real drive: milyen az élet a ghost in the shell után?
Óvatosan meglépett, cukormázas addendumnak ígérkezik a japán cyberpunk halódó lajstromában Masamune Shirow új, egyébként tavalyi, kevesek által ismert animéje, a Real Drive (RD 潜脳調査室 RD Sennō Chōsashitsu). Nyolcvanon túli főhőssel indítani olyan volt, mint Bruce Sterling Holy Fire-jét kézhezkapni és kétszer olvasni el az első fejezeteket, hogy bevésődjön: új lapra írt történetről van szó, nincs katedrálisban triplaszaltózó amorózó óriásmecha meg luxuspavilonok előtt instant agymosott lakosság. (original RD page in Japanese)
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blomkamp's district 9 to premiere 14th of august
These are times for good science fiction. Seriously. First, it's Duncan "Zowie Bowie" Jones with his rendition of alienation with his superbly shot Moon (featuring Sam Rockwell as himself and Kevin Spacey as Kevin Spacey's voice! HAL revisited! another sample source for oldschool psy and electro-industrial musicians! who all love David Bowie anyways!) and now - actually, on the 14th of August - it's time for Neill Blomkamp's alien apartheid action movie District 9. I've previously mentioned Blomkamp's work, so check up on that - aliens have been stranded on Earth for 28 years with the zaibatsu Multi-National United creating regulated zones to herd them up. So far, the trailers have shown us interrogation scenes, aliens confessing to want to go home, earthlings who are afraid and lots of warning signs. The new trailer is here and it shows us physically superior creatures, monstrous mecha technology that's actually able to catch an RPG in mid-air without too much of a hassle. And some sort of a spray that transforms humans into something the military calls freaks. Gorgeous. These are times for good science fiction.
ghost in the shell stand alone complex new series a possibility
During the question and answer session, one fan asked about the possibility of a third season of Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex. Terashima-Furuta answered that she expects the project to happen, but that the director is currently tied up in other projects.
Expects to happen would mean four to seven years on the Western hemisphere, two to three on the Eastern. (anime news network on the production i.g. press conference via drifter)
2033, sleep dealer, hocico: mexikói életképek
Tíz hónapon belül két nehézpáncélos mexikói versenyző is betalált a neonringbe, a nyolcvanas évek amerikai Sprawljában kövérre hízlalt hi tech low life pedig sehol sem igaz annyira, mint Mexikóban, ahol ha jó napod van, a sertésinfluenza nulláz le, ha rossz, a tizenötezer voltos sokkoló. Dekadencia, nyomor és az érthetetlenül dühös spanyol nyelv köszön vissza az új mexikói cyberpunkból: megérkezett a 2033, a Sleep Dealer, mindehhez pedig a Hocico-Amduscia tengely ipari csűrdöngölője dukál. Ami a mexikói sci-fi triviákat illeti: a Predator, a Tank Girl és a Total Recall egyes részleteit is itt öntötték celluloidba, az első mexikói sci-fit pedig vélhetően Manuel Antonio de Rivas ferences barát írta 1775-ös csillagászati atlaszának előszavaként, yo chekku de.
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robo-geisha: noboru iguchi is back with metal and flesh
The net is sizzling with the trailer of Noboru Iguchi's new movie entitled Robo-Geisha scheduled to be released in 2010. If you remember the robotic geishas of Ghost in the Shell: Innocence (or the insane geisha slut puppets in Dir en Grey's video Obscure), that's just much more - more exploitation and more blood tsunami action (and a narrative voice right beyond madness). Given time, check back on his Iguchi's previous works, The Hajirai Machine Girl and Kataude mashin gaaru. (via twitch)
realtime airtraffic in wraparound lufthansa visu porn
Developed by WHITEvoid, here a 14 meters broad screen equipped with a projection of 180° which makes it possible to the visitors to move in the airspace. An entirely navigable visualization 3D, in real-time, represents the 16.000 flights of the company of Lufthansa plane. ()
The project itself is named networkSim and won two iF awards for Structure and Interface - you can find more info at WHITEvoid's site.
samparkour and the "exploit yourself" runner
Problems offer opportunities. There is nothing more true about the l'art du déplacement, better known as parkour, the art of passing where other people merely see peril. If you've been following up on PD, you will know about the respect I pay for traceurs - and trust me, when you see Yamakasi and Banlieue 13, it is merely the Paris eyecandy - so it's a great joy seeing not one but two short parkour movies coming out during the past week.
Samparkour shows how Zico Corrêa traces the danger edge in São Paulo. Video was shot in HD with a 35mm lens adapter by Wiland Pinsdorf (co-directed by Arthur GW Guttilla, produced by Canvas 24p Films) and if you've ever seen some elaborate traceur moves done elegantly with style (and some decent camerawork as well), that's just it. (via renegade futurist)
Exploit Yourself is more like a NIKE ad, not really a short movie in its entirety of 50 seconds. What's so great about it is that it's been done by Big Lazy Robot VFX without any motion capture work at all, that it's accompanied by The Prodigy's The Big Gun Down which fits quite nicely to the oooomph-ahh tempo and it's all been directed by Carl Erik Rinsch who's actually directing a prequel to Ridley Scott's Alien. Exploit Yourself talks about pushing your limits just for the sake of it. Neatly said. (Thanks heaps to all of you who sent this in in the rush hours!)
40-minutes long trent reznor interview by kevin rose of digg
(sent in by Tomi Mesmer, director of 14sec)
skye sweetnam goes post-apocalyptic tank girl (no, not really)
it's in the air you breathe, it's hidden up their sleeves
they're even marketing what i say right now, watch out
Canadian pop diva Skye Sweetnam did this. Apart from the apparent bubblegum factor, this will remind you of Tank Girl (Mad Max designed by Vivianne Westwood!) VERY MUCH. As for the comic style animation sequence at the very end, it's been done by Cameron Stewart, whose work appears in the Transmetropolitan trade paperback Tales Of Human Waste.
polynomial: fractal beauty in 3d
I have weirdness in my brain and when it doesn't spit out raw comic (or porn) scripts, hundred thousand dollar project ideas or drum'n'bass tracks, it vomits game ideas and they smell like grass after rainfall. I had one idea like this for like, five years? Without telling all the details, it was 3D, it looked like it came out of a beautiful trip and it looked like rainbow and fractals and it was all action. And then I checked out Indiegames and it turns out someone has partially did what I had in mind. It's called Polynomial and it is BEAUTIFUL.
This is the game I'm currently working on. It is a 3D space shooter with mathematically generated fractal scenery and models. It is easy to get started - you fly around, shoot some stuff, collect some other stuff, and dodge enemy bullets, all while admiring the trippy scenery and self-repairing by flying close to stars. However, to get really high score, you must be good at the shooting and dodging and collecting parts.
final fantasy xiii: this time with lesbian motorcycle twin sisters
Let me rephrase this, this time with lesbian twin sisters who are motorcycles. According to the newsflash,
When triggered, her gestalt transformation involves Shiva and another Shiva (her "friend"? "college roommate"?) dancing around each other, before gently holding hands, continuing their dance, then...spreading their legs and bolting together at the hips, Voltron-style, to form a supernatural motorcycle. (via kotaku)
memory, a short film by Junichi Yamamoto
Mix post-nuclear debris landscape a la Fallout with armor design similar to the pure genius snarly-gnarly-tongue-in-cheek web comics Gone with the Blastwave, add two pinches of human memories to be devoured and voilá, you have Memory, a 7-minutes long animation by Junichi Yamamoto, as reported by Bouncing Red Ball. While you're at it, also check Yamamoto's other anime entitled Melody (字幕版), trippy and dreamlike, completely different from Memory, very much in the vein of Russian animation in the seventies.
Set in a post-apocalyptic world destroyed by nuclear war, it tells the story of a damaged robot found by futuristic soldiers investigating a devastated area.
The humanoid appeared to be household robot, reminiscent of Asimo, and when the soldiers booted it up, they were able to see what was left of videos recorded inside its memory as seen by the robot throughout the years. (via bouncing red ball)
did you click miss x today?
Ladies and boiz (and then some more ladies), time to visit Amelia Arsenic again! She's right in the middle of launching Miss X Aesthetic Laboratories - which promises to be a collection of makeup tutorials and a webstore for her product line and you can read much more about that on destroyx.com. For more about the makeups above, check Miss X vs Freyagushi and Madame Bones.
erwin olaf, le dernier cri
Erwin Olaf's video 'Le Dernier Cri' makes use of a kind of hyperrealism that is characteristic of much of his work. Here the slick realism of Hollywood films is being driven to its limits, giving the whole work an absurd character. The camera moves in one long, continuous movement through a house; it almost seems to be floating. 'Paris, printemps 2019', reads a subtitle. The atmosphere in the house is suffocating - despite the spatiality and the fragile early-spring sounds that can momentarily be heard at the start. Everything is reminiscent of the 'homely' variation of modernism that was popular in the 1950s and 1960s. (catalogue.nimk.nl)
Erwin Olaf, as you will see, is someone Paco would approach one day, commissioning him to create a doll comprising magnificient tools, the tainted lust of a housewife, the uncertainty of encountering a new civilization, grafted fuck muscles and a skinjob not entirely unknown to subterranean cults who still remember why curves were formed as curves in the first place. (via grinding.be, pic below comes from photography-now)
violent coffee commercials, guillotines and full-on headshots
From 1957 to 1961, Henson made 179 commercials for Wilkins Coffee and other Wilkins products, including Community Coffee and Wilkins Tea. The ads were so successful and well-liked that they sparked a series of remakes for companies in other local markets throughout the 1960s.
(via superpunch via boingboing)
14sec: too short to live, too long to suffer
A Marble Arch pakisztáni negyedében egy currytől bűzlő ágyon, késelő londoni lánybandákról szóló tévéműsort nézve, a kínai negyed egyik vietnami éttermében béka felé hajolva, aztán pár héttel és egy fél kontinenssel arrébb a Sunny Corner kékkel és sötétrózsaszínnel erezett ablakai között születik meg a 14sec. A cyberpunkot úgyis szereted, dolgozd át a forgatókönyvet úgy, hogy üljön, mondja Mesmer Tomi rendező, kell bele természetfeletti elem is. Én mindenestül kihoudiniznék bármit, ami nem szilikon, vagy államadósságnyi méretű robbanás, aztán mégis máshogy alakul a történet: 2009 februárjában két napig egy csepeli gyárban, Budapest szélén forgatjuk le a valamikoratávolijövőben rövidfilmet klasszikus elemekből: elhagyatott gyártelepre menekül egy katonai vírust lopott dezertőr, az utána küldött katona pedig nem azzal szembesül, mint amire számított. A film soundtrackjét a magyar First Aid 4 Souls és a japán, cyberpunk körökben jól ismert ipari csapat, a BAAL követte el, a film konceptmunkáit a H.R. Gigerhez gyakran hasonlított Joachim Luetkének köszönhetjük, a továbbiakban Twitter-beszámolók és helyszíni fotók mellett jön a film is, teljesen tizenhatpercestül.
14sec was born in the Pakistani district of Marble Arch on a bed reeking of curry with a hacked up telly showing what looked like a documentary of stab-happy London girlie gangs, in a Viet restaurant somewhere in Chinatown with some real decent frog dish to devour and some weeks (and half a continent) later, in our face place Sunny Corner, windows tainted with blue and dark pink. I know you love cyberpunk, rework the script and make it really happen, says director Tomi Mesmer, but we'll need some supernatural to add there as well. I would honestly Houdini everything out except for silicone or explosions eating up yearly GDPs, then it all goes in a slightly different way. In February 2009 we're stranded for two days on the outskirts of Budapest, shielded by a factory rented for two days, working on classic clichés: soldier steals military virus, runs for an abandoned factory, zaibatsu sends a gun for hire after him and then things don't exactly go according to plan. Soundtrack was done by up-and-coming Hungarian electro project First Aid 4 Souls and Japanese cyberpunk massif BAAL, concept art is by none other than Joachim Luetke - and you're just about to see the movier with some past tweets, behind-the-scenes photos and the sixteen-minutes long movie itself.
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updates on the upcoming alien prequel
on the complications concerning the Alien prequel:
Entertainment Weekly, however, reports that 20th Century Fox isn't interested in the project unless Ridley, who directed the original Alien 30 years ago, helms the new one as well. Complicating matters is the notion that Rinsch is (according to EW) dating Ridley's daughter, Jordan.
mfx - cognoscere
Ranked 20th at Breakpoint 2009 - steganography-based demo with tuned-down powernoise, somewhere between In Slaughter Natives, Con-Dom and Grey Wolves. Twisted.
the chosen/virtual diva: blue and smoky cyberpunk reggaetón
IO9 had a compilation a few days ago entitled The Best And Worst Of Virtual Music Video Worlds, ranging from classic eighties filledvector Dire Straits to lightcycle ripoff Infernal. Here's an addition I managed to dig up on Slate - Puerto Rican reggaetón superstar Don Omar's music video The Chosen/Virtual Diva, according to the post, " features lots of icy-blue light, plumes of smoke, guys in lab coats, jackbooted women in leather, and Omar alternately strapped to a gurney and bellowing through a bullhorn." In fact, just what the doctor ordered. (In fact, if Don Omar's world is a virtual one, I'm being very poetic about it.)
matthew santoro scifi "offline" inspired by tool
There is nothing new under the sun and both the voudoun gods of the interwebs and Warren Ellis work hard to decrease your novelty and shock tolerance levels. But sometimes there's just something to keep you entertained. @vjesci just sent this over and it was both the morning coffee and the trailer for Matthew Santoro's movie Offline that scratched my brain and made me feel and look like interested.
According to the post on Fourtheye, Tool guitarist Adam Jones was a huge source of inspiration for the movie.
He basically said to look at every shot like a piece of art. If your going to put your name on something make sure its something YOU are happy with (emphasis on YOU) because if you truly consider it to be a piece of art then in a way it is a reflection of yourself.
Here's a brief synopsis on offlinemovie.com, enjoy.
purefold: webseries in the blade runner universe
IO9 breaks news on Purefold, a new webseries set in the Blade Runner universe. The project is backed up by the Scott family (Ridley Scott, being the original movie's director, his brother Tony and his son Luke), RSA Films (Scott's commercials company) and independent studio Ag8. The series will take place before the original movie's 2019 setting - the first episodes are most likely to take place in 2011. The five to ten minute shorts will actually be driven by reader input pulled in from FriendFeed - according to IO9, there might actually be some hope for Purefold to make its way to TV (or DVD). As the producers don't own the rights to the PKD novel BR is based upon (Do Androids Dream of Electroic Sheep?), you won't see any BR-specific characters or situations in the series.
Two very interesting things to note about Purefold. 1) RSA is reaching back to how the original movies used billboard ads in the cityscapes and now they're busy hooking up themselves with ad and marketing agencies. 2) Scott announced that the series will be released under Creative Commons, so basically you can remix and recut the episodes to your liking. According to IO9, Ridley Scott is the first major Hollywood director to embrace CC. (via io9)