Wye Oak played quite a tasty set when they were on KEXP last month, and after the 15th time I went back and re-listened to it I realized I needed to share it. The band is a couple of very interesting people from Baltimore, MD, named Andy Stack and Jenn Wasner, who have had tracks included in shows like The Walking Dead and the US version of Being Human. Check out this performance and see if you don’t also conclude they are worth tracking down and hearing in person.
There is a brand new version of Gentoo Linux as a live DVD with multiple desktops and a ton of free software available. Gentoo Linux 20140826 features a collection of powerful updated software packages including Firefox 31.0, LibreOffice 4.2.5, GIMP 2.8.10, Blender 2.71, Amarok 2.8.0, Chromium 37.0.2062.35 and more. The desktops include KDE 4.13.3, GNOME 3.12.2, Xfce 4.10, Fluxbox 1.3.5, LXQt desktop 0.7.0, and i3 desktop 2.8. Plus, being a Live Disc, you don’t even have to risk your computer installation to run it. Just download the appropriate *.ISO file for your system and burn it to disc as an image, and you are ready to play with it. To use it, make sure your BIOS recognizes the CD/DVD hardware in your computer as a boot drive that it checks before the hard drive (that is the default on most computers made in the last 10 years or so). Then just drop the optical disc into your CD/DVD drive and power cycle your computer. When it wakes back up, it will be running an amazing collection of software on an OS you have not seen before; go play and explore! When you are done, shut down Gentoo, eject the disc, and reboot again. Your original system OS, be it Windows, Mac, or other, will be running just fine, without even any new files stored to your hard drive, pristine and unchanged. Live Discs are a great way to try new software and OS’s risk free on the hardware you own without having to worry about losing what you already had working. In a lot of cases, it is the software you never even knew to look for that ends up being the most worthwhile, and then you can check for instances of it built to run on the base system you have.
Low-fi Sci-fi lives, as this wonderful little clip from China makes abundantly clear. Ai Wei Wei, the iconic Chinese dissident, becomes a mysterious figure in this short film from Jason Wishnow set in a dystopian Chinese city of the near future. THE SAND STORM (沙尘暴) should at least teach a bit about water conservation in a Mad Maxian kind of world. This was a kickstarter project meant (as near as I can tell) to be a test platform for a feature length film, but it didn’t pull in the support it was hoping for once the original backers saw the end result. I am of two minds about this, since I thought the production quality was excellent, but I have also seen all the Mad Max Wannabies I will ever require in my life. So I will withhold judgement for now, and keep my eyes open for the next Ai Wei Wei story, and hope for something a bit more robust in the next iteration.
THE SAND STORM (沙尘暴) from jason wishnow on Vimeo.
This film won’t be out until February, but Seventh Son looks like a tasty adventure fantasy. It stars Jeff Bridges, Ben Barnes, and Julianne Moore, and is based on Joseph Delaney’s The Last Apprentice.
I am definitely looking forward to this one coming out… Go Marvel! Big Hero 6 will be hitting theaters in November.
There doesn’t seem to be anything exciting coming out this week, but Innocence could be worth watching, if the adventure and fantasy aspects are stronger than the horror. Based on the trailer, I don’t think they are.