Strider’s Web – Page 480

More Music while waiting for Avatar; the Beat goes on…

Weather is moving in, so I may not get to see Avatar in my local theater on opening day. But since William Gibson inspired me to post some music yesterday, I thought it might to be fun to post a bit more today, this time recommended by Wil Wheaton from his Radio Free Burrito podcast. The band Monsters from Mars may not be posting many new tracks these days, but I sure like the old ones.

I just noticed that John Scalzi posted some of his favorite music videos today as well, and there are some great tunes there.

Speaking of old audio tracks, anyone remember Lord Buckley? With his classic poems from Hipsters, Flipsters, and Finger Poppin Daddies, knock me your lobes, to The Naz, to Gods Own Drunk, and many more, he was the precursor that ushered in everyone from William Burroughs to Lenny Bruce around 1950 or so (Buckley started recording about 1940). In the process, he singlehandedly invented the language of the Beat Generation, and introduced Jack Kerouac to stream of consciousness poetry, Allen Ginsberg to free-form rhyme, and cheered on Neal Cassady as he also created a unique variation on what it was to be an American Beat. Neal never wrote anything, as near as I can remember; he was just the quiet center around which everyone else kept writing, and doing, and evolving, using him for their inspiration.

Poerty and Music

Sometimes the world hand you some truly beautiful things. Tonight’s special treat came in the form of a Tweet from William Gibson, pointing to a stream of William Burroughs doing his Words of Advice poem. So I figured his collaboration with Jim Morrison was also worth posting, and as long as the music link was there thought I might as well include the other Gibson link that attracted my attention this evening, an Acapella version of a Who medley. On occasion, art trumps science.

Things To Do: Cons

Anime South runs from the 18th to the 20th in Destin, FL. Besides the usual Cosplay, Panels, Viewing Rooms, and Maid Cafe, they have some unusual events, like Anime Speed Dating and the Anime Tractor Pull. Musical guest Eyeshine seems to be touring the Anime and Sci-Fi Con circuit this winter, so they may be playing near you sometime soon.

Also this weekend, Tsunami 16 2009 happens in Merida, Yucatan Mexico. Unfortunately the homepage, while one of the most visually stunning images I have seen for an Anime con, is just that: a JPG image. A bit difficult to click on anything and get more information.

Build your own: Music

No real film fests this week except for the tail end of a few winding down, so a good time to talk about building your own. One thing you will need when creating your own Sci-Fi movie, animation, or radio play is a good sound bed of themes and incidental music. The Super Collider at SourceForge has a single primary purpose; to generate quality music with a command/control string of only 140 characters. These Twitter-sized bites of code play entire musical masterpieces when run through the original program. You can view the source code for the first 120 entries, to give you an idea of how to create your own.

The SuperCollider real-time audio synthesis and algorithmic composition program that takes the source code and converts it into music you can actually listen to is part of the SourceForge family of software. There are more projects you will want to track, so please follow the Wire’s Rendition of the SuperCollider’s instruction set so you don’t miss anything.

Things to Do: Movies, and Cory Doctorow in the Metaverse

Avatar finally comes out this weekend! The trailers have been amazing, the interactive app has been fun, and the hype has been overwhelming. I have pretty much been waiting all year for this film, and I am glad it is finally time to watch it.

Also showing on the big screen this week is RiffTrax: Christmas Shorts-Stravaganza, with special guest Wierd Al Yankovic. The program is live on the 16th, with an encore replay on the 17th; feed your zip code into each date to find the closest theaters to you.

Appearing live in Virtual Reality this week is Cory Doctorow on Copper Robot, doing a real time interview in the Second Life Seaside Theater, over at World2Worlds Island. That happens on Wednesday, the 16th, 8PM SL time (11PM EST, since 2nd Life time is California time). If you already have the free 2nd Life software installed, this is the SLURL that will launch it and take you straight to the event. If you are trapped behind an office firewall and can’t get into the metaverse, you can watch it in real time at Copper Robot, or grab the podcast after the event to listen to at your leisure.

Next week brings both The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus and Sherlock Holmes to the big screen. I’m going to have to see each of them, and maybe swoop back for a second pass at Avatar.

Things to Watch: DVDs

The pick of the release week is the first in a series of movies; the name of this one is The 20th Century Boys 1: The Beginning of the End. It has been making the film festival rounds, and has been doing killer box office back home. With luck, they will be releasing the remaining two films in this set here soon.

I can’t believe they allow them to keep making these things, but as long as they do, I will keep buying them: Robot Chicken Season 4 is coming out Tuesday. In case you have not added any of these to your collection yet, they are also releasing season 1-4 as a box set. This is some of the most sick and twisted humor available today, from the minds of Seth and Seth.

In the Anime department, two old favorites get released in HiDef this week; Samurai Champloo: The Complete Collection, and Basilisk – The Complete Series. Each of these is an incredible job of storytelling in their own very different ways, with some of the best animation you have ever seen. Hell, even the soundtracks are world class. If you were thinking these are both historical action/dramas from the Shogunate period, one involving Ninjas and one Samurai, you would be right. They have a break with reality in the mystical and martial arts powers wielded by some of the combatants, and that is enough of an excuse to allow me to list them here (that’s my story and I’m sticking to it).

Previously unreleased Anime for this week includes El Cazador de la Bruja – Season 1 Part 2, which is even more interesting because this is the third series of Bee Train’s Girls With Guns set. Noir and Madlax were the first two series in the collection, which should tell you where this one is coming from. There is another Bleach volume out (number 23), but as usual I will be waiting for the box set before adding it to the permanent collection.

For another live action, we have Chai Lai Angels: Dangerous Flowers, the Thai version of Charlies Angels from the creators of Ong-Bak. Chai Lai translates to “gorgeous”, and this action-comedy has plenty of both (action and comedy).

There is a documentary hitting the shelves Tuesday as well that I thought was worth a mention: Fallen Idol: The Yuri Gagarin Conspiracy. They got the story pretty close to the way I heard it, so I suspect this will be worth watching.