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Something to Do: Movies, 5Apr13

There are several interesting films coming out this week, but I would be lying if I said I was more interested in anything else than I was in Odd Thomas, the Dean R. Koontz story about a short order cook with a hot line to heaven (or hell). I figure it would be too much to hope this production actually becomes available this week, considering back in January they were in court suing for distribution money that was promised but never delivered. In fact the movie itself was supposed to be released in January. But hey, I live in hope, and there is also a real good chance another Dean Koontz book series, Frankenstein, will be made into a TV series after all.

Things we have already seen worth going back to the theaters for this week are topped off with the 3D Jurassic Park presentation; it should be a monster (yes, pun intended)! And of course that leaves us with Evil Dead 2 as another option to consider. All in all, the selection this time looks interesting.

Something to Do: Movies, 29Mar13

The Host is a story of alien invasion, body snatchers who push out the human spirit, but some humans fight back hard. Based on the book by Stephenie Meyer, we get no sparkling vampires this time, so I think it might be worth taking a look at. Also out, GI Joe: Retaliation claims it is better than the first film, and I hope that’s true. I thought the first one was technically well done, but somehow I just wasn’t able to connect with the Joe characters. Possibly because they were supposed to be the good guys, but they killed off even more innocent bystanders than the bad guys and didn’t seem to notice, let alone care. Perhaps they fixed that problem by now and surgically attached souls to the bodies of the warriors.

New Terry Pratchett Radio Play (and App)!

BBC Radio 4 starts a new radio play with Terry Pratchett’s Eric tomorrow. They have broken the story into four parts, with part one airing at 2300 GMT on Wednesday, March 6th. If you want to get an idea of what you can expect, listen to the clip and try not to hurt yourself laughing. Terry Pratchett’s stories are always funny as hell, and BBC Radio does a first class job of rendering them in Radio Play format. And if you haven’t grabbed the Discworld App for the iPad yet, here is a little teaser for you…

Copyrights and Doctorow

Coming up on Thursday the 28th at the Gunn Center for the Study of Science Fiction at Kansas University, Cory Doctorow will be doing a lecture entitled The Coming War on General Purpose Computing: Every single political issue will end up rehashing the stupid Internet copyright fight. I wish I was anywhere near there so I could attend and hear one of the most innovative and insightful thinkers of the last dozen years give this presentation. If you are nearby, don’t miss it; seating is free, but limited, so you want to get there early. If someone records it and puts in on TED or YouTube, I will post it here, which will at least be better than missing it entirely.

Doctorow Poster

In the meantime, here is a very related presentation he gave back in 2011 that should give you an idea of the subject matter. The Copyright and Intellectual Property questions are very complex, because the solutions to protect one group’s rights would often wipe out every other group’s rights, and what we need is a system that will protect everyone’s rights at once. There is a solution to be found, but not without a lot of work to find common ground and implement a best practices list that actually works for all of us. I appreciate the fact that Doctorow looks at the problem from lots of angles and is not shy about expressing his opinions about all of the components involved with the process.

This stuff is important; it deserves your attention and understanding. Yeah, it may take a bit of time and effort to comprehend but the rewards of getting it right will be amazing for the entire human race. Don’t let the future be determined without taking a moment to find out about the arguments and making your voice heard in favor of the aspects you consider worth fighting for.