Souls in Metal

Souls in Metal: an Anthology of Robot Futures is an anthology of classic robot-themed science fiction short stories edited by Mike Ashley. It was first published in hardcover by Robert Hale in February 1977 in the United Kingdom, with an American hardcover edition following from St. Martin's Press in June of the same year, and a paperback edition from Jove/HBJ in June 1978.

The book collects nine short stories and novelettes. The stories were originally published in the magazines Astounding, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Infinity, Fantastic Universe, and Galaxy. The book includes a preface and afterword by the editor.

Contents

Metal: A Headbanger's Journey

Metal: A Headbanger's Journey is a 2005 documentary directed by Sam Dunn with Scot McFadyen and Jessica Wise. The film follows 31-year-old Dunn, a Canadian anthropologist, who has been a heavy metal fan since the age of 12. Dunn sets out across the world to uncover the various opinions on heavy metal music, including its origins, culture, controversy, and the reasons it is loved by so many people. The film made its debut at the 2005 Toronto International Film Festival, and was released as a two-disc special edition DVD in the US on September 19, 2006.

A follow-up to the film titled Global Metal premiered at the Bergen International Film Festival on October 17, 2007, and saw limited release in theatres in June 2008. Dunn has also elaborated upon his "Heavy Metal Family Tree" in the VH1 series Metal Evolution, which focuses on one subgenre per episode.

Contents

The film discusses the traits and originators of some of metal's many subgenres, including the New Wave of British Heavy Metal, power metal, nu metal, glam metal, thrash metal, black metal, and death metal. Dunn uses a family-tree-type flowchart to document some of the most popular metal subgenres. The film also explores various aspects of heavy metal culture. Notable segments include Dunn taking a trip to the Wacken Open Air festival, an interview with Dee Snider providing an analysis of the PMRC attack on heavy metal music, and an interview with several Norwegian black metal bands.

Metal (API)

Metal is a low-level, low-overhead hardware-accelerated graphics and compute application programming interface (API) that debuted in iOS 8. It combines functionality similar to OpenGL and OpenCL under one API. It is intended to bring to iOS some of the performance benefits of similar APIs on other platforms, such as Khronos Group's cross-platform Vulkan and Microsoft's Direct3D 12 for Windows. Since June 8, 2015, Metal is available for iOS devices using the Apple A7 or later, as well as Macs (2012 models or later) running OS X El Capitan. Metal also further improves the capabilities of GPGPU programming by introducing compute shaders.

Metal uses a new shading language based on C++11; this is implemented using Clang and LLVM.

Support for Metal on OS X was announced at WWDC 2015.

Performance

Metal should have better performance than OpenGL, for several reasons:

Metal (Wu Xing)

Metal (Chinese: 金; pinyin: jīn), the fourth phase of the Chinese philosophy of Wu Xing, is the decline of the matter, or the matter's decline stage. Metal is yin in character, its motion is inwards and its energy is contracting. It is associated with the autumn, the west, old age, the planet Venus, the color white, dry weather, and the White Tiger (Bai Hu) in Four Symbols. The archetypal metals are silver and gold.

Attributes

In Chinese Taoist thought, Metal attributes are considered to be firmness, rigidity, persistence, strength, and determination. The metal person is controlling, ambitious, forceful, and set in their ways as metal is very strong. They are self-reliant and prefer to handle their problems alone. The metal person is also wise, business-oriented, and good at organization and stability. However, the metal person can also appreciate luxury and enjoy the good things in life. Just as metal can conduct electricity, the metal person has strong impulses and generative powers and can bring about changes and transformations for those who come into contact with them. The metal person is patient, as well as a good person with a strong will.

Souls (series)

The Souls series (ソウルシリーズ, Sōru shirīzu) refers to a series of action role-playing video games created and developed by FromSoftware. The series began with the release of the PlayStation 3 video game Demon's Souls in 2009. Demon's Souls was followed by Dark Souls in 2011, and its sequels, Dark Souls II and Dark Souls III, in 2014 and 2016 respectively.

The Souls games are played in a third-person perspective, and focus on weapons- and magic-based combat with disfigured monsters, and exploration. Players battle bosses, interact with the strange non-playable characters, and journey through the medieval-like, interconnected environments in order to progress through the story. The series is particularly notable for its difficulty.

Setting

The games take place within a medieval fantasy setting, where the player coexists with the likes of knights, dragons, and various monsters. The recurring theme of the games' settings is that of a once powerful and prosperous kingdom which eventually fell into decadence and damnation after a series of unfortunate events. The players' goal varies between installments; the plot of Demon Souls follows an attempt to halt the spread of a demon-infested fog that would eventually shroud the world, while the plot of Dark Souls involved prolonging an age of prosperity and in the sequel finding a cure for the ailment known as "hollowing".

Shelter (2010 film)

Shelter (2010) is an American supernatural horror film directed by Swedish directors Måns Mårlind and Björn Stein, written by Michael Cooney, and starring Julianne Moore and Jonathan Rhys Meyers. The film was released as 6 Souls in the United States on March 1, 2013, for video on demand, followed by a limited theatrical release on April 5, 2013.

Plot

After the death of her husband, Dr. Cara Harding's (Julianne Moore) faith in God has been shaken, but not her belief in science. In an attempt to get her more open to accepting unexplainable psychiatric theories, her father (Jeffrey DeMunn) introduces her to Adam (Jonathan Rhys Meyers), a patient with multiple personalities who also takes on some of the physical characteristics of his other personalities. Cara quickly discovers that his other personalities were murder victims; and the more she finds out about Adam and his past, the closer she and her loved ones are to becoming victims themselves.

Cast

9 Souls

9 Souls (ナイン・ソウルズ, Nain Souruzu) is a 2003 Japanese crime drama film directed by Toshiaki Toyoda. It was released on July 19, 2003.

Cast

Reception

The film was part of the International Competition: Long Films section at the 18th Fribourg International Film Festival. On Midnight Eye, Tom Mes said the "film witnesses the birth of an assured, mature director capable of handling multi-character storylines with confidence."

References

External links