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Something to Watch: DVDs, 27May14

In Movies the winner is Journey to the West, an action comedy about a young inept demon hunter and the highly skilled female demon hunter he teams up with. This is another Steven Chow film, the man who created Kung Fu Hustle, and who is well on his way to taking over the Action Comedy crown in China from Jackie Chan. There is also Independence Daysaster, a made-for-Syfy movie that might be OK as a comedy, but doesn’t look like they expected anyone to take it seriously. While not quite genre, Eastern Bandits is somewhere between a western, a mafia flick, a war film, and a martial arts movie, and all of it is action.

In TV we have Universe, Season 7: Ancient Mysteries Solved, another great season of exploring what we know about what is out there. If your looking for some spy action, Covert Affairs: Season 4 is also hitting the shelves this week.

For western animation, Defenders of Berk Part 2 is actually season 2. They seem to have lost the core of the story/character development in the new season, going instead for mindless entertainment to boost their ratings. Perhaps the new feature film will return the franchise to its underlying values.

In Anime, Love, Chunibyo & Other Delusions! Complete Series begins with someone trying very hard to face reality as he enters High School; a Chunibyo is a student who wants to be acknowledged as valuable so desperately that they’ve literally convinced themselves that they have secret knowledge and hidden powers. Our protagonist Yuta is struggling to leave that behind, but he didn’t count on his friend and neighbor Rikka, who knows all about his past mental state, being delusional herself. Life gets truly strange as fantasy worlds collide in this comedy. Aquarion Evol: Part Two brings episodes 14 through 26 of galaxy-crossing Mecha combat and hormone fueled silliness to the shelves. I find it interesting that there is a 12,000 year gap between the stories of Aquarion and Aquarion Evol, but luckily there is only a difference of a few weeks between parts 1 and 2 of the new series.

There are also an assortment of Lupin The Third releases this week, including Lupin the 3rd: The Hemingway Papers, but most of them seem to be re-releases of earlier series and feature films. Still, Lupin is always an enjoyable show, so I figured I should mention it. And yes, I do know that the one I linked to here has been available for a while, but it is a great series and also worth mentioning again; Fujiko Mine. Finally, Servant × Service: Complete Collection is also worth mentioning for its covert government strangeness and general eccentricity. It is a comedy, as you can tell by checking it out at Crunchyroll.

New RoboLinux Distro; Run XP Inside

You have an older computer and you don’t want to give up your XP Windows, even though support ended months ago. One possible solution is to burn RoboLinux to disk, boot from that disk, and run your already-installed OEM version of Windows XP or 7 from the hard drive, inside of this VM (Virtual Machine) wrapper. The virus and intrusion protection is handled from the Linux OS, and the program boot and run times are much faster then you ever saw from a Windows platform. But it automagically runs every XP/7 program you have installed, through the power of Robolinux Virtual Box. It does take a bit of setup (all of it very simple), and if you like the results you should consider donating something their way, but beyond that it just works.

Note that for a permanent solution you want to install a Linux version in parallel to your windows OS on your hard drive, install Robolinux Stealth VM Software on the Linux partition, and create a VM file image from the hard drive. The VM file you create can be run on any PC that is running any Linux version with Stealth VM installed. From that point on, you have your entire windows software collection available to you on any computer you care to launch it from, plus another 30,000 killer Linux programs, all of it booting and running a lot faster than windows could do it.

I wanted to edit both of these videos down into only those parts that would help you create your Virtual Machine, and eradicate the various requests for funding and explanations about why you should go out and convince other folks to support the base system. It would have reduced the viewing time for both videos combined down to about 20 minutes of actually useful information that would help you create your own virtual disc. But they really are creating a worthwhile service, so deserve to get the word out in full so everyone can make up their own mind about how they want to proceed. I hope you find these useful.