Most of us never get picked for astronaut training (in fact a few like me never get picked to play on a team of any kind), but for those who don’t, astronaut Jerry Carr got together with TED and produced this great little animation on the topic. This will introduce you to some of the details that NASA usually doesn’t mention, like the fact that being an Astronaut is something you only get to do after doing a whole lot of support stuff in the background, to help the current astronauts get their job done. I do love the excellent job that Sharon Colman did on the animation; it is classic 50s Disney line drawings, just like they did for the whole Mission to Mars program and all the other wonderful Disney space shows they did over the years.
Terrestrial Human
I enjoyed the new game day trailers for the various genre films coming out soon, particularly the one for the new Lone Ranger offering. It was pretty much all new footage for me, although that one train sequence has to be central to the story; I think I have probably seen most of it now.
This amazing moonrise video was made in a single take, with no stop motion, no compositing, and no CGI effects of any kind. After watching this I wasn’t terribly surprised to learn that the man who filmed it, Mark G, is a professional photographer with some really tasty optical gear. He got about two kilometers behind the Mount Victoria Lookout in New Zealand so the people looked really small, making the moon look very large indeed. This is another one from the Astronomy Picture of the Day site, one of my favorite online destinations.
Full Moon Silhouettes from Mark Gee on Vimeo.
The first track is from the band Body Parts with the song Doing Things. Not only do I like the music, but the video for this song is also silly fun, a great combination. The second track is UK band China Rats doing To Be Like, and again these are from the SXSW Showcasing Artist collection.
The Sorcerer and the White Snake starring Jet Li is sadly in limited release this week. Although since China bought AMC last year, the larger AMC theaters (anything with 12 or more screens) are now showing Chinese movies along with the Bollywood films they have always carried, so you could find it nearby. This is not the first movie based on the Chinese legend of the White Snake, which was first written down during the Ming Dynasty. In fact, there have been TV shows, operas, and stage plays, as well as movies based on this story, coming from Japan, China, Taiwan, and other parts of Asia. I am looking forward to seeing how this interpretation goes, since some of them have been quite surreal.
There seems to be a distinct lack of live action genre releases this week, either Movies or TV. And the western animation is a re-release, Peter Pan, Diamond Edition, which brings this classic out in Blue Ray format for the first time.
We do a little better with Anime, but not by a lot. Toriko: Part 2 continues the combat gourmet epic as our hero attempts to assemble his Full Course Menu of Life. The rule for including a dish seems to be it has to be made from something that kills most of the people that hunt it. While I can’t vouch for Toriko’s sanity, you have to admire his style. Also this week, Casshern Sins: Complete Series is coming out in a S.A.V.E. edition, which means if you shop around you can pick it up for under $20. Robot redemption in the wasteland he created is a unique premise for a series, and this one is done quire well.
There are, of course, many other DVDs coming out this week, both live action and animated, but they do not seem to be genre or even genre related. Hopefully we will do better next week.