A completely unsolicited Age of Ultron featurette in which we get a glimpse of the fun and hijinks behind the scenes.
This came out a while ago, but I had a chance to post it finally and thought that I should do so. It will be on the big screen in only a couple of weeks at this point, and I am quite excited to see how well they do with this one.
This time we get Ex Machina, a tale of the worlds first true artificial intelligence. It looks like they are taking the story in an interesting direction, but I don’t seem to be left with an urge to run out to the theater after seeing this trailer. Perhaps it would be a good weekend to catch up on some of the TV shows I follow.
DarwinFish105 continues to amaze me with the incredible videos he creates, which in the past have included showing the construction of a Life Size Gundam and the building of the Tokyo Sky Tree, among many others. He does all of this at temporal and visual scales which bring the massive engineering projects into the realm of the intuitively comprehensible, so that just watching them allows you to understand what is going on and how it works together.
With this video, he is using the same tools, including a collection of high-speed cameras that many feature film producers would kill to have access to. But this time the driver for the visuals is not the engineering behind the project, but the music bed underneath it. As with all good music videos, he edited what appears on the screen to support and enhance the tempo, style, and experience of the soundtrack. I like the directions he is taking his art, and look forward to continuing to watch and see what new gems he comes up with. If you didn’t recognize the filming site, welcome to Akihabara, with a side order of Shinjuku (or was that Harajuku?)
Clive Owens and Morgan Freeman star in Last Knights, an epic fantasy adventure about the fight for freedom and justice against those who seek to oppress. The reviews have not been great, but it could be entertaining. I am a bit more interested in Detective Byomkesh Bakshy!, taking place in 1943 Calcutta, with a full assortment of potential evildoers both military and civilian. This one is based on the fictional detective in Bengali literature created by Sharadindu Bandyopadhyay, and if the movie does well we could have many more, since the original stories were published at a rate of 1 to 3 a year from 1932 to 1970. Interestingly enough, the author also worked in Bollywood writing screenplays, but not of Bakshy. There have been a number of other movies made about Byomkesh Bakshy, and after I see this one in the theater I am probably going to have to start tracking them down.
Oh, yeah, if you thought the two tracks they used in the trailer were the only good songs in the movie, allow me to correct that misconception by including the official Full Song Audio Jukebox. I wish western movies would do this, but since Bollywood movies are so music-centric it makes sense they would have started making these available before anyone else got around to it. Not just on YouTube to stream either, since they always give you a link to go buy the soundtrack on iTunes after you have streamed it and decided which songs you need in your permanent collection.
There are a lot of good choices this week, starting with The Imitation Game, the story of how Alan Turing was at the heart of defeating the Nazis during WWII by figuring out how to build a machine that could imitate the German Enigma Engine. Turing also invented the Turing Test which would help you recognize when a computing system became self aware, and the Universal Turing Machine which could simulate the computer a given program was to run on based on the program input. That last little 1936 invention was because of a function that became digital computer storage when they built it in the 1940s.
Also out in Films this week is Interstellar, part 1 of the movie version of the story of humanities escape to a new world, and I really hope they go ahead and build part 2. Outcast is the story of an Imperial fight for the throne in China and the part a couple of European Crusaders take in it, and why would I be surprised if Nick Cage goes a little over the top in a movie? Not to be confused with the Game of the Same Name.
In TV, we might get Silicon Valley: The Complete First Season, which I would find exciting. This series is funny and brutal and real, at least from my perspective.
In Anime, Gingitsune Complete Collection tells of Makoto, who sees and speaks with spirits and gods that others can not perceive. It is when they speak back that things often become interesting. Harlock: Space Pirate is the 2013 CGI animated feature film based on the multiple TV series the name of Space Pirate Captain Harlock. Sankarea: Undying Love comes out as an uncut complete series. This Zombie Romantic Comedy is a bit unusual, and quite entertaining. One Piece: Collection Treasure Chest Box Three brings episodes 206 (or possibly 209) through 299 or so in a single box set. Finally Magi: The Kingdom of Magic follows the continuing adventures of Aladdin, Alibaba, Morgiana, Scheherazade, and other Magi as they collect their power and prepare to protect their kingdoms. This contains the first 13 episodes of the new series.