If you are looking for some spacey ringtones or computer event sounds check out the NASA Sounds page. You can have such classics as One small step for man or Houston, we have a problem. Sources include the Mercury, Apollo, and Space Shuttle missions, as well as the ISS, and even bleeps and bloops from the likes of Sputnik or the Saturn Radio Emissions. They have MP3 and M4R formats, and include some general directions as well.
Captain Jacks Song (A better Man) is a definitive Trock (Time Lord Rock) type of tune, followed by a variant on Katey Perry called I Kissed Rose Tyler, another Trock.
Doctor Who, that is; this is TROCK, also known as Time Lord Rock. Have a taste of the home-made future, or perhaps another evolution of the Filk music we have been creating since the 1930s. While some of the execution is basic,
I am not a big horror fan, but this story was never really horror at its core. And depending on how true to the book they stay (remember Who Goes There by John W Campbell?) this second re-release of 1951’s The Thing could be quite enjoyable. Most folks today tend to remember the 1982 John Carpenter remake, which was better done than most. What both movie versions had in common with the best Hitchcock thrillers or modern Japanese horror is that neither film showed you any blood and gore; the scary bits were all off screen, but they were implied so well that your imagination ran away with you filling in all the details. Of course, this meant you would be imaging the scene in the way that would be most terrifying TO YOU, so while no two people ever watched the same movie, every one who saw it found it one of the scariest things they had ever seen. It is rare when a film captures the essence of a book, but having the audience visualize the missing bits like that brought the movie experience a lot closer to the process the human brain goes through while reading, and trust me when I say this is a technique more films should make use of. It remains to be seen how well this latest incarnation of the story is done, but this is one of the true classics of science fiction.
Movies this week kick off with Green Lantern, quite a fun little film for the action/adventure junkies. There is a related animation release, The best of Green Lantern, which seems to be a total of 5 episodes from 4 different series (I vote for just getting the compiled Justice League series and skipping this one). For folks looking for something noticeably sillier, we have Zookeeper.
Several interesting TV releases this time around, my favorite being the complete Chuck, Season 4. A couple of old classics finally coming out, including The Girl from U.N.C.L.E. released as a complete series, but broken up into two box sets (first and second parts). A related release for the same week, The Man from U.N.C.L.E. Movies Collection brings out the 8 stand-alone Man From U.N.C.L.E. movies. Note these were not included in the Man from U.N.C.L.E. complete series attache case, which only had a single feature length film in it.
Speaking of complete, Doctor Who – The David Tennant Years is a 26 disk set of every David Tennant episode, special, confidential, animation, and anything else they could find. I have a hard time visualizing who they are going to sell this to, since everyone who might want it has already bought each season as they came out.
In western animation The Penguins of Madagascar: All-Nighter Before Xmas becomes available. This is from the TV series, not the movie production project.
For anime, Tales of the Abyss – Part 1 brings us the story of building global conflict in an alternate reality timeline filled with sorcery. Note that this title is also a platform game from Bandai/Namco if you are looking for a more interactive story format. Also out new this week is Naruto Shippuden Uncut Set 8, and this box set brings us up to episode 100 for the series. The final new title for the week is Kobato – Collection 2, a magical girl series where our protagonist uses her magic healing flask to ease the pain and suffering of others.
Last time I mentioned NASA’s Swiss Army Knife first App, the NASA App. This time, a few quick links to the modules they broke off from that monster and turned into stand alone quick loading tools. First off is the NASA TV streaming App, for watching in realtime, and comes in both an iPhone and HD iPad version. Then from JPL comes Space Images, with a monster collection of pictures that come in iPhone, iPad, and Android flavors. There doesn’t seem to be an equivalent stand alone App for Twitter like there is in the NASA App, but there is a NASA Tweetup page that allows you to sync your mobile tweet interface of choice with other like minded space cases heading for a specific real world event. That gives you some of the functionality of the first App, but there are also some new Apps that do entirely different things: more on them next time.