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Reported by Quincey Forder
Movie News
"GORILLA Uplifted Heroes Rising" Release Date Announced!
Many people had pretty much given up the hope of seeing on the big holoscreen the adventures of this clan of simian Fall survivors. So, what is the verdict? And what is the thought of the very cast of this roller-coaster of a production? Our correspondent at the Interstellar New Shanghai Media Con set his eyes on the first screening and collected the impressions of the actors present at the panel.
To say that this movie was made after a successful Vids franchise was under piercing scrutiny of a rabid and dedicated fandom would be like saying that the Martian sunset is blue! And for good reason: after two amazing seasons, the studio had a change of management and direction following the studio's absorption into the Planetary Consortium, Gary Weatherman was invited to resign and an entirely new writer pool of indentured informorphs were tasked with writing a third season more in line with the PC's views.
Audiences plummeted and the series was canceled after the season ended. But the fans kept the meme of the show alive with fanart and fanfiction and a small but lively yearly convention, "The Gorilla Assembly." Weatherman kept in touch with the fanbase, and provided them (and all of us) with a motion comic published by Indentured Art Studio that picked up where the second season ended. It is thanks to the incredible sales of the M-comics that a budget of several dozen million credits was unlocked. But the studios did their best to keep the movie in tone with the infamous third season.
"It was a continuous battle of will," explains Weatherman. "The Consortium wanted to demean the memes that they found too 'pro-Autonomist,' but we prevailed."
And did we ever! The 200-minute-long movie retraces a mash-up of the two first seasons and ends on a riveting cliffhanger.
Spoiler Alert!
The work also gives hope for a sequel focusing on the Gatecrashing story arc of the second season.
"It was so great to be back!" gushes Sandy Harrison, who plays Ranger Aelisha Mendes, the main non-uplifted character. "It's like a big famlly reunion with Keith, Marianna, Bridget and everybody, and for a high octane adventure too!"
Bridget D'Argo, the lovely young uplifted gorilla woman playing Chelsea in both the series and the movie and who sat next to Harrison during the panel chuckled and commented: "This is not like your pen-pushing role in that Argonaut show for sure!"
Keith Cheklid, who plays Granite, the leader of the Gorillas, commented during the panel that it felt like being resleeved in a beloved morph after being egocast far away for far too long. And then, for the pleasure of the fans, he exclaimed: "We survived! We are assembled again!"
So what can we expect? A very powerful movie with three-dimensional characters. Both the heroes and the villains have their good and bad sides and solid reasons for doing what they do. The gliding sequences are a pure adrenalin rush, and if you don't shed some tears during the poignant scene of the Fall, then, my friend, you are in serious need of some psychosurgery! One thing is sure, I will be there next march when the movie is released!
Music
DJ Madskweeds's new album!
The famous Octopus DJ has released an album of the live performance last year on the Carnival of Goat, complete will full sensory input. You select your track and your location in the crowd, and off you go! It's intense, sensual and more than nearly-orgasmic! The songs are, as is typical with MS, a remix of pre-Fall songs in a maelstrom of Ragemix and 21st-century metal with live musicians on the side. In AR, we had overlays displaying the original musicians over the present band.
The album and the concert start with the 1990s Japanese song Rose of Pain; a nearly 12-minute-long epic song detailing a Gothic vampire story, during which you stand in the courtyard of a medieval castle through amazingly rendered augmented reality skinning. The rest of the songs follow the usual Reclaimers meme, with the views of the artist mixed in with Autonomist and Scum sympathies; two hours' worth of musical and visual bliss that will grip you by the guts from beginning to end.
Li Opera di Gladia Torretta
The famed combat-tactician-AGI-turned-soprano Gladia Torretta strikes again. You certainly remember the extravagant representation of Reaper Choir in which Gladia forked herself and sleeved in fifty two Reaper morphs. Well, she has done it again, this time with two hundred customized Steel morphs (silver variant) and Q-Morphs.
Needless to say, this kind of stunt made the Consortium execs grit their teeth but gives Gladia's F-Rep and @-Rep quite the boost, cracking up anti-hypercorporate groups, phyles, cliques and glades. Musically, it is an opera mixed with age-old pop tunes and technobeats. A bonus track is present (though well hidden) of a duo with Lady Angelina of her eternal hit "Bad Romance," recorded a few months ago on Carnivale.
Mesh Entertainment
Cartermore beta: New invitation groups sent!
In case you've been hiding under a rock at the confine of the System (or spending all your time in dead storage) you probably don't know zip about the Kerry Carter e-book series. Born of the imagination of Sue O'Ralley during the darkest years following the Fall, the story features a young ESPer named Kerry, an orphan of the Fall, who was sent to live with his religiously-oppressive bioconservative Jovian grandparents (yes, readers, I know, that's a pleonasm right there).
Life for Kerry was difficult living with his grandparents, who would punish Kerry over the smallest thing, until the day his father's associate from Cognite came and rescued him. His rescuer introduces Kerry (and the readers) to a world of intrigue and conspiracies where Kerry struggles to learn and control his budding psychic powers at the SAM (Secret Academy of Mars) and survive the attempted murders and forknappings by the terrible ultimate warlord Bloodwing Tomasi and his Scum and Brinker accomplices.
While many criticize the thinly-disguised propaganda and what Autonomist sympathizers call a blatant betrayal to the code popularized by a certain scarred, Pre-Fall, British wizard over a century and a half ago, it's the way in which the book was developed that has enthralled millions of readers. The story adapts to you and your sensibilities through interacting with your Muse in a very revolutionary way and updating and upgrading with each book. Until recently (at the time of release of the first book, that is) it was still considered to be science-fiction akin to genre classics like "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" or "The Diamond Age."
Each e-book actually consists of a Muse-like AI that is given all the diverse "story blocks" and weaves them together depending on the reader. If a boy likes the superheroes theme, an emphasis will be placed on the heroic action sequences, while a middle-aged housewife might like to focus more on the romance of Kerry's Steel-silver-sleeved surrogate brother Eddie with the sister of his worst enemy (and Academy rival) Cale O'Shea.
"Cartermore" pushes the idea even further. Not only do you follow the story the way you like it, you can now interact with it as well! And you don't do it alone: many readers will do the same, interacting with you in the same environment, all under the careful eye of AI and informorph moderators hidden in the background of a very secured VPN.
If you've always wanted to attend classes at the SAM, now is your chance! In addition, new info on certain characters and locations will be revealed at some point of the story. The result is an experience somewhere between literature and MMORPG. It may be memetic engineering and propaganda, but to quote Roy Langley, "it's bloody fun!"
