When I posted about new movies for this weekend, how the hell did I not mention A Winter’s Tale, this year’s perfect Valentine’s Fantasy? It opened today, do not miss it! Tonight I thought I would mention a short list of 5 of the best Science Fiction romantic comedies for Valentines Day from years gone by. I’m starting with a personal favorite, Earth Girls Are Easy, about a fuzzy alien (Jeff Goldblum) and a human girl (Geena Davis). The fact that they were wildly in love with each other at the time gives this film a chemistry that you almost never find on screen. Besides the Out Of This World romance, it is a wonderful musical comedy, featuring the songs of Julie Brown and the antics of the whole cast, who include some very funny people. Hopefully they will get the live stage version going sometime soon. Also in that vein, Blast From the Past has a boy raised in a fallout shelter going to the surface world for the first time, where a nuclear war never happened after all. The Princess Bride is a classic Fantasy that never gets old, and Warm Bodies is the best Zombie romance/comedy I think I have ever seen. Seeking a Friend for the End of the World rounds out the group with an Apocalypse setting for its story. If you have missed any of these, stream or rent a copy and watch it with your special someone; I am betting you will be glad you did.
Terrestrial Human
My car got buried under the 19 inches of snow that fell last night and today, and then it changed to rain which made me hope it would wash it all away so I wouldn’t have to shovel. 30 minutes later it changed back to snow, laying just enough liquid water down to put a layer of ice over everything when the temperature dropped again. The folks on TV say we can expect another 4 to 6 inches of snow before it ends tonight. This year has kind of made me wish I owned a sled or a pair of skies, so I could get some entertainment out of the unusual weather. At the point I took this picture we were at about the 12 inches mark.
Yes, this is a step-by-step tutorial about how to build your own Minions in Blender, a powerful free open source 3D modeling program. Since I personally love Despicable Me (both of them), this seemed like a great project to learn from. Download your free copy of Blender and start creating today.
This Flash Fiction contest is 3 Minute Futures, and they are looking for someone to write a short, powerful story. The world renowned science fiction author Kim Stanley Robinson will select the winner, and Star Trek actress Gates McFadden will direct the To the Best of Our Knowledge productions into a finished radio play, with the help of LA’s Ensemble Studio Theatre. The competition runs until March 1st, 2014, be sure to Submit Your Entry before then! Thanks to Boing Boing for the heads up on that one… and just how many of you actually remember Gerald McBoingBoing, the namesake for that site?
On Wednesday we get the reboot of Robocop, and excellent franchise about corporate greed and what it means to be a man. I look forward to finding out if this one stands up to the previous movies and TV show, but from the look of the trailer I believe it will. Also out this weekend in extremely limited release is Dead Snow: Red vs. Dead, sequel to the 2009 Norwegian horror/comedy Død Snø. And let’s not forget Vampie, a sweet story about a vampire girl allergic to blood who eats VAMpire PIEs to sustain her, and the evil vampires that want to use her food source to raise the dead and enslave the living. I have no confirmation that that last one is actually being released this week, but it looks like it could be fun so I had to include it anyways.
In movies, Ender’s Game was one of the rare films that is true to the book it is based on; both versions are telling exactly the same story. With an excellent cast, powerful performances, and amazing special effects, it is definitely worth joining anyone’s permanent collection. I don’t remember seeing The Adventurer: The Curse of the Midas Box in theaters near me, but it is now coming to disc. It was meant to be the first in a series of YA Steampunk stories based in the Victorian Era’s British Empire, but it did not get good reviews or much in the way of box office revenues, so I suspect it will be the last, instead.
In TV, Sherlock: Season Three continues the brilliant series driven by Steven Moffat. I am seriously waiting for season 4 next year. The Returned is a twisty little series about a group of people who came home to learn that they had died years ago, and when the currently living start dying off it becomes obvious something has followed them back. It isn’t quite a remake of the TV show Les Revenants, but it lives in the same zip code. Doctor Who: The Moonbase is one of the lost stories, available only in partial video episodes, audio drama, or picture book form. It is one of the Patrick Troughton tales for which they have now used animation to restore, so you can watch all four episodes. Not as good as they did for Enemy Of The World or The Web Of Fear, where they actually recovered the original video footage to restore, but a step closer to getting the whole story the way it was meant to be experienced.
In Anime, Kamisama Kiss is about a ordinary young girl who suddenly became a god at the touch of a stranger’s lips. As she struggles to get her new realm under control, she realizes that life may be worth going for, after all. MM! is about a masochist named Sado who joins a club to seek help with his emotional problems. The clubs president may or may not be a god, but certainly wields some interesting powers, and some of the other members include a girl terrified of men and a nurse who forces all her patients to cosplay. The other club members are a bit strange, even by this groups reckoning. Finally, Strike Witches: Season 2 S.A.V.E Edition gives you the girls who were airplanes continuing to defend the home planet from alien invasion during WWII, at a very affordable price. The Funimation home page seems to be saying Season One S.A.V.E edition on BR/DVD is also about to come out, but since I already own it I have to believe they mean they will be re-releasing it. Or maybe the blurb is for a different country.