The first track is All Things In Passing by Bowie Bravin vs The Beautiful Freaks, and then Facelessape Mefusula and Deepskytraveler playing live at Raglan Shire earlier this year. These are just a few of the bands you can hear playing live inworld at Second Life; if you thought all the live music was a voice with a single instrument, now you know better. Finally, Portishead’s Mysterons featuring the Guerilla Burlesque Dancers from Idle Rogue… I don’t know if they played inworld, but the music and machinima were too good not to include it here.

Unclothed Man in the 35th Century and other indy flavors…

The Unclothed Man in the 35th Century A.D. is one of a number of amazing stories to come to us from the IFC Web Series collection, which you can enjoy online at any time. I do like their tag line: Always On. Slightly Off, and I do think they did a great job on the animation for this series. The series involves a human revolutionary/reactionary who tracks down and eliminates Droids, using both weapons and cunning, and not much in the way of ethics.

Another story from the IFC Webisode collection I find interesting is Dead And Lonely, about two hopefuls who are brought together by a speed dating service called DateOrDie.Com. Too bad one of them is a vampire, unless they can really work it out before dawn.

And then there is the ever recursive Twisted Night, a webisode program about making webisode programs. The Perl hidden at the core of this oyster is the Webisode How-To Guide, giving you specific details on how to make your home made indie production come across as professional as anything made by a major studio. Following this small handful of tips could make the difference between being ignored and being appreciated, but it won’t cost you much beyond time and attention span to upgrade your projects into something that has the potential to go viral.

GANTZ live action

They have made a live action version of GANTZ, which all by itself is amazing news. It is going to play in a limited number of theaters in the US for one night only as part of its world premier on January 20th, 2011, as yet another Fathom Events Original. And yes, if you click on that last link and enter your zip code, you will get to see just how close to you this show will be, and grab tickets if you are so inclined.

If you haven’t read the manga or watched the anime, the basic premise is simple. An alien sphere with a cybernetically integrated dead body manifests in a vacant apartment in Tokyo, and begins gathering other dead people. It does not communicate verbally or even directly with them, but makes a small handful of rules known to them by physical example. The quicker a given person picks up on the rules and figures out how to abide by/exploit them, the higher the odds get that they might survive the current situation, even though a prerequisite to being chosen was being dead.

It uses a Trek-like beaming technology to grab them a split second before they actually die, and makes it known that if they complete a certain number of missions for it, they will be released unharmed and alive. If they fail, they will be beamed back to a fraction of a second before the moment of their death to suffer their original fate.

If they are damaged, no matter how seriously, during the mission, but are still alive when beamed back to the apartment, the beaming process will rebuild them whole and well, by integrating the recording of their physical bodies it stored of their molecular state when it first appropriated them, but with their updated current memory gestalt. If they die before being beamed back, they have died the final death.

While they are on their missions for the sphere, no one in the normal physical world will be able to perceive them on any level, although their mission targets will have no problem observing them. Which makes it a bit difficult to get help from your friends and family to escape, or even flag down a passing police car, but makes it very simple for your targets to target you in return.

And the final detail; your mission is to kill your targets, with no way of knowing if they are monsters worthy of death, out to kill off humanity, or victims the sphere has decided would be amusing to watch die. Each and every mission, the clock is ticking; how will you choose this time?

Singularity Music: Part 2

There is, of course, the iGuitar or the Pocket Guitar, each allowing you to play any song a physical guitar will allow you to play, but fitting into your pocket much easier. But what if you took two or four smart phones and set each of them up to do a different musical task, and played them all together? Rick Wakeman used to need 400 cubic feet of stage space and a dozen hours per show to assemble a fraction of this audio power, and that only after a crew of teamsters moved, mounted, and bolted together the gear for him. Today it can be done by a single girl with four smart phones, one for voice processing and the others to do the band instrument parts. The Futures so bright, I gotta wear shades!