Skip to main content

Rocket Man Variations

This song is an excellent tune about the subject of leaving this gravity well, and in 1978 it won the 5th annual Science Fiction Film Awards prize for best song. That was the first year the awards ceremony was broadcast, but it is much better known under the name The Saturn Awards. I have no clue who had the idea that William Shatner should be the vocalist for this presentation, but as musical performances go it has a certain amusement value, and is certainly historically interesting. I have to think he played this up for the chuckle value, considering his excellent renditions of other songs, including Common People from Has Been and the Brutus Rap from Free Enterprise.

My personal favorite from the various artists who have rendered it over the years has to be the Kate Bush version. A noticeable percentage of her work were original science fiction songs, such as Experiment Number 4 where the military was developing a musical weapon. Or Lyra, her tribute to the book The Golden Compass, which someone later used footage from the movie to turn into a wonderful video. Or Cloudbusting which depicted the governments reaction to Wilhelm Reich’s Orgone Energy research, and Donald Southerland made a wonderful Reich. If you are a humor fan, be sure to check out her duet with Rowan Atkinson.

Morning Jacket also did a version of the song, but this is the only one I know from them. Someone did a nice but low-rez job of adding space footage to this.

And finally, getting my vote for strangest video for a planetary exploration song, David Fonseca does the entire song backwards and in high heels as Ginger Rogers used to say when explaining why she was a better dancer than Fred Astaire. No, we don’t actually see the high heels in this video, but based on the makeup I would not be surprised at all if he was wearing them, and he did lip-sync the entire song backwards, which is no mean feat.

Something to Watch: Online

Most everything being mentioned here today is from Japan, so I must start by telling you you can watch NHK live online, in English, to keep up to the minute on developments in what is the worst earthquake to ever strike that country. My heart goes out to everyone hurt or with with family killed in this disaster.

Today is the leading edge of Global Shinkai Day, the Fan-invented celebration of Anime creator Makoto Shinkai. In honor of this Crunchyroll is streaming three of his best works online: 5 Centimeters Per Second, Voices of a Distant Star, and The Place Promised in Our Early Days. These are amazing movies (one feature length, and two shorter pieces) that are quite different than you would be expecting if you haven’t seen one of his masterpieces before. His stories only ever have one subject; the human heart. The day itself is tomorrow, the 12th, but the viewing runs throughout the weekend. Trust me when I say you want to catch them before they evaporate off the server.

Also the Anime Network has added a lot of new content to their portal on Hulu. Some of the new titles include Hell Girl (Seasons 2 and 3), High School of the Dead, and Tayutama: Kiss on My Deity, to name but a few. On their primary site they just launched Akane Iro ni Somaru Saka, an Anime rendition of a VN Game (Visual Novel Game, think interactive semi-animated comic book game). The subject matter of the series is not what I usually track, but because of the source media type this one is developing in directions I had never expected, and so promises to be worth checking out.

Sci-Fi Science: Geminoid DK

The person in the video below was built, not grown. He is the Geminoid DK, and he was assembled at the Intelligent Robotics Lab at Osaka University, the next in a long line of androids they have been developing there. Also called the Ishiguro Lab after the chief scientist, Hiroshi Ishiguro, their first realistic android was modeled after its creator, and the latest one was built for and modeled after Associate Professor Henrik Scharfe of Aalborg University in Denmark. Not all of them were a success; in the final clip,the adult woman android now has a job answering questions for the IEEE, but the little girl android modeled on Ishiguro’s daughter has been retired because she thought it was creepy in the extreme. So cheer up, when it comes to our new Evil Robot Overlords, we may be living in the middle of my favorite Pogo quote: We have met the enemy, and he is us!

The Doctor for Red Nose Day 2011

Under the tag line Do something funny for money, the annual charity event Red Nose Day is coming around in the UK again on the 18th. Also known as Comic Relief, this gets a full day of support and special programing from the BBC on several of their channels, including BBC 3, BBC Radio 1, and BBC Radio 3. While you still can’t watch their streaming video feed in North America (I keep waiting for their promised paid subscription service, but so far nada), you can listen to the radio streams live. One of the things I always look forward to is the contribution from the Doctor Who team. This year they are doing a micro episode in two parts according to SFX, complete with Amy Pond flirting with herself.

Something to Do: Movies

This looks like a quality week to make it to the movie theaters! To start, we have two contenders for the Action/Adventure title, the first being Battle: Los Angeles. The next in a series of alien invasion movies that has gradually grown more intense over the last decade or so, given a serious boost with the advent of Battlestar Galactica, and refined by all the recent entrants from District 9, through Skyline, to Monster. For the hard Sci-Fi adrenalin junkys in the audience, this is the film to beat.

For the Fantasy crowd, there is a selection just as compelling: Red Riding Hood takes you through the implications the Twilight series pretended didn’t exist. I am really hoping Red herself turns out every bit as Buffy-like as I imagine her while watching the trailer, and reaks havoc on the innocent monsters.

In Suing the Devil, Luke O’Brien sues the devil for $8 trillion and the devil shows up in court to defend himself. The situation is just a bit unfair, since all of the best lawyers end up in hell when their life is over, and Malcolm McDowell as the Devil brings them with him. Again, a compelling movie with an amazing cast, and a lot to think about before the ending credits roll.

The fourth and possibly final choice for this weekend is the animated Mars Needs Moms! This Disney flic is the silliest of the weekend, but not necessarily the one with the fewest important points to bring to the table. The animation quality is what you would expect from that house: first rate!