509: war games sequel released on dvd only
Wired's Kevin Poulsen found this - a direct-to-DVD sequel for War Games. I'm really sorry, but anything remotely connected to bomb-launching AIs posing as riot grrls and innocent Philadelphia whizkids are really of the previous millennium. Go find a new toy. Upcoming: the Frankfurt travel log and what happened at the Ethical Hacking conference, Budapest. (via)
508: dreamfish
One of the best albums in the ambient genre, easily surpassing Higher Intelligence Agency, Orb, Future Sound of London and all the others I cared to listen to during the past decade (yes, I'm that old. Fuck.) - Dreamfish by Pete Namlook and Mixmaster Morris. Unavailable at Amazon at the moment but you can find it on the Internet if you're smart. (And please, send me a webshop source, I so wanna buy it. Autographed, if possible.) Top listeners, anyone?
507: tron lincoln
Part of the Refacing Government Tender and Defaced Presidents : Tron Lincoln by Joe D (link)
506: crystal, the new sex
22", 1680*1050 res, 2ms, 1199$, 2mp webcam. When you almost think your money's safe, mother whore Life just stabs you in the face. Thank you, Engadget. (link)
505: blade runner revisited at meltdown festival
io9.com sez: Mixing 1980s SF dystopia with electronica, this year's Meltdown Festival in the UK will include a couple of performances that may be of interest to fans of Philip K. Dick, Ridley Scott or DJ-friendly orchestras. (...) Plus the festival will give fans even a special one-off IMAX screening of Blade Runner: The Final Cut along with a hipper, younger version of the soundtrack. (...) will include a collaboration between the Heritage Orchestra and Massive Attack, performing Vangelis' complete soundtrack to Ridley Scott's 1982 adaptation of Philip K. Dick's Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep?.
504: girls without guns, onechanbara
Anyone into planetdamage and the early years of ld50 could see this coming, heh heh. OneChanbara, previously an Xbox360 game is making it to the big screen in three days (April 26th), rocking geeks with big-tit samurai cowgirl Aya against flesh zombies. End of line. (via)
503: nishi shinjuku walk
Kirainet posted this a while ago, a six minutes long trip right in the heart of Shinjuku. (via)
502: until further notice, eat your albums (bento style)
Tricky food hackers at オバッチのJacket Lunch Box adapt classic album covers into bento ingredients. Although recent links to the Lunch Box page only list a handful of albums, the guys keep creating new bento packs so check back often. And honestly, what could be more fitting to planetdamage than the Richard D. James album by Aphex Twin? (via)
501: a comic intermezzo
Hubei-born action artist Li Wei is basically your Matrix bloopers on acid (and a wonderful way to crack up a miserable morning). All the "fake action" photos on his site are not Photoshop drills, so it's all wire-fu, mirrors, scaffoldings, acrobatics and whatnot, right in Beijing. Guy could end up in Wormwood at random places just to suffer terrible acrobatic mishaps. Amazing. (via, original site, thx to Sinred!)
Now this is how I feel.
risky race
wherever you are, whatever you're doing - be prepared
UPDATE 1: it just turns out that this is the 500th post of pd.com, very fitting indeed. send me your regards, edible midgets and special, autographed diseases from outer space.
we are the strange
Couldn't force myself to do a proper review on M dot Strange's We Are the Strange cyberpunk-chiptune-stop-motion animation havoc yet, but we could just spare the whole writing part and let you do the watching and the talking, as M dot's uploaded the original version of his movie (88 minutes!) to YouTube and he did this with 17 subtitled versions (from Japanese to Dutch, Polish and Brazilian Portuguese as well). Order the movie from Filmbaby or Amazon.
0420> cyberpunk and sf movie newsflash (life according to twitch)
Kurt Wimmer's Ultraviolet is being re-worked into an anime by Osamu Dezaki (Lupin III). The new version, Ultraviolet Code 044 premieres July 1st in Japan and according to ANN, it's going to be a series, including Madhouse and Tezuka Productions animator and character designer Akio Sugino (who also worked for Black Jack and Golgo 13). Trailer above.
Ridley Scott returns to the SF world by directing Huxley's Brave New World. "DiCaprio will play John the Savage, who lives a “natural” life on a reservation while the rest of cloned humanity is lulled into docility with sex, soma (drugs) and feelies (films that also involve the senses of smell and touch). He finally escapes celebrity to become a lighthouse keeper", sez Times Online.
According to bloody-disgusting, David "they killed my Blade series" Goyer says a new edition of Dark City will be released on DVD and will probably have limited theatrical. You can expect FX upgrades, a redid score, longer cuts, lengthy interviews with parties involved and all this will be available via Blu-Ray as well.
patented tesla magnetic motor tattoo
A place of ROCK - Carl Zimmer's Science Tattoo Emporium. How much of a geek can you get, really? (Thx, Dawe!)
the birthday massacre - looking glass PV released
Official video off the new album Walking with Strangers. Got this gut feeling that they should stick to live videos as those are miles better than the conceptual wonderland stuff they put out and also, Looking Glass is not the best track off WwS. Still, enjoy.
Spielbergs helms 3D live-action remake of Ghost in the Shell
Google Trends is a tricky little bastard. It tells us the Philippines are the most interested in God, bukkake is common as bread in Italy and cyberpunk is practically dead, even when Hollywood pushes the Neuromancer project through the frontline trenches.
If it wasn't enough for you, cover your eyes, I have something that is very much bordering on wrong. Variety (and right after that, a zillion sites) announced that Steven Spielberg directs a 3D live-action adaptation of Masamune Shirow's Ghost in the Shell with DreamWorks having the rights. The project is penned by newcomer Jamie Moss, whereas one of the producers, Avi Arad, was responsible for the three Spiderman movies, three X-Men movies and the Fantastic Four ones as well. No Japanese crew members announced.
I want to throw a contraceptive nailbomb on the planet.
speed racer extended sneakpeak out
Trippy, hallucinogenic, vivid, like your first gleeful hours with Photoshop. Exactly. The new Wachowski movie (fifth, if I'm counting director status) is a rework of Tatsuo Yoshida's manga マッハ GoGoGo that got onscreen in 1967, arrives May 9th on the big screen. I was cautious with V for Vendetta, I'm cautious with this one.
RIP Ana/Despair
As some people will already be aware, Ana took her own life on March 24th, 2008. It is with a sense of horror and great sadness that I am obliged to make this the first official statement on this, the Official Myspace profile for DESPAIR.
At this time, this terrible loss is still very raw: and it is difficult for me to put into words the conflict of emotions I feel. I will make a full statement in due course.
In the meantime, I would ask people to refrain from e-mailing us directly with questions about this subject: please allow us to deal with our grief privately.
If you wish to leave some message of condolence, I have opened the ’Comments’ board to allow you to express yourself in this way.
I have also uploaded what now becomes Ana’s final song with DESPAIR - ’Gash’ from the new DARKER WATERS compilation. The release date of this compilation has been changed to June 7th: the same date that we - along with many of Ana’s other friends - will play a concert in her memory at Shinjuku Marz (Tokyo Dark Castle).
The answer to the question ’Will DESPAIR continue?’ is ’Yes: of course’. As others of you may be aware, Ana had in fact already played her final show with DESPAIR in February: and Rieu and myself were already recording material for the new album without her. However, I had hoped and believed that one day she might return: something which can now never happen.
I will write in more detail when I can collect my thoughts better. Until then, please bear with us at this difficult time.
Thanks
JUDE (Despair)
codehunters live-action movie in the works
Twitch sez:
Ben Hibon (Blinkink)'s Goldene Nica-winner post-apocalyptic ass-kicking piece of glorious animation called Codehunters goes full-length from its original nine minutes. (Register on the original CH site to get extra wallpapers, graphic content and downloads and while you're at it, read CGSociety's feature as well.)
The"big"Codehunters movie is planned to be a live-action one with producers Steve Barnett (300) and Roy Lee (The Ring), screen writer Kyle Ward (Fiasco Heights) and Ben Hibon, the director of the short movie you can check in the YouTube embed above. "A lone man with the ability to manipulate DNA directly", says Twitch. This meme done in animé - awesome. Do it in live action, and it sounds very much like The Gene Generation to me.
イヴの時間 [eve no jikan] trailer
Trailer of science-fiction movie about life in world populated by robots, life-like androids.
News from ANN:
Studio Rikka has opened the official Japanese website for its Eve no Jikan science fiction move and posted a trailer in high-quality and low quality versions. Yasuhiro Yoshiura (Mizu no Kotoba, Pale Cocoon) directs this "non-hard science-fiction" story about everyday life in a world populated by robots and life-like androids. The studio first screened this trailer at Tokyo International Anime Fair 2008. The English subtitle of the Eve no Jikan film title, which literally translates as "Time of Eve," is written as "Are you enjoying the Time of Eve?"
reallife / epileptic patients snowcrashed
First step towards demonstrating that snow crash exists - this time showing this off with unknowing epileptic patients on their favourite board. Not that hackers, to stick with the original example, would be more aware to methods like this, but this is really fuckeduply wrong.
The incident, possibly the first computer attack to inflict physical harm on the victims, began Saturday, March 22, when attackers used a script to post hundreds of messages embedded with flashing animated gifs.
The attackers turned to a more effective tactic on Sunday, injecting JavaScript into some posts that redirected users' browsers to a page with a more complex image designed to trigger seizures in both photosensitive and pattern-sensitive epileptics. (via wired)
john shirley's black glass samples @ flurb
2008 summer: another Mirrorshade icon hits the market. Black Glass - originally a co-op novel of William Gibson and John Shirley - is published via Elder Signs Press, finished up by Shirley himself. As Shirley states himself, this is both a Lost Cyberpunk Novel and "a pulp of new ideas".
The excerpts are published in FLURB, an endearingly oldschoolish fanzine of another author of the Mirrorshades fame, Rudy Rucker. (link)
The message scrolling on the ceiling read : They backon letting prispissin toletday Caning putre back out bodof mindle.
Terrence Grist reached past Lisha and hit the decrypter. Now the text message read:
They’re putting Candle’s mind back in his body. They’re letting him out of prison. Today.
Grist lay on his back, re-reading the message looping across the ceiling screen; Lisha kept on working, straddling him, keeping his dwindling maleness locked inside the intersection of her womanhood, gazing down at him with a practiced simulation of reverence. She was used to Grist reading and phoning during sex.
He read the message again and, wanting to keep his erection, he continued moving his hips, trying not to break rhythm...
Candle.
You want to keep it up, don’t think about Rick Candle.
He’d penciled this bedding into a busy schedule and he didn’t want to waste it. Lisha was expensive—everything about her. Even her face, which he’d paid for: Grist was in bed with himself.
seven sentences about silence
Remarkably fun and remarkably fuckedup the past few weeks had been. Insightful commentary on stuff I find is currently #1 on my wish-I-had list (well, almost). Just to keep this blog running, I keep on posting stuff without any comments or smartass remarks. Comment on this if you have something nice to say, also anything that can make me more smart and insightful. I have found the joyous side-effects of sleeping so cut the crap about that one, onegai. (The Frankfurt post is building up fast, I'm telling you. Not necessarily in English, though.)
leonard richardon's mallory
Vijay had been playing video games his whole life, but he’d never really become addicted to one until the first incarnation of Fuck Me. Adding an element of real-time strategy to the already-frenetic Gestalt Warrior combined construction, emergent behavior, and blob-themed violence in a way that both Vijay and the Selfish GAME found satisfying.
Game addiction burns hot and fast, unless the game itself keeps changing. Having spawned Fuck Me, the Selfish GAME shuffled its pedigree and came out with Super Fuck Me. This led to Ms. Fuck Me, which begat Fuck Me Heels, Fuck Me Millennium Edition, Let’s Have A Meaningful Relationship, and other profane heralds of blob megadeath culminating in Fuck Me Harder, which was too complex for anyone not skilled at earlier iterations. Fuck Me Harder put Vijay’s brain through strange transformations and he did not do well on the phone while playing it.
then why do you do it / sidewalk psychiatry
Candy Chang's sidewalk psychiatry, a bright piece of insight. (link, via boingboing)