This week we get The Imitation Game, the true life story of Alan Turing, the genius British mathematician, logician, cryptologist and computer scientist. He was in the forefront of the project to crack the German Enigma Code that helped the Allies win WWII, without him we might have lost the war. Benedict Cumberbatch gets to play the great man this time around. If you prefer your spy’s animated rather than real, The Penguins of Madagascar is quite a bit funnier… but it also stars Benedict Cumberbatch, so he is in both of my selections for this weekend.
There are many aspects to a SIGGRAPH convention, but one of my favorites has always been the Computer Animation Festival, and the SIGGRAPH Asia 2014 con coming up next month looks to have a good collection. The gathering takes place in Shenzhen, China, from December 3rd to the 6th, and as always will feature the cutting edge in what is being created in the world of computer graphics.
Another tale of the future from South Africa, co-written, directed, and co-produced by Neill Blomkamp, the man who brought us District 9. Chappie is a robot with a brain based on learning heuristics and a neural net, meaning he starts out with only the instinct to learn, knowing nothing. Actors include Sigourney Weaver, Hugh Jackman, Ninja and Yo-Landi Vi$$er (those last two you probably know better under the name Die Antwoord), and the trailer tells me I need to see this film. In the US it will be on the big screen on March 6, 2015.
In 1938, the Nazi’s were poised to take over the world, and one of the tools that gave them the power to attempt it was the Enigma Machine. This device let them encrypt their communications in a way impossible for anyone else of the time to break, and Europe was at risk of being lost because of it. But then a very small group of mathematicians led by the legendary genius Alan Turing became the team assembled at Bletchley Park to break the code. In the process, they re-invented the modern computer, for the first time since Babbage’s Difference Engine. This movie, The Imitation Game, is another retelling of that very exciting and important story, and this time they have Benedict Cumberbatch doing Turing, a man who had a lot in common with Sherlock Holmes, so the casting is perfect. The film is on the festival circuit at the moment, I can’t wait until it hits the theaters on November 21st!
I wish I had permission to post the winner’s images here, because they created some amazing places. You will have to visit E-On Stoftware’s 3D Environment Competition Winners 2014 to see them, but they are worth your time to check out. They were all created using VUE Infinite, the professional environment creation software suite from E-On. When I say professional, I am not kidding; check out their 2013 customer showcase video below to see just how many times you watched their product in a movie that year. But while their top of the line software is a bit pricy they have a full range of VUE 3D creation products including versions that range from VUE Pioneer priced at FREE up to versions priced to $500 for those of us not trying to create a feature film. And even the free version comes with full support including an active community, also priced at free.
Knoppix 7.4.2 is a security and bug-fix update which corrects the Shellshock vulnerability in Bash among a number of other vulnerabilities according to the good folks over at Distrowatch. Plus it has the latest and greatest versions of Firefox, Chromium, GIMP, LibreOffice, and a lot more. And since it is a Live Disk, you don’t have to install it on your computer; just pop it in your DVD drive, reboot your computer, and watch it load and run. Enjoy all the software, and when you are done and shut it down it ejects the disc; if you take it out of the DVD tray, the next time you boot your computer you go back to whatever operating system you have on your hard drive. It defaults to the KDE desktop, but you can select others during the boot process, including GNOME. I am going to download the .ISO file tonight and burn that image to disc so I can check it out!