2009, missing post #21: malevolent mechanized pets
Next time you see a seemingly ordinary house cat or backyard crow, consider Ryan Abegglen's mechanical beasts. These robotic soldiers of fortune are outfitted with an amusing array of abilities, from cheetah-blood powered combustion engines to explosive turd bombs. (ryan abegglen via io9(
2009, missing point #17: daybreakers
Daybreakers, a new vampire movie comes out next week. Bloodsuckers are the new tad and they're a bit overplayed by now after True Blood, New Moon and all their kin but then again I might just be jealous of the imminent success I didn't have a direct role in. But anyways. Daybreakers capitalizes on an old idea of David S. Goyer that didn't make it into Blade III: vampires walk the face of the Earth and humanity's the sorry-ass minority until the inevitable logistics hell breaks loose: blood farms can't really cope up with the population needs and they need to find a cure, fast. Not quite sure about how this ties into the otherwise evident problem of the energy/oil/resource crisis, but anyways. It has Willem Defoe with crossbows. You don't really need anything for the first week of the new, luckier 2010.
2009, missing post #16: fight evil with evil, the comics
Visualize a world without peace or justice. Visualize the business plot (1938) overthrowing FDR and installing a capito-fascist cabinet. Visualize the corporate wars (2050-2080) wiping the USA off the map with its own military-industrial complex. Visualize Entropica, a plot to murder God by three monotheist religions. Visualize two brothers, born from a medical cybernetic experiment on the effects of torture and human suffering. Visualize Man-Machine, destined to unleash a blind fury on the world. Visualize his brother, I-7the fourth prophet, spreadin a gospel of war among the machine-intelligence. THE MAN-MACHINE EPIC tells the story of their conflict... (via fightevilwithevil)
Not forgetting you either, rrooyyccee. Read his online cyberpunk comics at fightevilwithevil.com and enhance it with the related blog as well. It is actually quite good, lost in a triangle somewhere between Nawlz, moody French comics and Blame!.
2009, missing post #15: the lady gaga david lachapelle photo shoot
Part The Winter Market, part Metropolis.. and you know the rest. Lady Gaga's new photo shoot with David Lachapelle - grab the rest here on the updated mashkulture link, including Tesla punishment coils and - how to effectively and cartoonishly fall out of a wheelchair. (M1k3y believes I triggered some malware alert with the celebritysmackblog link.)
2009, missing post #11: day of darkness, etape two
This film covers a bit from the Caldari-Gallente war. It's set 200 years ago, before any of the 4 races had pod technology. I tried to use ships that may have been around back then, though sadly there's not a huge amount of information that I could find. (via youtube)
2009, missing post #10: the matrix still lives in denmark
Do not think you're nothing. Quite a feat for Google Translate, innit? That's the title for Manyar I. Parwani's short film set in the Matrix universe - basically a re-enactment of the scene where Neo meets Morpheus for the first time. Without any working knowledge of Dansk, I can only compliment at the visual quality and the cuts and at that point I'm surely sinking. Good thing is, Parwani's already been working on a new project, Klar Til Optagelse (Ready to Record) - the casting was previously public and it was obviously Quiet Earth who broke the news to the world - about Denmark's biggest public casting endeavour yet. Below is the brief talk about what Parwani felt obligatory to say about the whole process.
2009, missing post #8: the shamen
Too bad I found The Shamen only on the very last week of this year (apart from their very, very bad live recordings such as this one) - turns out they have more connections to cyberpunk and my time spent online than I remembered. Hyperreal, one of their 1990 singles, apparently gave birth to hyperreal.org, a long-lived site formed around music, chemistry and rave culture and their Axis Mutatis album (from 1995) actually gave its name to a cyberpunk community site (sort of) that serves a different Japanese site now under the same domain. (For more cyberpunk digital communities, check Project Cyberpunk and its links.)
2009, missing post #7: captain power and the soldiers of the future
It was 1987 and I was an eight-year old kid with an extra schedule in his life, one I took more seriously than brushing the teeth, cleaning the shoes and go to sleep at nine. It was waking up at six to get the best futuristic show available at that time (apart from Aeon Flux, of course): Captain Power and the Soldiers of the Future. It is so oldschool you should all play this in the background today, let it seep back to your already exhausted brainmeat. As for the show - you can all grab the episodes on public video sites here and here or you could just order them right at captainpower.com.
2009, missing post #6: darksiders, you're here to destroy the world... again?
Just when I thought I wouldn't need to buy another Xbox360 game before Mass Effect 2.
2009, missing post #5: principles of geometry + antivj
AntiVJ has been working on a new format for French retro-futurist electronic producers Principles of Geometry. Using stereoscopy (technology used in IMAX cinemas to watch visuals with 3D glasses) they produced a 50min long real-time journey through space. An exciting experience and a real visual counterpart to the band's space/epic soundtrack. (via antivj, music at myspace/principlesofgeometry)
2009, missing post #3: alleykatze, directly from dragon age
BioWare has based at least two of the characters in Dragon Age: Origins on real-life attractive women (....) According to Maxim, the two "real life hotties" Alleykatze Alex Stein and Victoria Johnson have "lent their sexy curves to their video game counterparts" in Dragon Age: Origins, giving you something to think about during loading screens or just before bedtime or really whenever you feel like it. And Maxim has exclusive shots of all this real life hottieness. (via maxim via kotaku)
Dig up some more info on Alleykatze on Model Mayhem, MySpace, Zivity or Twitter.
2009, missing post #2: openland, on the verge of the comtemplative sway
Quote, Openland is a reflective docufiction loosely guided by issues surrounding micro states and its derivative definitions, unquote. Directed by Patrick Defasten Doan, music by Andrew Coleman. Through intertwining interviews, meta-narratives, and digital landscapes, Openland unfurls a dialogue between consciousness, individuality, and collectivity. If the two trailers here in this post left you craving for more, do check out some extra footage in Defasten's vimeo stream or bite into his Flickr stream.
DEFASTEN believes in remodernist ideals and the nihilist difference of our alleged unified society. In the future, the alphabet does not exist.
Focusing on digital animation, DEFASTEN delineates parallels within information, space, and the urban landscape at the intersection of digital media practices. This direction reflects an interest in the fragmentation of media, contemporary society, and the post-modern condition.
openland.ca
on the upcoming warhammer 40000: ultramarines movie
Gapfiller numero obscuro for you on the eve of the new decade (well, almost). This very piece of news has been circulating inside the tabletop scene and the space marine afficionado sects alike: Warhammer 40K is finally getting the movie treatment. The movie entitled ULTRAMARINES (read about the Ultramarines space marine chapter here) is done by Codex Pictures (the ones who did Bionicle) under the guidance of Games Workshop: so far faithfulness to the original source material is one of the most emphasized points of all official statements. According to the newsblips, Ultramarines: The Movie is helmed by a relatively noname director, Martyn Pick - on the other hand, the script is worked on by one of the greatest names in the literary WH40K universe, Dan Abnett.
This direct-to-DVD movie is quite obscure at the moment, the most important things are eventually published on the official movie site, such as the concept art below for the Codex Chapel Entrance. I am not completely won over and after watching the Bionicle trailers, I'd sacrifice half my friends' kidneys in Tibetan incense rituals (or anything to that effect) to get Square Enix/Square into the production chair.
To soothe the hours (days, years) of waiting, here's something relevant to keep you on your toes, a THQ-developed action-RPG entitled Space Marine - with a trailer.
tetsuo the bullet man trailer
Five months ago a couple of sites broke news about the English-speaking sequel of Shinya Tsukamoto's cult classic TETSUO series: here's the trailer for the third installment called BULLET MAN. For more info on Bullet Man, read my previous post.
hardware: fields of the nephilim's carl mccoy cameo (with robot heads)
Look where sifting through endless linkboxes stored in 2009 will get you. British cyberpunk movie Hardware done almost twenty years ago (read CPR's review about it here) features none other than Carl McCoy, frontman and lead singer for one of the best bands that the Goth subculture ever donated to the world - Fields of the Nephilim. McCoy's voice is slightly altered but his eyes and the hat he wears give him away instantly - playing a zonetripper character who's out there in the wasteland, scavening whatever's left for the taking. The movie is hilariously bad but hey, it was the golden nineties, everything was permitted. Below, one of their best tracks, For Her Light off the 1990 album Elizium.
repo men remake comes in 2010 april, features law, whitaker, rza
Humans have extended and improved our lives through highly sophisticated and expensive mechanical organs created by a company called The Union. The dark side of these medical breakthroughs is that if you don’t pay your bill, The Union sends its highly skilled repo men to take back its property…with no concern for your comfort or survival.
Jude Law plays Remy, one of the best organ repo men in the business. But when he suffers a cardiac failure on the job, he awakens to find himself fitted with the company’s top-of-the-line heart-replacement…as well as a hefty debt. But a side effect of the procedure is that his heart’s no longer in the job. When he can’t make the payments, The Union sends its toughest enforcer, Remy’s former partner Jake (Academy Award® winner Forest Whitaker), to track him down.
Now that the hunter has become the hunted, Remy joins Beth (Alice Braga), another debtor who teaches him how to vanish from the system. And as he and Jake embark on a chase across a landscape populated by maniacal friends and foes, one man will become a reluctant champion for thousands on the run. (via quietearth.us)
Darren Lynn Bousman's REPO: THE GENETIC OPERA last year was a sine wave, high with its much-promising cast (from Skinny Puppy's Nivek Ogre to Alexa Vega, Sarah Brightman or even Paris Hilton), its fusion approach and the visuals, low with coherence and the lack of, well, anything to compel opera newbies to give themselves easily to its entirety. Whatever we missed - the cheesy, gory fun -, Miguel Sapochnik will put it back in his Repo Men remake - debuting on the 2nd of April, 2010 - featuring Jude Law, Forest Whitaker and even Master RZA himself!
mass effect 2: meeting the galaxy's most perilous criminals
Mass Effect has grown something into a household favourite during the past weeks. The sequel is coming in a little bit more than a month's time (26th of January, 2010), until that the fortuituous date, here's some twelve minutes of footage about how the Normandy 2 looks, how you board the Purgatory prison ship to meet Subject Zero and a few glimpses into the new battle system.
phreak/hacker history comic available as free download
The first two volumes of Wizzywig, Ed Piskor's wonderful graphic memoir of the early days of the BBS/hacking/phreaking scene, have been posted online. (...) Wizzywig is the story of Kevin "Boingthump" Phenicle, a fictional hacker who's part Mitnick, part Poulsen, and part mythological. Boingthump is a preternaturally bright, badly socialized kid who discovers a facility for technology that's egged on by his only pal, "Winston Smith," a would-be Abbie Hoffman who is obsessed with the potential to use Boingthump's discoveries to monkeywrench the machine. (first part of phreak, first part of hacker, via boingboing)
enter the pachinko matrix tv commercials
Pachinko operator Daiichi Shokai is really desperate inventive about enolagaying the pachinko market with their new machine Pachinko Matrix. The past week apparently was all about pachinko on Japanese pop culture sites and although bloggers agree that it's actor Nukumizu Youichi [温水洋一] in both of the ads, opinions vary whether it's really Carrie-Anne Moss before her pregnancy or just a lookalike (we'd go for the lookalike but Western actors actually do shoulder the occasional Japanese commercials for the paychecks). Sculpting noodle bonsai in bullettime is actually one of the best ideas I found in commercials (though it's really been a long time since I watched them at creative agencies and even that didn't take me anywhere), so spare a minute of your precious pre-Christmas time. (And if you need some good intel on pachinko gaming, just found that on Google Answers.)
photo enhancement in cop shows and movies
My favorite one of these -- I think it was in Enemy of the State? -- was two supercops looking at a satellite image of a terrorist standing on the roof of a building, and one says to the other, "can you rotate the picture so we can see his face?" I was waiting for the other guy to say something like, "sure, I'll just rewrite the fundamental laws of the universe so that cameras from overhead satellites can see around corners," but no, he did it. (via boingboing)