I actually took some time off the other week, and besides attending NADWCon I spent a bit of time at the National Aquarium while hanging out in Baltimore. One of the more interesting exhibits was the Jellyfish section, which had quite a selection of types. As I remembered from swimming in the ocean, Jellyfish are not real good at orienting to the local up and down, which should be a bit of a plus for surviving in space (or any other zero G environment).
This is an excellent weekend for movies, starting with R.I.P.D., the Rest In Peace Department from the comic book of the same name. It has Mary-Louise Parker costarring with Jeff Bridges, Ryan Reynolds, and Kevin Bacon in this comedy fantasy crime drama. If that wasn’t enough to keep you entertained another action/adventure/comedy based on a comic book is also hitting the big screen, RED 2, in which Mary-Louise Parker is costarring with Bruce Willis, John Malkovich, and Anthony Hopkins. That girl is definitely getting around, and getting some excellent parts in the process. Those are both on Friday, and I am going to have to attend both of them. On Wednesday the 17th Turbo is in the theaters, an animation about a snail who wants to be a race car. I really can’t afford to do three movies this weekend, even though it is from Dreamworks, one of my favorite western animation houses. This time around, the animation loses.
Not a great week for movies, with the remake of Evil Dead being about the only new film out there. And without Bruce, I just don’t see the point. We do better in TV, with Alphas: Season Two continuing the story for our team of special powered investigators. Unfortunately Syfy cancelled it, so it didn’t get a season 3, which means this is it for this series. Also this week the excellent BBC America original series Orphan Black: Season One hits the shelves. If you haven’t seen this one yet put it on your must-watch list and join the Clone Club.
In anime, Naruto Shippūden rolls out box set 15, bringing us up to episodes 180 through 192. The latest episode to stream out of Japan is 320, so we have a ways to go to catch up yet, but you can watch them on either the Viz or Hulu web sites. There is a re-release I am excited about this week, in the form of Patlabor (The Mobile Police) TV Series; Collection 1. Giant Robots, sociopaths, madmen waving guns – these aren’t just the problems the Mobile Police have to deal with every day, these ARE the Mobile Police! is a truly apt description, even if it is part of the current ad copy. This wonderful series is directed by Mamoru Oshii, who later went on to do Ghost In The Shell and many other excellent cyberpunk anime stories.
In honor of the 5oth anniversary, the folks at Future Publishing are hosting a competition for AudioGO, formerly BBC Audiobooks, and they are giving away 50 Doctor Who audio presentations, 25 CDs and 25 digital downloads. These are actually Audiobooks, with a single person reading a novelization, Radio Plays, with a full cast, sound effects, interlude music, and the whole nine yards, Soundtracks from the original TV series with narration to fill in the missing visuals, and several other formats. Some of the soundtracks are from episodes that have only survived in audio form, with the full original cast. They have literally hundreds of them, they have been doing Doctor Who audio stories from the beginning and are still cranking them out. To get and idea what kind of things they involve, you can download the free sampler and listen to 45 minutes worth of excerpts from all the different kinds of programs they produce. The only bad news for this contest is it is only open to residents of the UK (if I was reading the rules correctly), but even if you don’t live there you should grab the free sampler and check out some of the amazing stories you can collect.
The next film of the franchise, The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, doesn’t come out until November, but the trailer indicates it may be just as good as the first one. Suzanne Collins has done a superb job with these books, hopefully the film studio will continue at the quality level they brought to the first movie adaption.
In honor of the Apple iStore’s 5th anniversary, a bunch of games and apps have become free for a limited amount of time. They haven’t made it official and posted them anywhere, but Kotaku figured it out, and Techtola has collected up the ones they could find and listed them on that page. There are a few real goodies newly made free, and as usual some turkeys thrown out in the hopes some folks will mistake quantity for quality. App Snatcher lists some of them as well, but seems to be running a bit slow (probably because of all the folks hitting the site), and includes a few the other sites have missed.