As relaxing as a lava lamp is to watch from the outside, from the inside it’s a whole other level of mesmerizing. You’d assume that dropping a GoPro in a working lava lamp would be like diving into an active volcano, but the footage is more akin to peering inside a beating human heart as blood cells swirl all around you.
SPLOID
Apparently the time-bending antics of Syfy’s excellent 12 Monkeys TV series don’t just occur in front of the camera. Madeleine Stowe, star of Terry Gilliam’s original 1995 movie of the same name, will be joining the TV adaptation for season 2, debuting on April 18.
Stowe will not be reprising her role as Dr. Kathryn Railly, as the show already has one played by Amanda Schull. (And because the show’s raison d’etre is telling a story absurdly full of time travel which still manages to keep the narrative straight; adding an “Earth-2" version of 12 Monkeys would just be a mess.) Entertainment Weekly reports Stowe will instead play Lillian, a patient in a mental hospital in the late 1950s.
Here’s showrunner Terry Matalas explaining how Lillian intersects with time-traveling protagonist Cole:
“When Cole meets her, he’s in a very different place in his life than we’ve ever seen him. She’s going to deliver some very bad news, but she’s also going to give him some sage advice that our time traveler will desperately need. She’s like 12 Monkeys’ Obi-Wan Kenobi, but far more insidious.”
It’s a delightful bit of meta casting that fits right in with 12 Monkeys’ stalwart ability to take the pieces and beats of Terry Gilliam’s original film, but then expand them, tweak them and use them to tell a very different, very complex new story. We literally told you two weeks ago that it was one of the best shows on TV that are criminally underwatched
http://io9.gizmodo.com/16-great-unsun...
Contact the author at rob@io9.com. Follow him on Twitter at @robbricken.
Eight years after its release, the mere mention of Bad Robot’s found footage film Cloverfield is still a lightning rod. Whether people love it or hate it, everyone has a strong opinion about it. We saw that play out recently
All of that made me curious about revisiting the original film without all the hype that surrounded it eight years ago. No viral marketing, no potential sequels—just me and 84 minutes of work by producer J.J. Abrams (The Force Awakens), writer Drew Goddard (The Martian), and director Matt Reeves (Dawn of the Planet of the Apes). What I discovered was a movie that’s still polarizing for a lot of reasons, but also much more human than I’d remembered.
Spoilers ahead...
http://www.amazon.com/Cloverfield-Va...
If, for some reason, you don’t remember Cloverfield: It largely takes place over a single night in New York City when a massive monster attacks the city. Think Blair Witch Project meets Godzilla. And while the monster and the destruction are what most people remember, they probably forget that this takes a while to happen.
Goddard and Reeves spend a huge chunk at the beginning of the film setting up their characters. The film starts with Rob (Michael Stahl-David) and Beth (Odette Annable), a new couple who seem to be very happy together, and then jumps ahead several months to Rob’s going-away party, all being shot on the same tape. There, Rob sees Beth with a new boyfriend, and you’re immediately curious why they’re not together anymore. The party is also populated by Rob’s friends (played by a crew of then-unknowns, such as TJ Miller and Lizzy Caplan), who each have their own stories and personalities. All of this works together, so that you actually care about the people and story on their own, before a giant monster becomes the focus.
When the monster does hit, though, things escalate quickly. Some characters die immediately, others get separated from the group, and all those dramatic threads work to give this monster story an emotional base. And that monster, by the way, is never fully explained or named in the entire runtime of the film. Because Cloverfield is structured as an almost real time, videotaped account of one group’s experience, we never learn any more than they do. Which is not much. And that, to me, is the biggest reason Cloverfield is still so polarizing.
It comes down to this: Either you love the fact that the whole movie is left so open-ended, or you hate it. Either you want answers, or you’re cool with nothing but questions. You may also love or hate the film’s shaky-cam aesthetic—which, admittedly, can be jarring, even when watching at home. For me, the camera work is forgivable because it adds to the realistic feel. Plus I love that we only get hints of where the monster came from. We don’t even know whether or not it’s defeated at the end. All we do is experience the story of these characters for a few hours of their lives. Cloverfield, as a concept, stretches far beyond the frame of the film. It unapologetically sparks your imagination, with no definitive payoff.
Some other potentially negative things stand out about it too. There’s no doubt the film is made scarier by using subtle 9/11 imagery of on-the-ground New York destruction. Product placement throughout the film is also blatant, in a frustrating way. Thankfully, both of those things never push the film too far off its focus.
That focus, without a doubt, is action, and Cloverfield delivers quite well. Rewatching the movie, it’s hard not to be impressed with the seamless blend of visual effects and location shooting. It makes the whole film feel as expansive as a movie with probably 10 times its budget (Box Office Mojo says the film cost $25 million.) Some sequences—like an action scene in a helicopter—are captured so beautifully, it’s still mind-blowing that they were able to pull it off. And every once in a while, we’re reminded that we’re watching found footage, as the previous contents of the tape that’s being recorded over (of Rob and Beth on their first real date) pops back up. No matter how crazy it gets, with little nods like that, Cloverfield never loses its humanity.
And really, it’s hard to understate the crazy pacing of the film. It’s 84 minutes long. Twenty or so of those minutes are dedicated to character and world-building. The credits are probably about 6-7 minutes too, which is slightly longer than usual. So basically you’re really looking at an hour-long monster movie, with about five solid set pieces, and tons of Easter Eggs about who and what could have caused the monster.
Oh, and those credits? They’re maybe the best part of the movie. Over them is a piece of music called “Roar,” written by Oscar-winning composer Michael Giacchino. Before the credits, all the music in the film only happens within the world of the movie. Nothing is added for dramatic effect. We’re just watching a video. That changes over the credits with “Roar,” an original piece of music that captures the film’s excitement masterfully. It’s certainly one of Giacchino’s best. Listen for yourself.
Minor problems aside, I fell back in love with Cloverfield watching it again. I was a fan back in 2008, and I’m a fan once again. Whether or not 10 Cloverfield Lane has anything to do with it, I don’t particularly care. I just hope this new film can spark our imaginations as much as its namesake.
http://www.amazon.com/Cloverfield-Va...
The above image has been popping up on social media for the last day or so. It appears to be a set of posters for Mel Brooks’ long awaited sequel to Spaceballs, Spaceballs 2: The Search For More Money. These supposedly appeared in a New York City subway station. And it’s just plain evil.
Brooks has long talked about
No matter what, it’s a prank. A great one to be sure but a prank nonetheless. You’ve especially got to love how whomever designed this used the Vader helmet from The Force Awakens as inspiration. Plus flatly referring to this image as “The Teaser Poster” is perfect. Mel Brooks himself would surely love these images.
Maybe one day, the Spaceballs will return, but not today.
The head of Google’s self-driving car division made headlines recently for asking federal regulators to allow a vehicle without human-facing features like a steering wheel. Now he’s made a very good case for why no autonomous vehicle on the road should have these things at all.
In an interview with NPR that aired today, Google’s Chris Urmson hit home the point that it’s simply not a good idea to any to have any kind of human-oriented controls in self-driving cars:
You wouldn’t imagine that in the back of a taxi, we put an extra steering wheel or brake pedal there for the passenger to grab ahold of anytime. It would just be crazy to think about doing that. But at the same time, I could imagine that there are vehicles where most of the days you don’t really want to drive it, so let it take you to and from work in the morning, for example, but on the weekend when you get a chance to get out onto some open road, that you might enjoy driving in that location. But I think the idea that you want the person to jump in who hasn’t been paying attention or maybe had a couple of drinks with dinner and then jump in to override is probably not the right idea.
Although Urmson gives some examples of when you might want your car to go back and forth from semi-autonomous to fully autonomous, it’s pretty clear from his last sentence that the steering wheel-free car is really the only safe option here. And that’s what we know Google is pursuing.
Urmson’s concerns made the rounds a few weeks ago when the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration responded to a letter from Google requesting what’s called a “rule interpretation” on the design of its vehicles. Most of the buzz was about the NHTSA possibly considering Google’s AI to be the “driver,” at least from a regulatory standpoint, which was widely misinterpreted as the equivalent of giving a robot human rights.
But the biggest news was actually that a car company (or, the company that writes the software to run the car) is requesting to eliminate elements like a steering wheel, accelerator pedal, and brake pedal. These are things that are required by NHTSA since it is assumed that a human is operating a car. But Google is right to want to get rid of them because they’re actually dangerous—as Urmson says, drunk humans could attempt to take control of the car when it’s not safe.
So the question is this: How can Google’s self-driving car program adhere to safety standards while designing vehicles for these new conditions in which humans are not driving?
I asked this question of Mike Lukuc, program manager for Connected and Automated Transportation at Texas A&M’s Transportation Institute. Before he came to Texas A&M, Lukuc was NHTSA’s program manager for Connected Vehicle Research, where he handled rule-making situations like Google’s letter. “One problem with the NHTSA process is that they generally develop their standards based on historical crash data, so it’s reactive rather than proactive,” says Lukuc. It would take a very long time for the NHTSA to collect enough crash data on Google’s vehicles to change that rule.
But what’s happening now is that onboard technologies are evolving so quickly that NHTSA doesn’t have years of previous data to compare them to, says Lukuc. So NHTSA is adjusting: A recent rule recommending vehicle-to-vehicle communication (V2V) for all cars was the first decision which was based on simulations and modeling instead of historical data. For a case like Google’s, where lives are at stake, the NHTSA can’t afford to wait. As Urmson points out in the NPR interview, 33,000 people are killed on American roads every year, with 94 percent of those crashes due to human error.
So this where most important part of our shiny new autonomous car policy
This would also help with another issue that Google specifically faces. Remember that only a few months ago, California’s Department of Motor Vehicles released their own draft rules on autonomous vehicles, which required that self-driving cars have human-focused features like steering wheels as well as a licensed driver in the vehicle at all times. (This is one of the reasons why Google might have recently started testing its cars in Kirkland, Washington
[NPR]
Photo credit: AP Photo/Tony Avelar, File
In last night’s episode, “Taken,” all of Ollie’s secrets come out, as the team tries to rescue his son William from Darhk’s clutches. A lot of stuff happens, including one plot development that revitalizes the season—and one shot that misses the mark.
Basically, Ollie loses everything. He loses his bid to be mayor, he loses his son, and he loses Felicity. He even loses his arch-nemesis. Darhk has a totem from which he gains strength, and when the team break the totem he’s depowered. This last is a great plot development. We were all sick of seeing the Arrow team rush out to fight Darhk and immediately be defeated by magic over and over. (Even Darhk remarked how repetitive it was.) Now we don’t know what will happen next, and it’s exciting.
But Arrow makes one mistake—not with the story but with the directing. Here is the first scene of the episode.
And here is the last.
This episode is, in many ways, Felicity’s story. It’s Felicity who goes from happily trusting her fiancé to realizing she can’t be married to this man, it’s her struggle to walk that bookends the episode, and it’s her face we should have seen as she walks out. I don’t know why missing that shot was so important, but it is. We should have looked at her.
Hello, folks! Your postman is reporting for duty. This week we have questions about why DC should put all of its shows, movies, and comics into a single multiverse, why Deadpool rules when other R-rated “superhero” movies drool, why Finn had no problem murdering the heck out of his fellow Stormtroopers, and more.
Luke P.:
You said you wanted to give life advice, so here you go.
I’m a collector—action figures and statues mainly—and I was in a relationship that recently ended. Don’t ask. But the nice part is that she was used to my hobby and I could display my stuff everywhere. Now I have a new place and I want to put my junk back up but I also want to date someone again.
Can I do both? I don’t want to hide myself, and I know there are at least a few women out there who would enter a “nerd cave” and have no problems with it. But I can’t help but think bringing even a pretty geeky girl to my apartment and her seeing a bunch of Ame-Comi Girls on a bookshelf is going to get me a second date, you know?
Should I keep my stuff stored until I’m in a new relationship? Should I put them all out and hope to find someone who doesn’t care? I’m honestly stuck here, so you’re as good a solution as any.
I’m super-excited to get this question, because I have been there. I suddenly found myself single at a time when I had literally push-pinned unopened Star Wars figures to my walls in lieu of art (which isn’t just obscenely nerdy, but tacky as hell). I quickly came to the conclusion that while I enjoyed my hobby, I would enjoy not dying alone even more. So I took them down (plenty of less ostentatious displays of geekery remained).
Was I being dishonest? No more than any messy person who does a super-clean before a date comes over. New relationships are tricky, fragile things, so you don’t want dump all your hang-ups and quirks on someone on your first date, whether it’s your fondness for statues of female superheroes, or the fact that you run a Happy Days-specific erotic fan fic website.
If collecting is a major part of who you are, you shouldn’t hide it. If it’s important to you, then you owe it to yourself and your prospective relationships to be honest. There’s a line between putting your best self forward and misrepresenting yourself, but only you know how few toys and collectibles you can display without feeling like you’re pretending to be someone else.
If you’re worrying about the sexy nature of your toys putting off prospective dates, the same answer applies: If you like figures of sexy superheroes, don’t hide it. But that also doesn’t mean displaying every single one and introducing them each to your date by name. To be honest, lots of people (of both genders) think this sort of cheesecake is fine—while plenty don’t. If it’s something you really enjoy, wouldn’t you rather be in a relationship with someone in the former group?
And speaking of being honest: Don’t ever lie about it. If your date asks you point blank “Hey, do you run a Happy Days-specific erotic fan fic website?”, you tell him/her the truth. Not just because lying is a crappy thing to do to them, but because it does you no good either. If you never reveal to him/her that you’re a toy fan, what’s your plan if the relationship actually works out? Hide your toys forever?
Glitchy:
Greetings Postmaster! I was wondering your thoughts on the DC Cinematic/Television universes. At the moment, they mostly seem to be existing independently of each other: The movies are their own thing, obviously. But on TV, Flash/Arrow/LoT and possibly Supergirl (depending on how the announced crossover handles it) exist together, while other shows like iZombie and Gotham exist in their own independent realms.
Is DC planning on turning all this into one big multiverse with everything? If they aren’t, why not? The Flash did a great job introducing the concept of the multiverse so anyone could understand it. Isn’t it doable?
Warner Bros./DC could do it. They should do it! And they absolutely won’t do it.
To be fair, there are a lot of reasons for WB/DC not to. First and foremost is that the idea of a single multiverse is tough for a lot of people to wrap their heads around. And DC does not have a single multiverse.
Arrow and The Flash and Legends of Tomorrow are separate shows in the same universe. Supergirl is part of their multiverse. Constantine appears to be in the regular universe, though. But other shows like Gotham have their own universes that are not part of the Arrow/Supergirl multiverse, even though they are both technically DC universes. Then there’s the DC comics multiverse, which is a completely separate multiverse. Most of the cartoons have their own separate universe, but they are not part of a bigger multiverse, although they might have their own little multiverses inside.
DC has multiple multiverses across all its media. This shit is hard for me to keep track of, and I more of less get paid to do so. Imagine trying to explain this to your non-nerdy cousin who just wants to see Batman punch Superman. Which brings us to the other main reason DC/WB won’t do it—it won’t make them money. Connecting the shows/cartoon/movies/whatever together is a blast for fans, but those fans will be watching the shows or buying movie tickets whether Grant Gustin Flash meets Ezra Miller Flash or Christian Bale stops by Gotham and asks what the hell is going on.
There’s no benefit, and there’s a decent chance that you might turn off the larger, non-nerd audiences that any show/movie/whatever needs to succeed. Also, it takes work across departments and studios and networks and god knows what else to make these things happen. Both The Flash and Supergirl are produced by the same people, but there were some big meetings and some sizable contracts signed just to make this cameo possible (and please note that they’ve been very clear that Supergirl is not part of the actual Arrow-verse, but is another totally separate universe like Earth-2). And remember, Warner Bros. is a hierarchy with the films at the top. The movie execs aren’t going to do anything that could possibly interfere with their main money-making superhero franchises. This is how we get a Batman show without Batman in it and a Supergirl show where Superman is a shadow puppet.
But as I said up top, there is actually one weird trick that DC/WB could use to create one massive multiverse of every DC comic, cartoon, TV show, movie, everything. Ready?
Just say it is.
Seriously. Just get DC president Diane Nelson, and comics co-publishers Dan Didio and Jim Lee, and a few of the showrunners, and the King of Warner Bros. or whoever in charge of the movies together, so it feels like it’s really one massive group decision, and literally just say out loud: “Uh, yes. Everything DC has ever made is in one giant multiverse. It’s all canon. They’re all connected, although some parts of this multiverse are more connected that others. So yes, Arrow from the TV show could technically arrive in the main DC comics universe. Henry Cavill’s Man of Steel could technically appear in the new Justice League Action. He won’t, because he’s a living person and that’s a cartoon, but in a nerdy, technical way it is possible. Yes, Batman from The Animated Series shares a multiverse with the Wonder Woman TV series. The two won’t crossover, because of the cartoon thing, because that’s not how linear time works, and because it’s dumb. But technically they could. No questions!”
And that would be that. Fans would be thrilled. Warner Bros. wouldn’t have to do or approve anything additional because of it. Just say it is, simplify the craziness, and then move on exactly as you have been. Admittedly, there’d have to be some kind of reshuffling DC’s comics multiverse which is stuck at 52. But they reboot that shit all the time. What’s one more? Don’t they have some kind of Rebirth coming up soon anyway?
NotAMonster:
Dear Postman,
Your retro colleague Charlie Jane Anders in her editorial about the magnificent Super, compared Deadpool with Wanted, Kick-Ass and Kingsman. I agree that those movies have smartass “heroes” and stylized hyper violence; and yet I HATED all three of those snarky, “subversive” films, while I love Deadpool and Super.
Can you articulate what Deadpool and Super have, under the surface, that I responded to so favorably, while I hated those other films so much? The short answer is “Heart”, but I’m hoping you can break it down a little deeper for me.
I haven’t seen Super, so I can’t answer for that. I can definitely tell you why I feel Deadpool is superior to Wanted, Kick-Ass, and Kingsman, which all happen to be based on comics/stories by Mark Millar. On the surface, all four movies are pretty similar—a snarky, disrespectful-of-authority “hero” with cool powers who fights unquestionably bad villains with copious amounts of profanity and violence.
The first difference is that Ryan Reynolds’ Deadpool is actually likable, and the stars of the other three films are jerks. Yes, Deadpool is an insane maniac, but he still has people he cares for, he can be funny (if often crude), and at the end of the day he’s basically a good guy, albeit one with a very open attitude to violence. I would theoretically like to hang out with Deadpool. I enjoyed hanging out with him when I watched the film. Meanwhile, I have zero desire to hang out with any of the stars of Wanted, Kingsman, or Kick-Ass. They are all either bland or obnoxiously pleased with themselves, practically gloating when they get their superhero lives/powers.
It also helps that Deadpool is part of the X-Men universe. It adds a legitimacy to him and his movie that the other three stand-alone films don’t have. As part of a larger whole, Deadpool effectively gets to be the bad boy of the X-men-verse, and that makes him more interesting and more fun, because we know what “normal” X-Men characters and stories are.
Mainly, I think it’s Millar; he’s great at the wish-fulfillment aspect of being a superhero (“Boy, I wish I was a super-spy/hero/gun-magician!”) but his characters are... lacking. (“Boy, that super-spy/hero/gun-magician is kind of an asshole.”) Honestly, “heart” is probably still the best answer.
Dan S.:
In Star Trek teleporters are everywhere and a common mode of moving between ships. Now unless they have somehow changed how they theoretically work, basically each time our crew uses it, they are killed and a clone is made at the end point out of locally sourced materials. So where do they get the material to build the people on the other end? Are there giant vats of people goo that sit inside each ship just waiting to become the next Picard? When they teleport down to a planet, does the ship just carve a chunk out of the soil to make the away team?
I realized I had no idea how this worked, so I’m delighted to answer the question for any other nerds who don’t know this key bit of information. I don’t want to blow your mind, but Star Trek is a little inconsistent with exactly how it uses its transporter tech through its series and movies. Hopefully I’ve gotten the general gist; I have zero doubt people will be happy to correct me in the comments.
A ship’s transporter coverts a person’s matter into an energy pattern and beams the energy to wherever it needs to go. Now, some people consider the energy pattern to be mere information—like a computer program broken down to binary 0s and 1s. But I don’t see why the transporter doesn’t actually transmit the energy itself.
If it does, then just like matter can become energy in the first place, the energy can reform as matter (in the future of Star Trek, he clarified, as every scientist reading this had a brain aneurysm at the same time). The weird part is that the transporter can reconvert the energy back to matter at its intended destination—there doesn’t necessarily need to be a specific receiver to intercept the energy and reformat it, as we’ve seen every time someone beams to a planet’s surface instead of another ship.
This means no additional matter is needed. I guess you could argue that if your new body is technically made of the same stuff you left with, you aren’t really a new clone, and didn’t really die. But at the same time you and your consciousness ceased to exist as a living being, which is dead by pretty much any definition.
It’s an interesting philosophical debate it appears that Starfleet got over very, very quickly.
That_stupid_action_master_transformer:
In The Force Awakens, Finn is very upset after seeing one of his stormtrooper buddies killed but then 5 minutes later he massacres stormtroopers in the stolen TIE fighter with Poe. Did he have a mental break? Some sort of Stockholm syndrome? Won’t he switch back just as easily?
I have no doubt that Finn was traumatized by seeing a fellow Stormtrooper die, but I think he was at least as appalled by what the troopers were doing, namely executing civilians. Watching his co-worker’s death wasn’t necessarily what made Finn recognize the sanctity of all life. It was more “I don’t want to die like this guy, and I especially don’t want to die while murdering innocent people.”
Finn would be in a position to know if other Stormtroopers had similar doubts about their mission, but I’m going to take a wild guess and say they didn’t, and that all of Finn’s fellow soldiers were incredible assholes. They were all stolen from their families and trained for years to be unquestioning killers for the First Order. Just because Finn was somehow immune to the programming doesn’t mean anyone else was.
This, by the way, bums me out immensely—the idea of Finn being the only kid in the First Order Stormtrooper Academy that thinks everything he’s being taught is evil and insane, and him having no way out, no one to even talk to about it. He’d have spent his formative years emotionally isolated, and yet he somehow still was able to shake off literally years of indoctrination at the first actual sight of the atrocities his fellow soldiers were committing.
Ncasolo:
I enjoyed season 1 of Gotham. Crazy I know, but season 2 lost me. I still watched it because I had to keep watching once I start watching a story, but by the end of it I just wanted it to be over. And then Jim Gordon pulled the trigger. Is this a world where Jim Gordon becomes a vigilante with no moral spine? Does Bruce grow up to be police chief Wayne? Wasn’t this supposed to tell the story of Batman before Batman? Is the show worth watching because we don’t know what will happen or has it lost the plot completely destined to be an hour of awful television?
Gotham was ostensibly going to be “the story of Batman before Batman,” but it has quickly become a mind-boggling Elseworlds tale that I’m convinced is a hyper-violent mirror world version of Batman ’66. It’s terrible. I love it. I find it worth watching because 1) I don’t ever know what will happen, but also 2) whatever does happen, it will be the least Batman-y thing possible.
And I’m genuinely excited for it to return next Monday, February 29. As for the future of Gotham, I want Bruce Wayne’s first job as Batman to be catching the vigilante serial killer team of Jim Gordon and Alfred Pennyworth. I want Penguin and the Riddler to both take turns as Batman’s inexplicably older Robin, and I want Barbara to be the Joker. As absurd as this sounds, I know for a fact you can’t out-crazy Gotham.
If you have a question, need advice, have a “what if”? scenario, or want answers to anything remotely nerdy, email your friendly post-apocalyptic fake mailman here. And see you next week!
Contact the author at rob@io9.com. Follow him on Twitter at @robbricken.
On March 25, one of the year’s best genre films is going to be released. It’s not live-action, it’s not American, but it’s got more life and wonder in it than 90 percent of the films released in the States combined. It’s a French, steampunk animation called April and the Extraordinary World and we’re excited to exclusively debut the U.S. trailer.
The plot of the film is the kind of slightly revisionist history that makes the mind tingle with delight. In this world, based on the world of graphic novelist Jacques Tardi, everything changed when Napoleon Bonaparte was killed before he became a famous world leader. His demise started a chain reaction where most of the scientific advancements we now know and use never happened. Electricity, television, telephones? Don’t exist. Instead everything is run on fossil fuels, which obviously has led to a very different world.
At the center of that is April, voiced by Oscar-winner Marion Cotillard, who has long had to fend for herself since her scientist parents were killed. Turns out, though, maybe that’s not exactly what happened and April’s search for truth in this steam-based world kicks off a globe-spanning adventure.
In our review of the film last year at Fantastic Fest, I said “April and the Extraordinary World is the rousing, science-based adventure you wanted Disney’s Tomorrowland to be. It’s simultaneously an exciting roller coaster ride, while also stimulating your intellect by presenting a fascinating alternate history.” I stand by that. You can read more of the review below
http://io9.gizmodo.com/you-have-to-se...
It has been ages
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The Hageman brothers (who are also developing a script for Ninjago spinoff film in the wake of the success of The Lego Movie) replace previous writer John August. Del Toro is still potentially going direct the film as well as produce it—one of many, many projects he’s rumored and confirmed to be attached to at the moment (although now we know directing Pacific Rim 2 isn’t one of those).
Congress held a meeting today on what NASA’s overall purpose should look like under the next few presidents. But agreement on just what that purpose might be—as witnesses discussed everything from the planned Mars trip to a proposal for a space station hotel—seemed far away.
“If we treated the Air Force like we do NASA, we’d have no flying aircraft. We cannot decide every few years what we want the purpose of the space program to be,” said former NASA administrator Mike Griffin to the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology this morning.
The Mars mission was a topic of heavy discussion. At one point, Congressman Ed Perlmutter (D-CO) waved a MARS 2033 bumpersticker over his head (whether he brought it with him to the meeting for that specific purpose, or simply has it on him at all times was unclear)—only to have his colleague Congressman Jim Bridenstine (R-OK) snap that perhaps Republicans should print their own Mars 2032 bumper stickers.
But Mars was far from the only destination that came up; both the Moon and the Space Station featured.
“If God wanted us to go to Mars, he’d have given us a Moon to practice on first,” said Griffin. He suggested a plan whereby astronauts would first spend several months on the space station, before heading to the Moon for a six-month stay. Only after that would a Mars mission make sense, he said.
Astronaut Eileen Collins threw out the idea of a space station hotel: “There are plenty of tourists and people that have money that would love to go up in space and live on the station.” With the money saved there, she argued, we could push out further into deeper space. “If we could find a private company that would take over the station and sell it like a hotel, we may be able wean ourselves off of the space station and get into deep space.”
It remains to be seen which of these ideas, or a combination thereof, will actually be carried out—although the picture of just what’s to come will probably look a lot clearer after the election.
Image: Artist’s incredible concept of space colonization (1970) / NASA
Follow the author @misra.
The Silence of the Lambs turns 25 this month. All this time, you thought it was merely a story about FBI trainee Clarice Starling’s hunt for a brutal serial killer named Buffalo Bill—with help from Hannibal “The Cannibal” Lecter. But the Best Picture winner has a secret: everything in the film is actually part of a plot to brainwash Agent Starling.
It sounds insane without any context, but The Silence of the Lambs is filled with hints if you know where to look, as redditor TuTone Shoes points out (read an extended version of the author’s theory here). What if Lecter and the FBI were actually working together, using cruel and clever deception to make Starling’s mind more suggestible—with the ultimate goal of turning her into a deadly government assassin?
Are we paranoid? We might be. But the clues are there—and you might start to feel a little paranoid, too, after you watch this video.
In a Star Wars movie, there’s only so much the characters can do (for now
The episode, called “The Honorable Ones,” did something we’ve rarely, if at all, ever seen in Star Wars. It took two characters on the opposite side of the grand conflict, in this case Zeb and Agent Callus, and let them duke it out. Not with their fists, though, and not on a Death Star. The battle takes place in a small, enclosed space and is fought with their thoughts and minds. Usually in Star Wars, this kind of jawing results in blasters or lightsabers being drawn out and used against each other. Not this time. Blasters were used against something else.
The whole conceit allowed for ideas to be exchanged and wits to be matched in a really fun way. It was very much like something you’d expect from a hard boiled detective film—just with a Star Wars flare to it. Here are a few clips.
The episode also had some Death Star hints, Attack of the Clones references, a battle between two droids and more. Great stuff as usual.
Injuries are common in the fossilized remains of dinosaurs, but the recent discovery of a severely roughed-up skeleton in Arizona establishes a new record for the most bone injuries sustained by a single theropod. This guy got wrecked.
The dinosaur in question belongs to a species of theropod called Dilophosaurus wetherilli. These creatures lived about 193 million years ago during the early Jurassic Period, and were among the largest carnivores of their time. A fully mature adult measured around 20 feet (6 meters) long and weighed as much as 1,100 pounds (500 kg). In addition to their impressive size, dilophosaurus were known for a pair of cranial crests and a notch behind the first row of teeth, giving the beasts a crocodile-like appearance.
In a recent PLOS One study, paleontologists Phil Senter and Sara Juengst from Fayetteville State University analyzed the remains of a specimen recently uncovered in Arizona. This dilophosaurus appears to have been roughed up in an encounter, but it somehow managed to survive.
On its left side, the dinosaur suffered a fractured shoulder blade and several fractures and fibriscesses (like an abscess in mammals) in its ulna (the thinner, longer bone in its forearm) and hand. On its right, it had abnormal twisting in its upper arm, bony tumors on its forearm, messed-up metacarpal hand bones, and severe deformities in its third finger. In all, eight distinct injuries were detected in the skeleton. That’s a new record. What’s more, many of these wounds had healed, suggesting the animal was able to live for months, and possibly years, after these injuries appeared. The deformity in its third finger, however, may have occurred at birth.
So what happened?
Senter and Juengst aren’t entirely sure, but they say the injuries could have been the result of a single, high-energy encounter with a tree or a rock wall during a fight. During the battle, a rival dinosaur could have caused the puncture wounds to the hand and toe claws. The dilophosaurus may have survived the encounter, but the injuries “must have severely compromised the use of the forelimbs in prey capture,” wrote the researchers.
To survive during the healing period, the dinosaur likely fed on small prey that it was able to catch with its mouth or feet, or with its one good forelimb. It must have been a pathetic sight. But as the researchers conclude, this dilophosaurus is “a testament to the hardiness of an animal that doubtlessly experienced an agonizingly long duration of high degrees of pain” across its body.
[PLOS ONE]
Netflix already has three major heroes: Daredevil, Jessica Jones and Luke Cage. And now at last, this corner of the Marvel Universe is complete. Game of Thrones actor Finn Jones will play the hero in the upcoming Netflix series, according to Entertainment Weekly. Jones plays Ser Loras Tyrell on Game of Thrones.
The Iron Fist series will be run by Dexter and Six Feet Under producer Scott Buck. It’ll film in New York and take place in the same geographical area as the other three heroes mentioned above. Eventually, all four heroes will come together for a team-up series called The Defenders. No release date has been set.
Iron Fist is an American martial arts expert who has mystical powers that he learned from a far away, ancient land called K’un Lun. This is going to be a tricky character to realize, because he’s a white guy who masters Asian martial arts, plus he’s a mystical figure who dabbles in sorcery, on the same mean streets as Daredevil, Luke Cage and Jessica Jones. Let’s hope Jones is up to the task, and they can pull this off.
Squirrel Girl is famous for one thing: Squirrels. Okay, two things: squirrels and absolutely wrecking Doctor Doom in her very first appearance. Doreen Green has been tussling with Doom once more in the latest arc of Unbeatable Squirrel Girl which culminated this week with a timey-wimey throwback to that 24-year-old duel.
http://io9.gizmodo.com/squirrel-girls...
Spoilers ahead for The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl #5, by Ryan North, Erica Henderson, Rico Renzi, and Travis Lanham.
Ever since The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl began with a new #1 for “All-New, All-Different” Marvel late last year—only its second #1 in 2015!—Doreen has been dealing with being stuck back in the 1960s
It’s been a fun romp, but the final battle between Doreen and Doom in USG #5 was a total highlight—and not just for some time manipulation shenanigans that would make Doctor Who blush with envy.
It turns out Doctor Doom’s whole time travel world domination plan was actually completely separate to the reason Doreen and her classmates were being sent back in time: another classmate discovered he had an incredibly specific time travel blaster that sent its targets back to the early ‘60s and erased them from history. Then, he started sending smart students back in time so his bad grades would go up. Nice one, dude.
Doreen got to use the blaster to her advantage to fight Doom though. Realizing she couldn’t beat him alone, she zaps herself with the time gun, sending herself a few days back in time so she could bump into herself fighting Doom, zap her current self and past self back, and use it to duplicate an entire army of Squirrel Girls. It’s a bit confusing, but seriously, there was a chart and everything.
Clearer? No? TIME TRAVEL! Moving on.
Squirrel Girl and her army pounce on Doom and overwhelm him with numbers. Sound familiar? It should... because that’s exactly how Doreen bested Doom in her very first appearance, way back in 1992's Marvel Super-Heroes #8.
Except without time travel. And instead of an army of Squirrel Girls, it was an army of squirrels. It’s a brilliant twist on one of the most hilarious and infamous battles in Marvel comics history. Made even better though, when the reference gets even more oblique:
Which is, of course, an outstanding reference to this:
Unbeatable Squirrel Girl, never stop being an absolute delight.
Shots fired! Or harpoons launched? Just weeks after Bryan Singer said that following X-Men: Apocalypse, he’d turn his attentions toward his long-awaited adaptation of Jules Verne’s 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, another X-Men movie director has announced some mighty similar intentions.
http://io9.gizmodo.com/bryan-singer-c...
That’d be James Mangold, who made 2013's The Wolverine and is working on its as-yet-untitled sequel. Mangold has also just added a Disney film called Captain Nemo to his upcoming slate. Though both films are Verne-inspired, there’s a chance they won’t exactly be identical, at least according to Deadline, which calls Captain Nemo an “origin story.”
The Deadline report also notes that Disney’s been itching to make a new 20,000 Leagues film for some time, with David Fincher formerly attached. (Imagine what that might have looked like!) The project holds special meaning for the studio, for obvious reasons:
The original 1954 Disney film was one of the earliest live-action pictures made by Walt Disney (Treasure Island was the first, in 1950.) Disney famously bet his studio on a film best remembered for the giant squid scene. It became the second-highest-grossing film that year, won three Oscars and became the basis for a Disney theme park attraction.
Since Mangold—whose other films include Walk the Line and 3:10 to Yuma—is going to be tied up in X-Men land for awhile, Singer’s film seems likely to make it to theaters first. If that’s a flop, will Disney nostalgia be enough to propel an second, unrelated 20,000 Leagues film forward? More importantly, will either movie dare to re-enact the best scene from the 1954 version that doesn’t involve a giant squid, which is obviously this (below)?
Kotaku The 12 Best Games on PC
Meet two parkour superstars who bring the Mario brothers to life in this spellbinding display of ninja-like gymnastics. As you can see, no CGI Koopa Troopa is safe. The video was made by the folks at Dark Pixel, a YouTube channel that released a similar video three years ago
These guys need to be fighting crime or competing in the Olympics. Or just keep making Nintendo-themed parkour videos until the end of time. Watch the whole glorious, Goomba-stomping video below:
GIF via YouTube
With its sixth season nearly here, Game of Thrones is ready to leapfrog where George R.R. Martin’s books left off, since Martin’s The Winds of Winter is yet to arrive. But when we feel the Winds at last, there will be at least one huge surprise to Thrones viewers.
Should go without saying here, but suffice to say, there will be spoilers for Game of Thrones and A Song of Ice and Fire below.
The reveal comes from a recent interview the writer conducted with IGN, which you can see below. Martin confirmed that one of the big twists of the book would end up being a bit of a challenge for the TV show to adapt. Because it features a character the show has already killed off, but who’s still alive in the books.
Now, there’s actually quite a few characters who have died on the TV show but are still alive in the books—like, for example, most recently the death of Stannis Baratheon in the show, who’s still up and about (and as miserable as ever) as of Winds of Winter.
So, which doomed Game of Thrones character could be so crucial to Winds of Winter’s shocking twist? We thought we’d throw the question over to you, through the magic of internet polls. Cast your vote!
Mattress toppers, BOGO video games, and $2 off at Jamba Juice lead off Thursday’s best deals. Bookmark Kinja Deals and follow us on Twitter to never miss a deal. Commerce Content is independent of Editorial and Advertising, and if you buy something through our posts, we may get a small share of the sale. Click here
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It wasn’t long ago that portable, USB-powered external hard drives maxed out at 2TB, but Seagate’s new Backup Plus manages to double that, and you can pick one up for an all-time low $120 today. That price even includes 200GB of Microsoft OneDrive storage for two years, which is a $96 value on its own.
We’re not sure how long this deal will last, so if you need to keep a lot of storage in your travel bag, or plugged into your Xbox One, I’d grab this quickly. [Seagate Backup Plus 4TB + 200GB Microsoft OneDrive, $120]
http://www.amazon.com/Seagate-Portab...
If you still haven’t upgraded to 4K, this is one of the best deals we’ve seen to date. $900 gets you a Samsung 55" 4K smart TV, which is nearly $200 less than Amazon’s current price, and Dell will toss in a $400 promo gift card to sweeten the pot.
That gift card is only valid for 90 days, but you can use it on anything Dell sells, including video game consoles, computers, speaker systems, and a lot more. [Samsung 55" 4K Smart TV + $400 Dell Gift Card, $900]
Note: Sometimes, Dell pulls these deals without warning, so make sure you see the gift card in your cart before checking out.
If you own a TiVo DVR with four or more tuners, you can hook up TiVo Minis to your secondary TVs to access all of your recordings and live TV, with no cable boxes or additional fees required. For a limited time, you can snag a refurbished Mini from Amazon for $70, which should pay for itself over time compared to renting equipment from your cable company. [Refurb TiVo Mini, $70]
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/AS...
If cold winter air is chapping your lips and drying out your hands, this single-room $19 Honeywell humidifier can make things a little more comfortable for up to 20 hours on a single tank of water. Obviously, there are bigger, more powerful humidifiers out there, but with this should get the job done if you’re on a budget. [Honeywell HUL520W Mistmate Cool Mist Humidifier, $19]
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00...
If you aren’t thrilled with your mattress, but don’t want to pay hundreds of dollars to replace it, a 3" Simmons Curv memory foam topper can make it feel brand new.
As part of an Amazon Gold Box deal, you can grab a king or California king for $135, a queen for $110, or smaller sizes for even less, today only. Those represent roughly $25-$35 discounts, and the best prices Amazon’s ever listed. Just don’t sleep on it; these discounts will only last until the end of the day, and they could sell out early. [Simmons Curv 3" Memory Foam Toppers, $70-$135]
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B015RIAYAU/...
If CVS is your pharmacy of choice, this discounted gift card is essentially free money. [$100 CVS Gift Card, $88]
http://www.ebay.com/itm/2916887010...
We’re starting to see a few more PS4 deals than we used to, and if you’ve had your eye on Street Fighter V, this one is particularly enticing. You’ll actually be paying $10 more than you would for the bundle by itself, but between the headset and the extra game, you’re coming out way ahead. [PS4 Star Wars Battlefront Bundle + Street Fighter V + Sony Silver Wired Headset, $360]
http://www.ebay.com/itm/3018791751...
For a limited time, Target’s offering a BOGO deal on select console games. Your options are pretty limited, but Rainbow Six Siege, Far Cry 4 Complete Edition, and Assassin’s Creed Syndicate are all solid choices. [BOGO Select Games]
You won’t need to break into a Jamba Juice to get a cheap smoothie, you just need this coupon. [$2 Off a Jamba Juice Smoothie, Juice Bowl or Oatmeal]
I know you guys generally prefer wireless headphones, but this is a legitimate set of active noise canceling earbuds for $25. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen that before. [Panasonic Noise-Canceling Earbuds, $25]
Yesterday, Kmashi offered a 10,000mAh battery pack for $9. Today, it’s 15,000mAh for $13. You just can’t beat that. [KMASHI 15000mAh External Battery Power Bank, $13 with code MXYYXZ5X]
http://www.amazon.com/KMASHI-15000mA...
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Today only, Amazon’s offering Crocs shoes for the whole family for just $14-$30 per pair. The cheaper models are the swiss cheese rubber monstrosities you’re probably thinking of, but there are also some decent looking “real” shoes available as well. [50% Off Crocs Shoes]
If you don’t mind buying a refurb, Woot is currently offering the best Apple Watch prices we’ve ever seen. [Refurb Apple Watch Sport, $235-$275]
This cheap OTG hub lets you connect to any USB drive, SD card, and more to your Android device’s microUSB port. That’s perfect for viewing and sharing photos you take on vacation, or storing HD movie files to watch on your tablet during a long flight. [Inateck Micro USB TF SDHC card reader + 3 port USB2.0 OTG hub for USB On-The-Go Compatible Devices, $11 with code WRPE39HH]
http://www.amazon.com/Inateck-Adapte...
TriggerPoint’s “GRID” is one of the most popular foam rollers on the market, and Amazon’s offering the black 13" model for $31 today. You’ll even get some instructional videos to help you get started. [TriggerPoint GRID Foam Roller With Instructional Videos, $31]
http://www.amazon.com/TriggerPoint-R...
For just $6 today, you can sip your drinks in style with a four pack stainless steel drinking straws. I own this exact set, and use them for everything from Coke Zero to Moscow Mules. And don’t worry, they come with a little tube cleaner to help you wash them. [MIU COLOR® 18/10 Stainless Steel Drink Straw, Set of 4, $6 with code 7GNUT2LM]
http://www.amazon.com/MIU-COLOR-Endu...
Before you head out on your next outdoor adventure, you might want to pick up some of this sub-$20 survival gear. I’m especially interested in the Gonex paracord grenade, which includes an eye knife, cotton tinder, flint, fishing tools, and more.
Gonex 550 Paracord Grenade Keychain Survival Bundle ($9) | Amazon | Use code CMDL75NY
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B01BBGOXZY
Outdoor Survival Paracord Bracelet with Fire Starter Scraper Whistle Kits ($7) | Amazon
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B016ZA1WYQ/
Etekcity 1500L Water Personal Filter Purifier Chemical Free ($16) | Amazon | Use code I5PAYL2H
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Everybody’s Gone To Rapture might just be the best
http://www.amazon.com/Everybodys-Gon...
http://kotaku.com/everybodys-gon...
Polk Audio’s Melee headset is a great, affordable upgrade option for Xbox owners, and Amazon’s marked it down to an all-time low $27 today for Prime members. [Polk Audio Melee Headset, $27]
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00E1L7836/...
Amazon’s in-house exercise bar is fairly priced at its usual $20, but for a limited time, they’re knocking it down to $16, the first discount they’ve ever offered. [AmazonBasics Pull-Up and Exercise Bar, $16]
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00R3N0782
The Dell XPS 13 is still the Windows laptop to beat
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Dell-XPS-1...
http://gizmodo.com/dell-xps-13-re...
Unlike those disposable chemical hand warmers, this Zippo lasts for up to 6 hours at a time, and can be reused by filling it with a splash of lighter fluid. Plus, it just looks really cool hot. [Zippo 6-Hour Chrome Hand Warmer, $10]
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B013HLGULG/...
Not only can this LED desk lamp put out three different color temperatures at four brightness settings; it can also charge your phone via its built-in USB port. What more could you possibly need? [ANNT LED Touch Desk Lamp with USB Charging Port, $26 with code MLXJQ3LE]
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B014KN8ZT0/...
Smartphone camera lens attachments have been around for years, but I’ve always held off because I didn’t want to use a specific case on my phone, or pay for a new set of lenses every time I bought a new device. This clip-on solution from Aukey though seems to be a more versatile alternative, and looks like an awesome option at $10.
Unlike most lens add-ons, Aukey’s 3-in-1 kit uses a clamp to attach to your device, which means it should work with virtually any smartphone. Once that clip’s in place, you get to choose from three different lenses: Fisheye, wide angle, and macro. A handful of Amazon reviewers have uploaded sample photos and videos, and they look pretty great to my eyes, particularly the close-up macros.
The whole system is very reasonably priced at $17, but today you can use promo code FNKXYPLR to save an extra $7. [Aukey 3 in 1 Clip-on Cell Phone Camera Lens Kit, $10 with code CVDFD4N4]
http://www.amazon.com/Aukey-Fisheye-...
One of the only downsides of cast iron pans is that they can be a nightmare to clean, but this 4.6 star-rated chainmail scrubber can scrape away caked-on food without hurting your seasoning, or resorting to soap. [Hudson Cast Iron Cleaner XL 7x7 Premium Stainless Steel Chainmail Scrubber, $14]
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/AS...
http://bestsellers.kinja.com/bestsellers-lo...
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