The Art of Video Games is a new exhibit at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, with a collection of 80 games, interviews with the creators, quite a bit of history and background, and a whole lot more. So I am sure not many will be surprised to learn that the folks from Think Geek are making a run to attend the event this weekend , and they are inviting everyone along for the fun. It works like this: meet up at the F Street lobby no later than 12 noon on Saturday, the 26th, to gather and be identified as part of the event. Of course, you might want to sign up ahead of time so if you are one of the winners they know where to send your prizes. At 12:30PM everyone will have been split up into teams of three and start cruising the exhibits, where you will want to pay plenty of attention. Finally, at 2PM, reconvene in the F street lobby to answer questions about the exhibit and the games for a shot at the prizes. This gathering should be a lot of fun, but if you already have plans this weekend the exhibit runs through September 30th, so you still have plenty of time to see it.
This tasty little animation was inspired by Charles Bukowski’s Bluebird poem. Created by Sidewalk Gazer, who is looking for someone to do a music video project with it. The creativity of some people is amazing, and thanks to Zouch for the heads up on this one.
This week we get the long-awaited Men In Black 3 for more sci-fi comedy fun. And this time around we get a bit of time travel to fix the world with, and I am definitely looking forward to it; I am thinking the 3D IMAX version may be the way to go.
In genre movies we have the Japanese Mutant Girls Squad and the American Evil Dead Inbred Rednecks, but I won’t be recommending either one of those. The only movie I can recommend this time around isn’t genre at all, but a spy based romantic comedy: This Means War.
Top TV selection this time is Sherlock: Season Two, the amazing re-imagining of the Holmes saga in another Steven Moffat project. If you haven’t seen these yet, you are in for a serious treat. The other choices in TV this week includes MTV’s Teen Wolf: The Complete Season One, which is apparently their attempt to pull in some of the money from the Twilight audience. My Babysitter’s a Vampire: The First Season is targeting the children’s fantasy market.
Some folks no doubt think The Secret World of Arrietty is a Disney animation feature film based on The Borrowers. They would be right except for the minor detail that this one is Anime, produced by Studio Ghibli, although it did use Disney as its North American distribution partner. They are using this opportunity to re-release a couple of other Studio Ghibli classics: Whisper of the Heart and Castle in the Sky, both as combo Blue-Ray/DVD sets. If you are missing those titles now is your chance to correct that, and if you haven’t seen them yet I really recommend you do so..
Other new Anime this week includes Planzet, a story about Earth’s battle with Aliens a few decades from now. Humans have raised a defensive shield around the planet, but are trapped behind it; the time has come to drop the shield for an all or nothing counterattack, to try to win their freedom. This one, like Arrietty, is a stand alone story, but at 53 minutes long I don’t think I can actually call it a feature length film. More like a 2 episode OVA.
Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood releases it’s OVA collection this week, which clocks in right at 60 minutes. Bakuman: Season One Part One brings the Blue Ray formatted first 13 episodes of a story of two young men trying to break into the Manga publishing industry. It has an account of both the good and the bad, as reported by industry insiders.
Not one, but two programs, one on each side of the Atlantic! In the UK, at the beginning of the year Blue Peter went looking for script ideas for a new Doctor Who episode, and it got them. So they made the mini episode based on a story put together by grade school children, and The Doctor, Amy, and Rory will be doing it for us this Thursday the 24th as part of the next Blue Peter program. On the US side, BBC America is running the Matt Smith Top Gear episode this Monday evening, as the Doctor drives a Reasonably Priced Car.
This is the man who invented the Florescent Light off the top of his head, and then came up with a system for delivering electrical power to it without using wires, 4 years before Tommy Edison started trying to make his employees figure out how to make an incandescent light bulb. This is the man who invented AC power, the electric motor, and audio speakers, all of which he patented. He invented a bunch of other stuff he patented (Marconie’s “invention” of radio relied on 17 of Tesla’s patents to make it work), but he also invented some stuff the patent office couldn’t figure out how to process, like broadcast energy, wireless charging of batteries, Ball Lightning, Radar, and oh, yeah, that earthquake machine he almost sank Long Island with (he had to move to Colorado and build another lab to avoid going to jail for that one). Yet another great site in a long list of web pages honoring the genius of Nikola Tesla is Oatmeal Comics: Tesla. I recommend you read it and begin to learn what a true geek he was. Another site worth checking into is The Man Who Electrified The World, as is The New Prometheus. Each of those sites has their own perspective on the man and his works, but what I find interesting is the things they are forced to agree on by the historical record. I personally only ever had 5 heroes in my life, and Nikola pretty much tops the list, with Albert Einstein coming in a very close second.