Strider’s Web – Page 380

Something to Do: Movies

No doubt about it, Rise of the Planet of the Apes has to be the movie of choice for the week, doing an excellent job of letting us know exactly how the whole thing got started. As with all the best tragedies it was born from the best of intentions, with a lofty and laudable goal; curing one of the major plagues of our time, Alzheimer’s. If the trailer is any indication this one should be edge of your seat time adventure.

If you are looking for lighter fare, The Change Up may be what you are looking for. It is a familiar enough trope; two people are each jealous of the others situation, and through magical intervention swap bodies. Hopefully the writers find some humor to bring to the table that isn’t as well used as the stories premise.

The documentary choice this week is a major slice of history. Magic Trip was filmed back in 1964 but never seen until now, as Ken Kesey (author of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest), Neal Cassady, and the Merry Band of Pranksters made their epic road trip to the New York Worlds Fair.

Something to Watch: DVDs

In movies there don’t seem to be a lot of choices this week; Stake Land pretty much looks like it, and I am not terribly enthused about this one. However, there is a box set that should be fun: Mystery Science Theater 3000: MST3K vs. Gamera XXI has all 5 Gamera films with the famous MST3K audio overlay going on.

In TV, The Colony: Season 2 is a very interesting show, if you haven’t seen it. It is sort of the Discovery Channel reality TV version of the BBC’s Survivors, the setup is post-apocalyptic and the goal is to prosper in the face of adversity as a team. Unlike the wimpy broadcast TV equivalents, this program includes full tilt combat situations as part of the environment and resolution process. The other TV program of note is about a different battle: Ed Sullivan Presents: Rock N Roll Revolution is all about the British Invasion of the 1960s, and how America fought back. Of course, that battle took place on the dance floors and for the first time ever for a purely cultural clash on TV (there had been a number of political clashes on TV before that). The one notable Ed Sullivan Show performance that should be on the disk but is missing appears to be The Doors Light My Fire.

The western animation selection this time is Rio, a delightful little film put together by Blue Sky Studios, who did the entire Iceage series of animations. The choreographed areal dance/music sequences are some of the best I have ever seen.

For anime, Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood Part 5 continues the steampunk and sorcery parallel timeline story as brothers Elric and Alphonse struggle to regain what they have lost. With this one they also finish up the Brotherhood storyline, which was much closer to the original Manga than the first anime series was.

Might Be Giants: Tubthumping

The AV Club is an interesting web site that does a lot of things, one of which is the Undercover Project each year, in which a band covers a song by a different band. As soon as a band covers a song, it is removed from the list of songs to be covered. One of the choices this year was the They Might Be Giants song Birdhouse In Your Soul, which was covered by Titus Andronicus. Some folks didn’t like that version, but many did, including John Flansburgh, who dragged his band into the studio to cover yet another song on the Undercovered list, Chumbawamba’s Tubthumping. If you didn’t already know, John’s band is They Might Be Giants. There were a ton of other great bands doing covers there as well (what a surprise). Another kick ass song from a great band is Whirring from The Joy Formidable; Enjoy!

They Might Be Giants covers Chumbawamba

In Time trailer

Andrew Niccol has built some very intelligent films already, including Gattica and The Trueman Show. This trailer is from his new one, In Time, which will be hitting the big screens on October 28th. Science has learned how to turn off biologic aging, and now time is used as the currency of the culture, with the rich living forever and the poor dying young. This is true science fiction, extrapolating one advancement in the way the world works, and then exploring the different implications that grow naturally from that change.

Key of Awsome

They should actually call themselves Key of Silly and Politically Incorrect, but they have put together a bunch of geek-oriented music, including the triptych presented here. This is a song in three parts, with part one being Sexy Cyborg from Another Dimension, part two is Moon Girl, and it concludes with Tron Girl. Thanks to Barely Political for the great attitude!

Otakon

This weekend is Otakon, the by fans, for fans convention covering Manga, Anime, and all things Asian pop culture like. It takes place at the Baltimore Convention Center and the surrounding Baltimore Inner Harbor from July 29th through the 31st. Their schedule is huge, and for the last handful of years they have sold out the convention center, which is a lot of people. They generally try to hold back a block of tickets for same day walk up sales, but you have to be there awfully early in the morning to get them. One of the movies scheduled to be screened this year is Bunraku, currently on the film festival circuit and looking quite tasty, as you can tell from the trailer. The unscheduled Otakon event that got the most YouTube coverage last year had to be the fire drill, when 30,000 Otaku were all on the streets of Baltimore at once.