Wonder what the technology you are going to be able to buy and use 3 to 5 years from now might look like? Visiting the SIGGRAPH Emerging Technologies exhibit each year should give you a pretty good idea, and this year there are a few particularly interesting ones collected on this video out of the 26 on the floor. The annual event ends today, and I wish I could have been there; perhaps next year. The other SIGGRAPH paths I enjoy are the Art Gallery and the Studio, so I am also including their trailers for this year.
Yes, someone actually did convert the Guardians of the Galaxy trailer into a Legos version. Enjoy!
I love good music and I enjoy animation, and this tune combines them both. This has won a few film fest awards for the animation work for Alvaro Les Riel, and the band who recorded this, DadaD, have a decent body of work. This song is called Peace, and it has been getting quite a lot of airplay for the Tokyo band.
If you are a Manga fan, you need to be aware that Viz has now launched Viz Select. These are some classic Manga’s that have been out of print for a while, and have now been re-released in a digital media format. Some of them started life as light novels, got turned into manga, and finally became Anime. Other stories went in a different order, such as The Girl Who Leapt Through Time, which started out as a novel, got turned into an Anime, followed by a live action movie, and then was developed as a Manga. However they got that way, there are some classic Manga titles in this collection, such as Future Diary, The Girl Who Leapt Through Time, Fate/stay night, Trinity Blood, D・N・ANGEL, and more. Enjoy!
In movies, the animation Rio 2 is a family friendly action/adventure worth the time to check out. Just like the original feature, the new one is very heavy with musical talent, both on the vocal and instrumental levels, as is fitting for the town where it takes place. In both films the animation is integrated with the music to an extent I have hardly ever seen before. I particularly like the aerial ballet work. A Winters Tale is a romantic Fantasy that I missed at the theaters, and am looking forward to seeing on disc.
For TV, Orphan Black: Season Two is the definite winner, and I have a hard time understanding why Tatiana Maslany was not nominated for half a dozen Emmy Awards after the insanely complex series of characters she has been portraying.
In Anime, Deadman Wonderland: Complete Series is a twisted little story about the unjustly imprisoned who are forced to fight to the death for the entertainment of the public and the enrichment of the networks. Not exactly a new premise, the plot has been around since at least 1975’s Death Race 2000, and renewed with The Running Man (the 1987 film with Arnold Schwarzenegger, or the 1982 Steven King book it was based on, your choice). Also this week, Mononoke: Complete Collection is a sequel to 2006’s Samurai Horror Tales, and tells the story of a medicine seller who travels the provinces looking for the evil spirits he is charged with defeating. When he finds one, he goes through a three stage process to banish it, the final step being to wipe it out with his sword. The tale takes place during the Edo period so this is a bit confusing to the locals, since society is broken up into four classes, and only the highest class, the Samurai, are allowed to use swords. The lowest class, merchants such as the medicine seller, would never be allowed near them; and yet, here he is, heavily armed to protect his fellow breathers.
Finally this week, To Love Ru: Darkness brings season three of the battle of the royal daughters of the planet Deviluke over the fate of the human Rito Yuuki. This one is a definite romantic comedy, and when the Golden Darkness shows up with an army of possessed high school students, things get really wild.
In Spring and Chaos we see the animated biography of Kenji Miyazawa. He was Japan’s most read and beloved modern poet. The film was released as a TV Special in 1996 to mark the 100th anniversary of Miyazawa’s birth, and while I do not know how they got permission to mirror it, it seems TokyoPop TV apparently did. Enjoy, and learn a bit about one of the worlds best artists, if you do not already know about him.