DreamWorks Animation just posted the first five minutes of How To Train Your Dragon 2, so I figured I would share it here. Enjoy.
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There are two choices that could be fun this weekend; The Machine is about two engineers working to create an autonomous AI to help mankind (and specifically one scientist’s daughter). That lasts until the Ministry of Defense steps in, takes the AI operated robot over, and teaches it to kill. As you know, this is not the thing to do if you hope to survive the rise of our evil robot overlords. The other film worth noting is Brick Mansions, about a cop and an ex-con trying to keep Detroit from being destroyed by the criminal gangs running wild behind the containment walls erected to keep them imprisoned. If this Luc Besson film plot line sounds familiar, it is because he is remaking his own 2004 movie Banlieue 13 (District B13), but not in French and not in Paris this time. For those thinking this is not genre, this is the future we do not want to live in, somewhere between Escape From New York and Mad Max. The original movie introduced the world to parkour, something most folks had never even heard of at that time.
Not much in movies this time except for re-releases. In TV we have Doctor Who: The Web of Fear, a Patrick Troughton era tale that has not been seen as a complete story since it first aired. They managed to find most of the episodes recently, and have used an original audio recording and some animation to fill in the last missing bit, episode 3. This is the story where we first meet Alistair Lethbridge-Stewart, later known as the Brigadier, and it sets up the Doctor’s ongoing relationship with UNIT. In western animation we have the Spectacular Spider-Man seasons 1 and 2 in a single box set.
In anime, also, most things are re-releases, but there are a few genre sets coming out. In Nekomonogatari (Black) the protagonist has survived a vampire attack with the help of his beautiful friend. He then learns she was able to help him because of the power given her by being possessed by the Curse Cat, and he must try to free her if he can. In Little Busters! – Collection 2 they are receiving cryptic messages delivered by cats and seeking a friend’s lost shadow. And then things started getting really strange.
They call themselves the Wagakki Band, which means Traditional Japanese Instrument Band, and while the name is not imaginative, the music they create certainly is. It is a mix of traditional, pop, rock, and a bit of metal, played on a combination of traditional and modern instruments. The musicians are masters of their instruments, and Yuko Suzuhana does an amazing job on the vocals. The first track is called Roku Chounen to Ichiya Monogatari, The second is a live version of their song Ephemera Days, and the 3rd is Senbonzakura. Since I still only have a vocabulary of around 100 words of Nihongo yet (meaning I understand the language as well as a smarter than average dog), I am depending on Google Translate for those titles. The final track is the band version of Tsuki Kage Mai Ka (The Shadow of the Moon, perhaps?) which they posted online back in November of 2012. Bottom line, I am very impressed with this group, and would love to see them come to North America on a tour, preferably as the warm up band for The Yoshida Brothers their first time. Even though they have been around for years, their first full album is being released on April 23rd, at least in Japan. With luck it will be available here through iTunes.
I can’t imagine anyone who doesn’t appreciate Ghost In The Shell when they meet this unique cyberpunk universe, so instead of ranting about how excellent the series is this time I thought I should just share a few of the recent shorts from GITS: Arise. The first one from The Borderless Project is called Foreseeing 2027, the second is Memory, and the third is Color. There are a few more in this set, all encouraged by Katsuyuki Motohiro, the main director of Psycho-Pass, which owes its existence to the influence of this show.
The New York Public Library has put an amazing collection of hi-res Open Access Maps online for downloading. There are over 20,000 cartographic properties which they believe have no known US copyright restrictions. Because of that, they have put them all under a Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication. You do have to create an account, but that is free within the bounds of being asked to support the library every so often. There is a bit of a learning curve finding your way around the site, but it doesn’t take long to pick up on it.