If you ever wondered what it was like going through a Tsunami, this footage from Japan should spell it out for you. This is brutal to watch when you consider how many of the people you see in this film did not survive, including the driver of the car doing the recording. The sad part is, this is not science fiction, or even a mundane disaster film. This is the way the world really works, although thankfully it doesn’t do this very often or in very many places at a given time. But sometimes it happens, and a town of 17,000 people only has 7,000 survivors (one Japanese town’s real statistics out of a coastline of several dozen towns). I know the actual events were months ago now, but the impact will last for years, if not decades, on the surviving residents. They need all the help we can give them.
Terrestrial Human
According to the official Stanislaw Lem web site, there is a new, better translation into English of his masterpiece Solaris. The original Polish version of the book was translated into French by one team, and the French version was later translated into English. With the double translation came lots of errors, and Lem spoke out against that version, since he also spoke English and could see for himself just how poor a job it was. Unfortunately, both of the English language movies made from it were based on that bad translation. The actual physical print version of the new translation is currently tied up in a copyright dispute, but it will be out as an audiobook and an e-book later this year.
Hell Girl has been streaming for a while, but now Anime Network has added Maria Holic to the online streaming collection. The Anime Network YouTube site starts out with a very nice Angel Beats trailer, which should be online sometime soon (actually already online if you get your feed from the Anime Network paid service). All of which means you have a good site to watch some quality Anime from, whenever you are so inclined. Enjoy!
It looks like the official props crew of the BBC, and the BBC itself, have now licensed for sale Official Daleks. They are full sized replicas built from the same moulds and specifications used to create the ones you see on TV, and if they seem a bit pricey at £3,000 (just under $5,000), remember that each one is hand-built to order. Being the same as the TV versions, you can not ride around in them like cars, but you can wear them like costumes if you crouch down and manipulate the transport directly (foot powered). Thanks to the folks at io9 for the heads up on this one.
Sometimes silly commercials are actually fun. While these may not be sci-fi, they are silly, and that counts for a lot with me. Plus, commercials invoke a discipline most audio/video creators never have to work within: tell your entire story and get your message across in 15 seconds to 3 minutes. If that sounds easy, give it a shot, and see just how it works out for you. I was surprised at the results I got the first few times, but as I worked at condensing the plot and action, I got better at it, and the stories themselves had a lot more punch in a lot less screen time.
I don’t see any movies this week in wide release I am excited about, but I have to mention Cars 2 simply because Pixar always does an amazing job with their animation. However, if you are in Seattle, the new Philip K. Dick movie Radio Free Albemuth will be having its theatrical world premiere at the Science Fiction Hall of Fame, kicking off their annual awards presentation. Wish I was on that coast.