Not the Experience in Seattle, home of the Science Fiction Hall of Fame, but a real live Museum of Science Fiction is being built in Washington, DC, and it is yet another project being built by crowdfunding. It will cover the history of the genre in all the various media, and examine its relationship to the real world. As they say on their You Tube page: Our mission is to create a center of gravity where art and science are powered by imagination. This effort is headed up by science fiction authors Greg Bear and David Brin, and their crowdfunding is centered at Indiegogo. They are starting by building a preview museum to open next year, and hoping to open the full scale facility by 2017. The preview museum will have exhibits including Star Trek, Star Wars, and Doctor Who artifacts, as both a warm up and an additional fund raising effort. Thanks to USA Today for the heads up on this one.
Yes, there is a Doctor Who: #SaveTheDay hashtag, and you might get some recognition and unlock some sneak peaks at the 50th anniversary celebration. Just upload your most creative content to Facebook, Twitter or Instagram with the hashtag #SaveTheDay to get involved. It is also a chance to be featured on the Doctor Who #savetheday web site if they like your creation.
This one should be fun, in an Indie kind of way. Her is about a specially designed artificial intelligence, custom built for the end user, and the poor schmuck who has to spend the rest of his life with her. Sometimes our Evil Robot Overlords are also our better half.
I know everyone has already seen the new Captain America: The Winter Soldier trailer, but I don’t care; here it is again. So far each Marvel movie in the Avengers series has been better than the one before it. I don’t think they can keep that up, but I will keep going to them to find out.
This is shaping up to be an excellent movie month, with several films to chose from this week. I absolutely have to be in the theater for Thor: The Dark World with the 9th Doctor (Chris Eccelston) playing the bad guy, and Chuck (Zack Levi) playing one of the Warriors 3 as kind of a variation on his role in Tangled. For those disappointed that About Time didn’t come out in a theater near them last week, it goes into much wider release this week, so you have a better shot of finding it. And The Starving Games is a parody of The Hunger Games that looks like it could be pretty funny.
In film, J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey leads us off, and if you don’t already know all about this one you haven’t been distracted, you’ve been comatose. Computer Chess is set in a 1980 tournament where some of the best programmers in the world got together to run their programs against one another and determine a winner. A comedy-drama about the first steps on the road to the invention of artificial intelligence and the creation of software that can beat us at our own game. I should probably mention that while this is its DVD debut, it have been available for purchase and download at iTunes and the like for a while. Much as I hate sparkly vampires I suppose I have to mention Twilight Forever: The Complete Saga, for those who somehow missed it earlier, or who absolutely have to have the several minutes of extra footage they stuck back in.
In TV we have Under the Dome, the series based on the Steven King story.
In Anime Hiiro no Kakera – The Tamayori Princess Saga Season 2 tells of Tamaki, the new Tamayori Princess. Which makes her the protector of the universe, with 5 protectors of her own. The five hansom boys devoted to her well being do cause a bit of confusion among her high school peer group, and more than a little amusement for the viewer. Living to inhabit her new role is not at all guaranteed, with lots of things doing their best to kill her. Zetman is about two guys with special powers, who each want to use their gifts in the cause of justice. What justice means is different for them, which becomes a source of trouble as their lives intertwine.
Fate/Zero is about the first Holy Grail War, which took place 10 years before the one covered in Fate/Stay Night. If you are not already following this series, whoever wins the wars gets an item that will make any dream come true, no matter how impossible. This particular special edition is a bit pricy for me, so I will be waiting for a more cost effective release to come out.