The one I will be in the theaters for this week is Mr. Peabody & Sherman, because I always appreciated that Rocky and Bullwinkle sense of humor. Like so many other franchises, they have been absorbed by one of the Disney studios now (Dreamworks, in this instance), most of whom have benefited from the funding and attention to detail. We also get 300: Rise of an Empire for those looking for something noticeably more serious. For those lucky enough to live in the right towns, you may also have a chance to see Journey to the West: Conquering the Demons, a film about a monk who has to fight 3 demons while falling in love with the beautiful demon hunter who helps him repeatedly. Before it is all over, he also has a transformative meeting with the Monkey King. This is another quality story by combat comedian Stephen Chow, and if you don’t live in a town where it will be on the big screen, it will also be available on that date through Video On Demand and iTunes.
Terrestrial Human
In movies, The Hunger Games: Catching Fire brings the second story in the series home, but not on Tuesday as is normal; this one hits the shelves on Friday. Also this week, The Grandmaster is another retelling of the life of Ip Man, who numbered among his students Bruce Lee. This one covers from 1930 to his death, with Tony Leung Chiu-Wai as Ip Man this time, and it was nominated for two Academy Awards this year. The Last Days on Mars is a sci-fi thriller where the discovery of life on the Red Planet might mean the death of us all. While it tanked with the critics, the cast and special effects are both quite good.
In TV, Doctor Who: The Time of the Doctor is the latest Christmas special, and the end of Matt Smith in the roll, as the Doctor regenerates into Peter Capaldi. And while it is not genre, Mr. & Mrs. Murder: Series 1 is a very quirky Australian murder mystery series bubbling over with dark humor and twisted plot lines that I thoroughly enjoy.
In Anime, Aria The Natural: Second Collection continues the girls trials on their way to becoming the top gondoliers on the canals of Mars, renamed Aqua since it’s terraforming. One Piece: Season 5 Part 6 likewise continues the adventures of the Straw Hat Gang as they battle the other pirates in an effort to gain control of the high seas.
If this J-Rock band isn’t channeling the love child of the Beatles and Chuck Berry in this song, they are coming damn close. Ulfuls got their name because back in 1992 one of the band members misread the word Soulful on his favorite album and they went with it. I find this rather ironic, since the lead guitarist’s name is Ulful Keisuke; or perhaps that was more of an inside joke. They turned out a ton of singles, albums, and videos from 1992 through 2009, at which point they retired, until the last few weeks. It looks like the band, or at least the lead guitarist, is once more cranking out music and putting together a tour, including the release of this track online earlier this week, and an appearance on Music Station to get himself back out in front of the public again.
UPDATE: There was a live version of the track recorded this week and released/posted on the 6th of March, 2014, so I appended it to this blog entry. Enjoy!
Earlier this week the audio/video production powerhouse AV Linux released it’s newest version, 6.0.3. This is a minor update, mostly focused on fixing bugs and updating software packages to the latest and greatest stable versions, but they did make one non-trivial change; they changed the default kernel to the 3.10.27-PAE low-latency build. This gives improved performance for all aspects of media capture and processing, but especially for PCI audio devices or firewire interfaces. Performance on older platforms and hardware is also enhanced by this change. Whatever type of multimedia creation and processing you were thinking of doing, this Live DVD has all the resources you need for every aspect of the production workflow. You can download the Torrent or the Image and burn it to disk to get your own free toolkit. After you have booted it from the DVD and had a chance to see just how complete the software collection included in this OpSys is, you can also install it to your hard drive if you so desire.
Because the world will never have enough Godzilla movies, here is the newest trailer for the latest version. Notice how the monster is bigger, by an order of magnitude, from one film to the next? This one should be in theaters on May 16th.
It is the end of the school year and time for graduation in Japan, a theme reflected in the latest video from Kyary Pamyu Pamyu. The track is called Yume no Hajima Ring Ring, and is being released today; if her past releases are any indication, you should be able to pick it up on iTunes if you live in North America. And if you do live in North America, she is on a world tour at the moment, and will be playing in New York, Toronto, and Chicago in March.