Strider’s Web – Page 476

Things to Watch: DVDs and TV

Best choice for DVD’s this week has to be Duncan Jones’s Moon, filmed on a tiny budget but delivering a huge and powerful story. The creative use of miniatures at a time when everyone is making CGI effects is an entire tale unto itself.

A project that did focus on CGI and Animation to get its results was The Celestial Railroad. The classic Japanese story of riding a train through the Milky Way was used as a good jumping off point for creating a program to project onto a planetarium dome at IMAX resolution, and it is now available in Blue Ray.

For TV, tonight’s season 3 premier of Chuck kicked the series off in the right direction, even if a few details (like the whole Prague decision sequence) were beat on harder than they needed to be. And yes, if you missed it you can watch it online at that link. Later this week, the Discovery Channel Sci-Fi Science series gives you the info you need to build your own working light saber. If you haven’t already been following the series, then last week you missed how to build a Starship. Some of the top physicists in the world are involved with this one, so it is not just fictional speculation, but the real deal.

Jeep Rock, Tucker & Dale vs Evil

Some of the things you find online take more imagination than I generally expect from people, and the Jeep Rock video is an excellent example. The second video is the trailer from the film Tucker & Dale vs Evil, a comedy horror film that will hopefully get a distributor after it appears at Sundance this year.

Interesting Animations

And it comes down to this…

Alice, Kirkbot

The Syfy Channel ran Alice last month, which won’t actually be available on DVD until March, but was a wonderful interpretation of the book from the same folks who did Tin Man last year. But there is a computer variation of the namesake I wanted to mention here. It comes in the form of the A. L. I. C. E. Artificial Intelligence Foundation which uses an artificial James T. Kirk to drive its point home, as well as the Alice Programming Initiative which allows students to learn basic 3D graphics object-oriented programming while creating their own home-made videos.

Things to Do: Cons

Sac Anime happens from the 8th to the 10th in Sacramento, CA. The musical guests include The Slants and Voltaire, and there are many more guests in many other categories.

Animé Los Angeles 6 also happens this same weekend. They have some great Guests of Honor and some good events set up for the convention.

For the weekend Media Con, there is the Twighlight Con in Miami, FL. It runs from the 8th to the 10th, and the estrogen levels should be intense.

Things to Do: Film Festivals

This week sees the Palm Springs International Film Festival kick off, running from the 5th (today) to the 16th. While one of the more interesting segments is the G’Day USA: A Showcase of New Australian Cinema, it doesn’t have any actual genre entries. For that, Air Doll is one of the better choices. I think Hipsters about do-wap singers in 1955 Russia would make a great double feature with Howl about the US 1957 obscenity trial and counter-culture creation by Ginsberg.