The 10th Visual Effects Society Awards were handed out this past Tuesday, and as is often the case, a small number of shows got several awards each. Transformers: Dark of the Moon seemed to get the most (no, I didn’t count them, so I could be wrong), but Hugo, the animated Rango, the semi-animated live action Rise of the Planet of the Apes, and various episodes of Game of Thrones walked away with more than one each. But there were a number of projects that got a single award each, such as Captain America, and this little gem here, called A. Maize, which was awarded Outstanding Visual Effects in a Student Project
In November of 2013 Doctor Who will be 50 years old, having first aired in November, 1963. Moffat and company have been doing a great job of building up to it, and promise a really exciting series of events throughout the year. In honor of that, a trailer for the last question, and a snippet of an interview with Aldred and McCoy about their interest in joining in on the fun.
It is more Captain Robert, of course, than the band as a whole, but the first several chapters of The Wrath Of Fate are available to purchase, or to listen to online if you need a taste before making your decision. This is the fictionalized story of the origin of Abney Park, a kick-ass Steampunk band, and personally I love the way it is evolving so far. Just in case you didn’t know what kind of music a Steampunk Band plays, the second video shows them practicing one of their better songs, Airship Pirates, although the audio with it is from the studio version. This is the music you would have been listening to when the semaphores or telegraph finished sending the digitally processed signals, and Babbage’s Difference Engine used an array of tuned saw blades struck by hammers to play it back out to you. In those days, we would have been called clackers rather than hackers because of the sounds the steam-driven brass logic switches would have made while they ran our calculations, algorithms, and apps.
And a couple of pictures taken in London a few months ago; the first is a picture I took while staring at the actual, completed Babbage Engine (Babbage never finished building the full sized one himself, although he did have a bunch of smaller versions that allowed Ada to develop the worlds first programing language). I tried my best not to drool all over the case, but I may have failed in that particular.
The second was a picture taken of me and the Babbage machine by my traveling companion, proving I was there with it. I know that in this era of photoshoping anything and everything this does not constitute proof in most peoples minds. Since I have the added data point of having been there and remembering the moment the photo was taken, I could really care less if you believe it; for me, this is the photo that locks it down in my memory.
Finally, a bit of Captain Robert’s own attitude, as distributed by G4, about what Steampunk really is…
There are a whole bunch of fun events coming up this weekend, and I wanted to mention a few of them. FaerieCon West is all about the art of Faeries, and while most of that is tied to various graphics formats, some is music, some is programming, and some is authoring. As an example, Abney Park will be hanging out and playing music at this Seattle event. If you don’t now who they are check out The Ballad of Ranch Hand Robbie and I’ve Been Wrong Before, both from their latest album (click to play, right click to save-as to disc). The other event I wanted to mention was the Boston Science Fiction Film Festival which has some amazing movies gathered together this year. Here are a few trailers to give you an idea of what they are up to…
SG1’s Michael Shanks, Smallville’s Erica Durance, and The Vampire Diaries’ Daniel Gillies are the stars of the new TV show Saving Hope, where they are all doctors. But Shanks becomes a patient in a coma, walking the halls in spirit form as the others fight to save his life, interacting with the spirits and ghosts of other patients. They have been commissioned for a 12 episode first season, and I like the actors, so I will be checking this out to see how they do with it.
First off, a reminder that the Boston Science Fiction Film Festival takes place from the 10th to the 18th of February, but there is new Sci-Fi for folks not in Boston as well this week. Journey 2: the Mysterious Island is based on the Jules Verne book, and is the sequel to the version of Journey to the Center of the Earth from a few years ago. I suspect that is going to be the movie to beat this weekend, but it does have a bit of competition. Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace is being re-released in is 3D incarnation. This may actually end up being worth watching, because unlike most post-production 3D processing jobs, they have the money to do it right. Now if only they could improve the story and kill Jar-Jar while they are at it.