8,000 Glowing Balloons Recreate the Berlin Wall

As Germany celebrates this, an amazing art installation is in Berlin. Wish I could get there to see it – i’ve been there twice, once in 1987 (before it fell) and once in 1992 (right after). Very strange on the second visit how it had immediately changed and the desolation at the center of the city between the two sectors – i’m sure much, much more has changed since …. Such a cool city – can’t wait to go back again….!

Enjoy and congrats, Germany.

LICHTGRENZE from Fall of the Wall 25 on Vimeo.

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Hmmmm….?

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Finally got around to reading another John Scalzi book, this one being The Human Division. I had heard about this book some time ago – it was published originally online as a series of stories set in the Old Man’s War universe, then consolidated into a book with some extras when it came out in hardcover.

I liked it – it presents effectively the other perspective after the ending of the Old Man’s War trilogy – that of the Colonial Union trying to get Earth back in the fold. And it doesn’t present a straight narrative – kind of jumps around to follow the main characters through different situations – sometimes the transitions are rather abrupt but it still all holds together pretty well.

I also liked that true to form, he tries to inject direct and subtle humor in many places along the way. These days, while I like the crazy, over the top ‘serious’ sci-fi like anyone else, I also appreciate when humor is used – it just softens the tone of a given book and humanizes the characters so much more, IMHO.

One other interesting angle is how he veers around the backstories between the main characters – most usually start out fairly sarcastic or intense – but then he takes the time to make them more three-dimensional – even in very small ways. Nice touch.

While I was disappointed that the ending is rather open-ended, I guess that’s life (not a ‘hollywood ending’) and, it potentially means he’ll revisit stories in this ‘universe’ again in the not-too-distant future.

Now, to read some of his other back catalog of books….

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Annoying – I find yet ANOTHER great animated series, only to determine that it’s already been CANCELLED – argh! So just finished watching the last episode of Sym-Bionic Titan, made by one of my fave animators – Genndy Tartakovsky, you may know him for Samurai Jack, Dexter’s Laboratory or even one of the early Clone Wars animated series.

So apparently this series came out a few years ago but was ultimately cancelled after its first year of 20 episodes in part because there were no TOYS associated with it? Sometimes I really think Cartoon Network has its head up its collective TV set on this stuff?!?

This series is really well-done – it has the always incredible art and design by Scott Wills (also of Samurai Jack fame among others); it has engaging stories that while in some cases a wee bit repetitive (they do generally fight one monster a show) still move a multistory plot along in the background and have the characters actually *develop* along the way. Astute viewers will notice sly visual pop culture references hidden in most episodes or in some cases, dialogue, but ths show doesn’t go out of its way to be ‘hip’ in that respect, which is nice.

One thing that’s very different about this show vs. say, Samurai Jack, is that the violence is definitely more pronounced, definitely more anime-inspired. While in watching some extras about Samurai Jack, they talked about how they could never actually kill a ‘person’ onscreen in that show – so they slice and dice robots and robot kaiju all over the place instead – here, they definitely left that rule behind, sometimes in a big way (the large battles of the ‘Escape from Galaluna’ episode especially).

But like happened to TRON:Uprising – I guess hollywood can’t appreciate (and RENEW for another season!) quality when they see it. Hopefully Mr. Tartakovsky will keep up the great work and using the same animators and art team – amazing stuff, this was…..

Other voices:
Metacritic

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