Got to go to the third day of the Science Fiction Fantasy and Short Film Festival put on by SIFF every year about this time – very cool! The first bunch were the ‘encore’ best of sci-fi shorts from Saturday (Fri night shows horror shorts); then the second session was ‘best of from the past ten years of the festival, including the winner from the very first one (‘They’re made out of meat‘ – pretty weird).

One of my favorites, ‘The Kirkie’ is linked below but i wasn’t able to find it online. Some other good ones are below the pic – click through and enjoy!

time travel lover

time freak (may work, may not)

decapoda shock – may work, may not

RPG OKC

wanderers – carl sagan narration

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An oldie but a goodie…

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So Amazon is trying to get on the ‘online studio/streaming’ bandwagon with a number of new pilots – most of which I haven’t paid attention to, but The Man in the High Castle is of particular interest, given that it’s based on a PKD book, one for which he won the Hugo back in the 60’s.

This the story of an alternate history where the Axis won WWI and divided up the world (specifically the USA for the plot of the book) between them. The story flips between the East Coast (dominated by Nazis), West Coast (run by the Japanese) and a central ‘neutral zone’ (I think it was called the Colorado Free State in the booK).

After some stupid tech issues, I finally got the video to run – the first episode is free, although it does make you log in with your Amazon account. Not sure if they are doing a miniseries (like the initial return of BSG was before it became a full-on series) or trying to extend the original story beyond that of the novel, but it’s an interesting start, and well-made so far. I liked the several Seattle ‘architectural cameos’ in it – nice touch, Bezos – and I liked that the actors aren’t big names – for a series like this, I think that in many ways detracts from the story, especially with an ensemble cast.

Definitely interested to see more – although now I may need to take a spin back through the original book too, as it’s been so long since I read it. Hoping they do this justice like A Scanner Darkly, Minority Report or Blade Runner – and NOT like the recent adaptations of The Hobbit (for which JRR T must be doing backflips in his grave about now) but time will tell….here’s a clip:

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So Kerewin and I recently watched the third of these BBC movies, Salting The Battlefield, to finish the trilogy started with Page Eight and then Turks and Caicos. These were BBC ‘tv movies’ – we watched them on PBS.org via Masterpiece, for those inclined to check them out.

So these are spy thrillers, in my view the first two are pretty good, the third not quite as. Bill Nighy is the star here but in each movie there are several around him definitely providing interest. Ralph Fiennes knocks another ‘you really want to hate him’ role out of the park, he’s such a good bad guy (not as over the top as Voldemort or Harry from In Bruges, but there are definitely elements of both in his portrayal of the British PM).

And these are a bit lower-key than say, a Bourne movie, and not as complex as Tinker Tailor was (not sure of any movie that fits that bill). Still, they are probably far more realistic as regards plot and setting by contrast.

It was also obvious that the writers are definitely making both a direct and indirect commentary on the increasing British spy state as having grown out of the Bush years and why it just keeps on growing to this day – most notably in the third movie. What ends up happening to Johnny and the others is not as predictable as you might expect – but then again, this isn’t Hollywood either.

Check them out!

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longtime readers – Hmmm…. – may have seen the previous posts on Ghost in the Shell – both the movies and the 2 TV Series. recently a ‘prequel’ 4-episode miniseries was done that arguably fits ahead of all of them in time, although it’s closest in plot, characters and mentality to the two TV series – Ghost in the Shell:Arise.

So these episodes are a bit of a mix – they attempt to tell more of Motoko’s backstory (I can’t remember if they did much in the series with this, certainly not the movies, with this, barring one notable episode) – and they show the forming of the team (Motoko, Batou, Borma, Paz, Saito and Togusa with Aramaki as the Chief) that continues in the two series. And they attempt to include the other characters a bit more than seen previously (in the series it’s all about Motoko, Batou and Aramaki with Togusa in close second, the rest of the team have fairly 2-dimensional roles) although with four episodes there isn’t much time for that.

Here they also develop Motoko’s origins in Army Intelligence prior to joining Section 9, which is interesting but definitely not explained enough. And her former captain (Kurutsu) is seen throughout this series, in part as a foil, in part as a potential adversary? It’s not really clear.

Like all the Ghost series and movies, the animation is top-notch, and the visuals are always interesting and offbeat. And in addition to the backstory development mentioned above, there are at least two major plot lines through the four series in parallel, and those are sometimes hard to follow but interesting also.

The Section 9 ‘think tanks’ (Tachikomas in the two TV series) are seen here as earlier versions called ‘Logicomas’ – while the characters sometimes slam their capabilities as outdated or inferior, they seem as useful as the later versions – and not quite as silly in voice characterization as the later Tachikomas are).

And another interesting side topic is the infrequent commentary on ‘cyberization’ of humans – the human dream of merging man with machine – as well as the flip side of it being forced on people in part due to corporate greed. I found it kind of ironic that the people (with one exception) doing most of the commentary on this in the show are full cyborgs (all the members of Section 9 excepting Togusa and Aramaki).

I would say that besides the first movie, the first TV series (namely the Laughing Man story cycle within) would be my favorite – but this mini-series is very well done and definitely next in line – there’s likely sufficient timeline available for yet another between this series and the events in Stand Alone Complex, certainly. Like Initial D, Samurai Champloo and Cowboy Bebop, Ghost in the Shell rarely disappoints and ranks right up there with the best anime – can’t wait for the next one!

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While I’m not as stoked for this as I was for the second coming of TRON – and was somewhat disappointed – doh! – I have to say, this looks pretty good. Now to avoid watching any other trailers to avoid spoilers for just over a year……

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having just seen this – funny!

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Saw Guardians of the Galaxy yesterday afternoon – good movie! It really wasn’t at all what I expected, but entertaining nonetheless. And despite the Marvel pedigree, not really a superhero movie either, actually – more like a weirder version of Firefly (swashbuckling ‘western in space’ story) with bits of Star Wars (space dogfights complete obvious copy of, some of the plot elements are also very ‘anakin vs luke’ and The Fifth Element (the orb they are seeking, a lot of the production design, spaceships, etc.) thrown in.

And two nits (spoilers?) – if Chris Pratt’s character has the Sony Walkman with him playing classic tunes (on cassettes that lasted apparently 20+ years, hmmmm) – where does he get the AA batteries to power it? 🙂 Also, who the heck is Thanos and why does he spend his time just floating around in a big ‘space chair’ (cartoon image of same here) – kinda silly – but then again, I never understood why the original Baltar did it either?

And given that GOTG were a pretty obscure comic to begin with – they only appeared a few times in the 70s – Marvel obviously felt comfortable going in a completely different direction. Here’s what the originals looked like:

Anyway – entertaining movie, good actors and smart-a** dialogue – definitely all the great elements of a lazy Saturday afternoon matinee… 🙂

Other voices:
Rotten Tomatoes
Roger Ebert.com

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