If you have played this even once, the reality of the Ratchet & Clank movie can be summed up with their tag line: Kick Some Asteroid! It will be on the big screen at the end of April, just a handful of weeks from now.
IBM Japan has created the VRMMO project Sword Art Online: The Beginning, and when they asked for 200 Tokyo-based Alpha Testers the other week, over 100,000 people tried to sign up. Why all the excitement? For one thing, this may be the first time a fully realized 3D Immersive Virtual Reality MMOG was ever created based on a series of Lite Novels and Anime stories. For another, the books and Anime are all about living in a fully realized 3D Immersive Virtual Reality MMOG, which gives it just that touch of recursive irony that can really draw the fans. Finally (although I could keep pointing out additional reasons), this is IBM; who better to build the future of computer enhanced VR environments in the year when VR goes mainstream?
They are deploying their Cognitive System architecture, previously used to create tools like Watson, to be the basis of their AI control for NPC and Environment functions, which has to rival the power of the systems described in the books and Anime. They are also invoking SoftLayer, their own software-switched network control system that builds cloud environments with the click of an icon and actively keeps them robust and lightning-fast. Here is a video to give you the idea of what they are doing. If you are an SAO fan, be aware that the Alpha testing is over, and the Beta testing is about to roll out! Be sure to check out the Sword Art Online: The Beginning YouTube Channel for more video updates.
This is a movie I want to see, from a game I should be playing; it is amazing. Blur Studios, the folks who put this together are heavy into both worlds, with movie special effects credits including Thor: The Dark World and the upcoming Deadpool. In this case, League of Legends happens to be a game, but after watching this video I am ready to plunk my money down on the counter to see the finished production on the big screen. Mind, I was gasping for sympathetic breath 30 seconds into the trailer; I suspect that same 30 seconds might end up being my best time staying alive were I to actually attempt to play.
In Movies Hitman: Agent 47 is the story of a genetically engineered assassin who is not terribly happy about his fate. He teams up with a woman who may be the offspring of one of the earlier iterations in his lineage to try to stop a multinational corporation which is out to unlock the secret of his creation and build an army of unstoppable killers. They are the only thing standing between that group and world domination, and the world could really use their help. Sadly, that seems to be all the new releases we get this week in any genre category, but that isn’t terribly surprising considering the holidays were last week, and the buying gifts season is officially over for this year.
It looks like they have put some effort into Warcraft: The Beginning, which will be hitting theaters on June 16th, 2016. There is nothing to their web site so far, but there is a little bit of info on their facebook page. Personally, the trailer sold me; I will definitely be in the theater for this one.
Normally I do music on Saturday night’s, but normally Saturday is not Halloween. So this time around, a couple of classics in honor of the holiday. To make up for the schedule, music will be along very shortly, in honor of the new Abney Park album. The first Halloween video:
This is part of Disney’s Silly Symphonies series: The Skeleton Dance is a classic from 1929, not long after the Steamboat Willie era, and perfect for Halloween. In those days, this stuff was experimental state of the art, which tends to explain why Walt himself directed this one. The entire Silly Symphony collection was created from 1929 to 1939, and totaled out to 75 separate short animations, most of which were mini-masterpieces for their time. As evidence of this, the series won the Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film seven times, including the first 6 times that award was ever given out. It was also a Disney test bed for new technology, of which the single most important piece (to my mind, at least) was Technicolor, a technology nobody else in the industry would appreciate until decades later.
The second Halloween video is a more modern classic: The 8 Bit version of Army of Darkness. It may have been the third film in the Evil Dead franchise, but it became the definitive horror comedy film of its time very quickly. It didn’t have a serious contender for that title until Shaun Of The Dead hit the big screen quite a few years later. I do kind of wish I could have played the game instead of just watched it, though. These CineFix virtual remakes are quite the hoot.