There don’t seem to be any new genre movies or TV shows being released this week, although in martial arts The Protector 2 is another Thai story of combat among the elephants starring Tony Jaa. We only get one real new title in anime as well, Problem children are coming from another world, aren’t they?, about three human girls who get invited to another planet to engage in games with combat they may not survive. Sadly, that’s about it this time around, or at least all that I have found that wasn’t a re-release from years gone by.
Actually, every specialist variant of Ubuntu just came out with their build of Ubuntu 14.04.01, a maintenance update of the current stable release. I have two personal favorites of this family, Xubuntu and Ubuntu Studio.
Xubuntu is a minimal footprint build that allows my surviving computers from the 1990s to run as if they were built a mere decade ago. It runs all the latest versions of my favorite programs, and it’s Virus, Intrusion, and Identity Theft protection is up to the minute. That one I have installed on a few computers that otherwise would have been relegated to the status of doorstop, since no one would remember what they were going to do with them by the time Windows finished booting.
Even more impressive is Ubuntu Studio, a Live Disc version that boots straight off of the DVD without messing up the OS on your hard drive. It is filled with the most amazing collection of software for capturing, creating, editing, burning, and broadcasting your media in any format. Want to create a 3D animation, run your own radio station, turn your home video footage into a high quality movie, or burn that movie onto DVD complete with a great menu system and lots of special features? Those are just four of the hundreds of projects in all aspects of media production and creation that this OS and its related software suites are designed to help you achieve. To make it even easier, they have broken the menu system down into workflow driven tracks, so once you decide on a project you will find every tool you could ever want for that project within that track’s folder. Whatever multimedia project you want to create, this is the perfect tool set to use.
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!
Only Lovers Left Alive was a British/German romantic vampire drama that came out in 2013, but not anywhere near where I lived. It has been nominated for a number of awards, and received a lot of critical attention, including getting an 87% at Rotten Tomatoes. One of the vampires writes music and does scientific research, using Tesla’s inventions to power his house and vehicles. Another wrote about half of Shakespeare’s plays. It will finally be released in the US on August 19th, and I am looking forward to finally being able to see it.
One of the choices this Friday is Lucy, the latest Luc Besson science fiction film. Scarlett Johansson is kidnapped and has an experimental drug surgically implanted in her, so she can be used to smuggle it somewhere. But when the container bursts inside her it triggers a series of genetic changes that act like accelerated evolution, and as her power grows she takes on those who tried to victimize her. Also this weekend, another version of Hercules, this time based on the graphic novels from Radical Comics and starring Dwayne The Rock Johnson. They both look like excellent choices to me, but before you make up your own mind about which to see you might want to check out Alan Moore’s call for a boycott of the Hercules film. It seems the writer of the comics, Steven Moore (no relation), wasn’t getting any money for the movie and had no creative input, but the company did agree not to put his name on it. Since his death earlier this year they have been promoting it as Steve Moore’s Hercules without paying his estate for using his name to try to increase their profits.
In movies this week Transcendence is a story of the singularity, as the first person to upload themselves becomes in control of the web and everything connected to it. I have not seen this one yet, but as someone who wants to be uploaded I intend to, and hope it does not end too badly. In the realm of Fantasy we have Heaven Is For Real, another movie I haven’t seen and can not comment on.
In TV we have Xena: Warrior Princess – Season Five, and yes, I know this is not the first time this season has been released. But when it was originally put on the shelves it had a list price of $79.95, which means if you shopped around you might be able to find it for $59, or a used copy for $45. The new set of releases list at $26.95 when each first comes out, meaning you can find it for $19 or so, a lot more cost effective choice, and a bit less if you wait about 6 months. The other thing I prefer about the new series of releases is that they are in a single multi-disc case per season, and so take up about a third of the shelf space of the original box set with 4 or 5 normal DVD cases in it. And the rumors of a new series/movie continue, so maybe we will get a bit more of this show to enjoy.
In Anime Appleseed: Alpha is the new prequel to the other series by Masamune Shirow about what it means to be human, and where the borders of your humanity are in a war-torn cyberpunk universe. For those wondering the primary series from the author/artist on the topic is Ghost In The Shell, the title referring to the human/AI mind/spirit encased in whatever combination of organics and machinery your particular cyborg situation has you in. Appleseed is one of the best professional instances of Machinema I know of, rivaled only by the Final Fantasy franchise. And the GITS link is a really good viral site, driving everyone nutz when it first went online; have fun learning your way around it.
The Severing Crime Edge: Complete Collection is a dark fantasy about people who inherit murder weapons from their ancestors, complete with a curse that causes them to re-commit the original murders. But they don’t want to do that, and are fighting their destinies. The other anime this week isn’t exactly genre, but it is pretty amusing, right down to the title: My Teen Romantic Comedy SNAFU. His student adviser put him into a club that had only one member until he arrived, and the club’s mandate is to help all who come to them solve their problems. Except the problems they are asked to solve are fairly strange, and get stranger as time goes on.