If you didn’t make SIGGRAPH 2015, and I didn’t, there isn’t much I can say that will make sense about this Emerging Technologies Contributor. I know Shogyo Mujo isn’t a person, but more a process and team effort. Specifically, Shogyo Mujo utilizes 360-degree projection mapping to take an artistic sculpture to the next level by projecting the images, suitably distorted to map across the physical surface in ways that capture our gaze, as artwork that pulsates to the music. I found it a bit hypnotic to tell the truth, and plan to try my hand at this newly created art form whenever I can find the time to experiment with it.
I am excited about Heros Reborn, because when the original series of Heroes came to the small screen, it kicked ass for the first season and was almost as excellent for the second. It may have slowly degraded after that, but I stuck with it to the end. Even in the final season it had a lot of story to tell, but sadly had lost some of the threads, and some of the characters were no longer people we cared about.
In the Heroes Reborn reboot we have a number of our favorite characters from the original series, and an assortment of original characters, in what looks like a pretty good mix. We also have a good mix of story telling media, with Dark Mater Webisodes already available to enjoy (I posted the first one after the trailer, you should watch them all), the soon to be released comic book Heroes: Season Five, the App with its plethora of goodies and extras, and the 13 episode TV mini-series itself. This is not that dissimilar to what the first series did with their Heroes Evolution’s series of web sites, which included some strictly for mobile devices (not as common in 2006 as it is today).
Bottom line, the new offering has the potential to be good, and I can’t wait to start watching it and see if it lives up to that potential! The TV show portion of the new series hits the small screen on September 24th at 8/7PM (that whole time zone thing); I look forward to finding out if they did the topic justice, and hearing what everyone else has to say.
Hot on the heels of last weeks brush with U.N.C.L.E. we get two spy thrillers, the first being Hitman: Agent 47. He got that number because he is the 47th in a line of genetically engineered soldier/assassins, and he is not terribly happy about his fate. Now someone is out to unlock the secret of his creation and build an army of unstoppable killers, and he is the only thing standing between them and world domination. Then there is American Ultra, where a stoner turns out to be a highly programmed MK-Ultra sleeper agent, accidentally activated while working the overnight shift at his convenience store. Now the government is trying to shut him down permanently and he is running for his life. This one is as much a comedy as an action/adventure film.
Some amazing short animations have been collected up in Walt Disney Animation Studios Short Films Collection, which I incorrectly identified as being available last week. Most of them are fantasy, and one or two are sci-fi. Non-genre but no less surreal for that, The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared is a strange and wonderful Swedish film that everyone ought to see at least once. For the musically inclined, the docudrama LAMBERT & STAMP is about a couple of guys out to make a movie about a rock band who ended up being the managers of The Who. They didn’t have a clue what they were doing, but somehow wound up helping to shape one of the iconic rock bands of the last century. Finally the Western animation feature Batman Unlimited: Monster Mayhem has a subset of the Justice League trying to deal with a consortium of criminals in Gotham on Halloween.
TV has Once Upon a Time: Season 4, a show that gets better with each story. The release date gives you a month or so to binge your way through it before season 5 kicks of on September 27th. The week also brings the UK series Atlantis: Season Two Part Two, also a fantasy although not quite as imaginative.
Anime this week is represented by Future Diary: Complete Series, in which a dozen combatants receive a cell phone app which shows them their death three or four minutes before it happens. If they are very quick and very lucky they might live through it, surviving to face the next challenge which will come along much too quickly. If you are a fan of the manga this is based on, you might also enjoy watching the Live Action version, streaming now from Japan.
One of the more amusing Anime’s this season is Actually I Am… , in which Kuromine is a high school student who supposedly cannot keep a secret. I know that doesn’t sound like much of a premise, but the writers take it and run with it, with quite funny results. This is about all I can say without needing to post a Spoiler Alert: A bit over the half way mark through the first episode he discovers the girl he has a crush on, Yoko Shiragami, has a secret. She will be yanked out of school and he will never see her again if her dad learns that anyone knows about her, so he spends the rest of the episode going to great lengths to help keep her secret. Things just keep getting funnier from there, episode after episode, at least through the first half dozen of them. I have no idea if they can keep up the momentum and the humor all the way through the series, or first season, or however long it ends up being, but I really like the show so far. Check it out and see what you think.
The clear winner this week is the reboot of The Man from U.N.C.L.E., bringing the 1960s best Spy TV series back to life again. The premise is slightly different from the original, or perhaps this is an origin story, since Napoleon Solo is a CIA agent while Illya Kuryakin is a KGB operative rather than both of them working as spies for the UN. It has been quite a while since we have had a new U.N.C.L.E. story to watch, so I am looking forward to it. Also in limited release this week is Walt Before Mickey, the story of the young Walt Disney and how he got started.