Coming out on Wednesday rather than Friday this time, Frozen looks like a fun ride. If the trailers are anything to judge by, this one looks a lot like Tangled, which I really enjoyed.
My favorite movie this time around just might be Red 2, the amazing sequel to the first film they created out of this graphic novel. Scratch that, nothing “might be” about it; this one is world class! Also out, Jobs is a BioPic with a proper attitude.
In TV, I count Murdoch Mysteries: Season 6 as genre because of its near Steampunk goodness, mixing the 1890s super science cutting edge of forensics, air flight, electronic communications, and so much more with some well thought out mysteries and a bunch of characters you will thoroughly enjoy. The protagonist himself most reminds me of the Mounty from the TV series Due South, another excellent police procedural.
In Anime, Accel World: Set 1 is abut an unpopular boy who spends all his time in online gaming. He is surprised one day when a popular girl approaches him and invites him to combat in a new virtual world as her knight. As usual, all is not as it appears at first glance, and when they neurolink into the game he learns about Brain Bursting, which accelerates your mind when you go into combat mode. La Storia Della Arcana Famiglia is the complete collection, the tale of what happens when and organization leader retires and puts his position up for grabs to whoever wins the fight for it. Each member of the organization has a power granted by a tarot card, as well as the usual guns and knives, so the competition will be fierce. But when he throws in his daughter as part of the prize, she gets ticked and enters the competition herself, with the goal of winning her own hand. Her card gives her telepathy to spy out the plans of her would be suitors and rivals, but she is aware every one of them also holds a card.
Super Robot Wars OG: Divine Wars is the full 2006 series, while Super Robot Wars Original Generation is the 2005 3 episode OVA that got the ball rolling. Alien invasion, giant mecha, the fate of the world at stake, you know the drill. The link I gave actually goes to Super Robot Wars OG The Inspector, a different series (the usage is different in Japan, I would have said season to mean the same thing in the US), but it will give you the idea.
The anime gem this time is the multi-award winning Wolf Children, a feature film by Mamoru Hosoda, the internationally-acclaimed director of Summer Wars. It has won dozens of awards around the world, one of the prizes it won was the Japan Academy Prize for Best Animation of the Year, 2013.
I generally do a music post on Saturday night, and tonight being the 50th anniversary of the very first Doctor Who episode, that pretty much locks down the theme. A number of fans have done their own version of Doctor Who Theme, and I thought I would share a few of the ones I really liked today. The first one is by Camille and Kennerly Kitt, also known as the Harp Twins, and they have done a truly unique version. The next is Doctor Who Meets Metal from Eric Calderone. Then we have Lara plays the Doctor Who theme on violin, and I would like to point out the posters behind her and her R2D2 skirt.
Finally, we finish up with the famous Doctor Who Theme Song played with Tesla Coils by Ark Attack! If you haven’t already played with the musical possibilities inherent in Tesla Coils, it is really pretty simple. They are spark gaps (sometimes some pretty freaking big spark gaps) through the air generated by Alternating Current. How frequently they spark per second determines the frequency of the sound they make, which allows you to use them to play music. It works best with a standard synthesizer keyboard structure, where the key you press engages the preset oscillator circuit that feeds power to the coil at the desired frequency.
There does come a point where you have to admit some of this might just be the tiniest bit silly. But what’s not to love? The following video is quite tasty, an interview with Karen Gillan about the Doctor Who 50th Anniversary that also talks about her role on another excellent Sci-Fi franchise, Guardians Of The Galaxy, part of the Marvelverse, and perhaps one or two other projects she is in the middle of.
The Doctor Who theme has been sung A Capella on more than one occasion, so as we gear up for the 50th I thought I would present a few of them. Some have been done better than others. OK there might have been an A Capella version of I Am The Doctors sneak in there somehow.
The same thing again some more; taking black and white photographs from some VERY early Doctor Who stories, convert them, colorize them, and create my own version of the colorize portraits. This time around it it the 2nd Doctor, Patrick Troughton, and a companion or two of his.
