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Something to Watch: DVDs, 12Feb12

Robot & Frank is a great little indi film about the robot Frank’s kids get for him, to help him around the house. But Frank see’s a chance to come out of retirement, and starts teaching the bot how to be a cat burglar. This one absolutely has to come home with me this week. In The Man with the Iron Fists the Emperor’s gold is stolen, and everyone in China is out to claim it for themselves. Aladdin and the Death Lamp is one of those Syfy Channel made-for-TV movies that they would be better off not making. However, I can’t wait until the production company that they formed with Universal Pictures comes out with their first movie, based on the first Wildcards book, with both George R.R. Martin and Melinda Snodgrass involved with the project.

Skyfall has to be mentioned, because Bond is the character that made Spy stuff so out there it became genre. For the documentary fans we have two items, the first being 50 Years of Bond Cars from the mainiacs with Top Gear. There is also an offering called Jedi Junkies, all about Star Wars fans. It includes the usual collection of interesting people, of whom my favorite has to be Olivia Munn.

In TV we have Weeds: Season Eight which, while not genre, is a twisty little series. I am amazed so many of the characters lived to make it to the final season, but I don’t hold out much hope many of them will survive it. The other TV show of note is Duck Dodgers: Dark Side of the Duck Season 1; any program that has Marvin the Martian as a regular character definitely gets my vote.

In Anime, InuYasha: The Final Act – Set 2 finally brings the saga to a close. I think. This series has been running for a very long time, there is no rule saying they couldn’t continue it if they wanted to. Also this week, New Fist of the North Star – Complete Collection brings us more story for that show, but not a lot. This one is a 3 episode OVA. What the two shows have in common is they are both old school anime of a style common in the 1980s and 1990s, probably because that’s when each series originated.

Again with the fun music

This is almost more scary than fun, with the first being a protest song about one of the big issues of today, student debt. The second song of this set is from Duel Core, a great Nerdcore tune centered around the concept of Drink All The Booze, Hack All The Things.

Astronaut Training

Most of us never get picked for astronaut training (in fact a few like me never get picked to play on a team of any kind), but for those who don’t, astronaut Jerry Carr got together with TED and produced this great little animation on the topic. This will introduce you to some of the details that NASA usually doesn’t mention, like the fact that being an Astronaut is something you only get to do after doing a whole lot of support stuff in the background, to help the current astronauts get their job done. I do love the excellent job that Sharon Colman did on the animation; it is classic 50s Disney line drawings, just like they did for the whole Mission to Mars program and all the other wonderful Disney space shows they did over the years.

Full Moon Silhouettes

This amazing moonrise video was made in a single take, with no stop motion, no compositing, and no CGI effects of any kind. After watching this I wasn’t terribly surprised to learn that the man who filmed it, Mark G, is a professional photographer with some really tasty optical gear. He got about two kilometers behind the Mount Victoria Lookout in New Zealand so the people looked really small, making the moon look very large indeed. This is another one from the Astronomy Picture of the Day site, one of my favorite online destinations.

Full Moon Silhouettes from Mark Gee on Vimeo.