Today is the birthday for Dwight Brown of Whipped Cream Difficulties, whom I’ve known since God was a corporal. Happy birthday, Dwight!
On the birthday theme, here’s a viral teaser trailer for Prometheus promoting Weyland Industries’ androids, that’s so straight it’s almost not creepy. Which makes it that much creepier:
Plus an imaginary TED talk from Mr. Weyland himself.
Last Saturday I was over at A.T. and Carol’s house watching a Japanese science fiction action film called Returner (imagine every big budget American science fiction film between 1980 and 2000 being jammed into a blender and set to frappe and you’ll have a pretty good idea of the plot elements). It was fine if you didn’t mind the complete lack of originality, but we watched it because I thought it might be the one I saw a clip from a year or two ago. The problem is, while my memory of the clip is fairly clear, I can’t remember sufficient details to find it via a Google search.
In the clip I saw, people were fighting some freaky looking monsters that were obviously some sort of CGI (about the same level of the CGI in Returner, i.e. better than the Skiffy Channel’s cheap monster movies, but not as good as a major U.S. release). I think the monsters were sort of pale and slightly taller than human sized (but not multistory kaiju sized monsters). It was live action, not anime. And they were fighting in some sort of open, brightly lit interior area, like an atrium, or foyer, or perhaps somewhere in a museum. And the monsters weren’t guys in suits and didn’t look anything like the monsters on Ultraman, etc.
This should be enough to find the clip again, but it doesn’t seem to be. Maybe it wasn’t a movie, but part of a TV show. And maybe it wasn’t from Japan, but Hong Kong or South Korea. Or maybe Taiwan. (But not the Philippines. Probably.) And maybe they weren’t monsters, but aliens. Or maybe demons. Beings from another dimension? And I thought I saw it on Fark, but couldn’t find it when I searched there. Maybe it was linked from comments in the thread?
Movies I know it’s not:
Any ideas? It’s driving me to distraction…
This week’s Shoegazer Sunday offering is a Japanese band called Civic. First up is “Tensai”:
Here’s a live version of “Guitar,” which is a tremendously fun high energy number. Skip the first 1:20 seconds of annoying “walking on stage” intro electronica.
Like many of my Japanese shoegazer discoveries, Civic records for High Fader Records. Guitar seems to have been reborn there as “Tobacco” up on the High Fader Myspace page, and have another song called “Innocent” on their own MySpace page. They have a very coherent, appealing sound, with the male and female vocalists trading off verses. They’re probably closest to SuperCar among their Japanese shoegaze brethren, but they’re also have a bit of U2, The Beatles, The Byrds, and maybe The Ramones in their sound.
Since I don’t read Kanji, I couldn’t tell you what the name of this song is:
I would buy a full length Civic album right now if one were available in the U.S…
I wanted to do a brief follow-up on Wednesday’s Heritage Books Auction. Results were all over the map.
First, books I have trending data for:
Books I don’t have trending data for:
But the most schizophrenic result from the auction was two early signed Thomas Pynchons going for hefty sums, but two later signed copies failed to sell at all:
You would think there would be enough hardcore Pynchon collectors for those two to sell, especially the Slow Learner.
And a beat-up Shakespeare and Company true first edition (in wrappers) of James Joyce’s Ulysses went for $35,000.
As for the non-fiction first editions:
Heritage Auction is having another of their big book Auctions April 11.
There are a few notable SF/F/H works listed:
There’s also some signed Thomas Pynchon, which almost never comes on the market, including:
Plus the notoriously fragile Shakespeare and Company true first edition (in wrappers) of James Joyce’s Ulysses.
But the main strength of the auction is in non-fiction, including first editions of:
Not to mention several Isaac Newton first editions, plus a whole lot of important economic and military first editions.
More obscure Japanese shoegaze, this time from Speaker Gain Teardrop off their album RENDERING ENCRYPTION (a title that will no doubt bring a smile to Cory Doctrow’s face).
Here’s both the live and studio versions.
Sometime I’ll have to post my long in gestation piece on why I love Amy Winfrey’s Making Fiends, a successful web animations series that Nickelodeon made into a a swell TV show it failed to adequately promote.
In the meantime, enjoy this April Fools episode, which, if you haven’t followed the original series, probably won’t make much sense to you…
Last night the Rockets beat the Lakers to go 30-25. Barring an end-of-season meltdown (always a possibility), it looks like the Rockets will make the playoffs and be seeded somewhere between 6 and 8 in the stacked West. This is a mild surprise, given how shaky they looked early in the season and how two of what were their best three players going in (Kyle Lowery and Kevin Martin) have been out with health issues during the latest run.
Given the back-to-back defeat of the East-leading Bulls, and the still-tough Lakers, it’s time to consider that maybe, just maybe, Kevin McHale knows how to coach a little.
This is actually something of a surprise, since many people (myself included) were skeptical when Daryl Morey tapped McHale to be head coach after the departure of Rick Adelman (McHale’s Hall of Fame playing career notwithstanding). The fact that McHale was awful as the Timberwolves GM (drafting Kevin Garnett in 1995 was pretty much the only thing he did right as GM until the Kevin Love trade in 2008) and that he went 39-55 in two brief stints as their coach didn’t exactly inspire confidence.
But McHale has the superstar-deficient Rockets playing unselfish, team-oriented basketball. Though it’s hard to compare due to the strike-shortened season, McHale’s team is two games ahead of where Adelman’s was 11 games before the end of the season. Granted, having two legit centers in Marcus Camby and Samuel Dalembert (as opposed to the always-scrappy but height-challenged Chuck Hayes (whose stats in Sacramento are way down)) certainly doesn’t hurt, but no one going into this season would have thought that would remotely make up for all the time Lowery and Martin have missed.
Once again we’re faced with the possibility that Daryl Morey just might know what he’s doing.
In which we learn, yet again, that mother nature really hate 18-wheelers.
I guess those annoying sirens are the new “TORNADOES WILL KILL YOU UNLESS YOU TAKE SHELTER RIGHT FUCKING NOW!!!!” warning.
Filmed off a TV, but impressive close-ups:
From Lancaster
Aftermath: