The Higgs Boson is often referred to as the God Particle for the simple reason that once they find and understand it, it could literally open the universe for us. The first video is Professor Michio Kaku giving a very brief introduction to the concept, and why the discovery is important. They came very close in December, and the actual discovery is expected, or at least hoped for, this year. The second video goes into a bit of additional detail on the concept of the Higgs Boson, which interacts with all but three other particles. Which means the discovery and direct observation of the Higgs could give us the key to the ToE (Theory of Everything) that Einstein spent his last 30 years working on, and pretty much every physicist since has taken a crack at. The key to time travel, FTL travel, as well as access to higher dimensions and parallel universes, this discovery could be the game changer that brings the future alive.
There are a couple of live action movies coming out this week that look interesting, and I think Bunraku will beat out the competition by a noticeable amount. It had a very limited theatrical run, so for most of us this will be our first shot to see it. Stars include Josh Hartnett, Woody Harrelson, Demi Moore, Gatck, and Ron Perlman, while the premise includes cowboys without guns and samurai without swords. The other live action selection is Snow Flower and the Secret Fan, a story that crosses centuries and cultural evolution to talk about friendship.
There is another film of note this week, and it is a documentary: the Magic Trip, staring Ken Keasey, Neal Cassady, Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, the Warlocks (they later changed their name to the Greatful Dead), and the Merry Band of Pranksters. This is the epic journey the bus Furthur and its humans took in 1964. If you knew what it meant to be On The Bus in the sixties, you can finally see the movie they filmed during that journey a mere 48 years later. I am planning to watch it as part two of a double header, with Howl starting the lineup, therefore watching the core events that caused post WWII America to evolve into the counterculture of the 1960s in one sitting. There is also a western animated feature film, Cars 2, with an all star vocal cast from Disney.
Only one TV series that ran nationally in North America found this week, Transformers Beast Wars: The Complete Series. This show was rather well done, with some good quality 3D animation for its time and a story line that evolved out of the original Transformers series. Personally I thought it was much better done than Transformers themselves, at least until the live action feature films came along.
In anime the primary selection is Amagami SS – Collection 2, continuing the story where all the potential futures for our protagonist are explored, each in their own parallel timeline and universe. There is no indication in what I have read if they continued the previous collection practice of having each shows primary voice actress sing the closing song, but I certainly hope so; it was a very nice touch. Also this week, Gakuen Alice – Complete Collection has schoolgirl friends transferring to a school where explosions, superpowers, and axe-wielding teddy bears are all part of the daily events.
What If… stars Kevin Sorbo as the man who gets a glimpse of what his life would have become had he made different choices. Yes, we have seen this before in many different movies, but I think the actors this time around bring a unique perspective. Surviving the experience with these kind of glucose levels may be a bit of a challenge, of course.
Originally a PBS series episode, Pioneers of Television: Science Fiction is a documentary which explores how Star Trek, Lost in Space, and The Twilight Zone changed the way the future was viewed, while delivering modern morality plays able to explore topics normally untouchable on the small screen.
For western animation this time around there is really only one choice: ReBoot: The Definitive Mainframe Edition. I have been waiting entirely too long for this direct descendant of the original TRON to become available. This was the first fully computer generated TV animation in western countries, telling the stories of the Guardians and their battle with the Viruses they defended Mainframe from. Besides having animation of a quality that had not been seen before in a TV series, it had a unique story line filled to overflowing with concepts previously only available in a collage level computer course, but told in a way to make them understandable even to children. Out of this weeks choice, this one is the Must Have selection for me. NOTE: while the Shout Factory web site page talks about the complete series in a single box on 9 DVDs, the Amazon page lists Season 1 and 2 on 4 DVDs, and I don’t know if they are releasing two versions or had to scale back the scope of the release.
There is one new and one repackaged Anime entry this week. Shin Koihime Muso: Complete Collection involves a girl with a disease that will turn her into a cat if an antidote is not found, and a guy trying to forge a peace between the kingdoms.
Samurai Champloo – The Complete Series also becomes available this week. This re-release (the original was in 2009) is the story of friendship through combat skills, as a waitress, a Ronin, and a Samurai wander Edo-era Japan looking for a warrior who smells like sunflowers. This program completely changed the way everyone viewed Samurai movies or TV, with a hip-hop music line, a unique animation style, and some amazing fight sequences.
David Bowie’s Space oddity is one of the truly definitive Sci-Fi songs, bordering as it does both inner (mental aberrations and chemical dependencies) and outer (rocket ships and planetary exploration) space. So it should be no surprise that even though Bowie wrote and performed this masterpiece originally, many other artists from many other countries have paid tribute to it over the years. I figured I should present a few of my favorites, just to make sure awareness of these artists got whatever small increase my mentioning them could induce. First off, from Japan, we have Atsushi Sakurai, with his brilliant 2004 live presentation:
Next up, we have the short version of Emilie Simon’s amazing variation. This one has what may be my favorite rhythm structure of any of these, even if the editing that shortened the length cut off noticeable chunks of the song. Of course, you can always hear the full version here.
Bet you didn’t know there was a Natalie Merchant version, did you?
For comparison, here is Bowie’s first live presentation at an awards ceremony for this world class song…
The Steampunk Fortnight continues over at TOR, with multiple articles stories and presentations posted each day. One I particularly like is the The Amazing Fantastic Steampunk Timeline of Music and Things by Evelyn Kriete. This presents a very nice chronology of the various Steampunk bands, and ties it to some other events and milestones of the subculture, liberally sprinkled with links to most of the mentioned performers and publications.
Not exactly two words I thought I would have been putting together in the Title area, but true none the less. So lets check out a few small but intense examples… and the fact that they are from radically different parts of the world tells you this is an art form that is well appreciated. These are the best examples I have found to date.