machineries of war
Iraki nő kapaszkodik egy kamionba, miközben ételosztásra vár Bagdad egyik siíta negyedében (via hvg.hu via AP)
Iraqi woman clutching onto a van, waiting for food in Baghdad. A picture that speaks very much for itself.
future fashion 001
BART HESS: fur and alternative bodies: I really believe these are the fashion furs of the future. Why kill an animal and re-form the fur into a shape? Why not have the animal already shaped to your body, have it living and breathing around you, like the shoes. (link @ we-make-money-not-art, via grinding)
TIM SMIT: get stylish when at war: Who says protecting yourself from sniper attacks or chemical warfare needs to be ugly business? Certainly not Dutch designer Tim Smit. His “Urban Security Suit” will be all the rage in a war zone near you. Made of stylish neoprene and strategically lined with body molded kevlar, this runway show stopper will be THE must have accessory for your next war, skirmish, struggle, conflict, combat zone or civil strife you find yourself in or starting. (link @ yanko design, via grinding)
DMITRI ARBACAUSKAS: fetish gas masks at their best: each gasmask has been converted from tools of warfare to reflect more epic forms- gods, spirits, monsters, and demons from many different cultures. Each gasmask piece is also wholly unique- while the studio may do a variation on the original design, they will never make direct copies of an original piece. (link @ tormented artifacts, via grinding)
official babylon ad trailer presented by kassovitz on youtube
Goddamn meme splicing, goddamn ignorance! Always thought the new Kassovitz movie "Babylon A.D." is based on animé - whereas it's a screen adaptation of French quasi-cyberpunk novelist Maurice G. Dantec's most cyberpunk stuff (or at least that's what Wikipedia says) Babylon Babies (apparently this is also available in English if you wish take the preliminary reading course and reader comments diss this). It has Vin Diesel, Michelle Yeoh and a synopsis of
Veteran-turned-mercenary Thoorop takes the high-risk job of escorting a woman from Russia to China. Little does he know that she is host to an organism that a cult wants to harvest in order to produce a genetically modified Messiah.
that sets a few Christian triggers in your mind if you've read reMix by Jon Courtenay Grimwood (which you probably haven't, but anyways). Kassovitz presents the movie with a sheep-eating grin and although in itself the trailer doesn't have anything interesting except for a few shots of Diesel and a hearty explosion, it satisfies our hunger well.
According to an earlier report of Twitch (our torch in the times of dire need), following up on a rumour of Fox mangling the international version of the film - the original will not be 160 minutes, as Kassovitz said this as some sort of a joke (a bad one, indeed) and the European cut in 105 minutes long (whereas the fuller one appears to be two hours long if I understand this right).
Movie stills are available from both IO9 and SFCool. (via)
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)
507: tron lincoln
Part of the Refacing Government Tender and Defaced Presidents : Tron Lincoln by Joe D (link)
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!)
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.
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?"
then why do you do it / sidewalk psychiatry
Candy Chang's sidewalk psychiatry, a bright piece of insight. (link, via boingboing)
yellow drum machine (stuff that girls adore)
fritsl's 120$ self-propelled autonomous drumming robot on letsmakerobots is not only yellow, it has immense attractor written all over it. really. while finding its way to the nearest wide surface or single object it can drum on, it does a serious business of turning its sensors in a very paranoid fashion - by using three drumsticks, a microphone and a loudspeaker, it records patterns of its own (randomly invented) drumplaying he uses as a basis to drum to, though it can also synchronize to music or to your feet tapping. i'm on my way to find someone who jury-rigs one for me. (via wired)
ray park shows off glowing i ching patch (g.i.joe promo)
Uninitiated in the lore of G.I.Joe? Me too. But that doesn't mean we couldn't appreciate a ninja in a pyric gear, emblazoned with 既濟. Yes, that's an I Ching hexagram there (63), meaning "after completion" or "already completed".
If you're not into Hellgate or I Ching, don't worry. Meditate on this: that's Ray Park there, better known as The Toad or Darth Maul, posing for the first promo pictures for G.I.Joe as Snake-Eyes. (via io9)
tokyo fashion week: furries, bunnies, dead souls
Tokyo Fashion Week, here I come! (link, via tokyomango)
hoyhoykung: the glory of motorways, teenagers and pit stops
Thai deviantartist hoyhoykung has a habit of making amazing sci-fi airbrush paintings, mixing retro pop/art with cyber kitsch, giving a brief look-see into the minds of the Thai cyberpunk teen generation: all about megalove, motors, pit stops, runways, vivid colors and by the looks of it, hallucinogenes. Lots of them. (Titles from top to bottom: Wandaburger and peppercola, MIKA megalove, Suki circuit)
cyberpunk bodypaint girls with guns (g.e.n.)
Girls Entertainment Network's all-female staff blogs the way they think about games and technology and at the same time what they think would get a few thousand extra male visitors for their site. Their version of celeb boobs takes a new twist: Halo's Cortana and Ghost in the Shell's Motoko Kusanagi cosplayed with bare skin, some body paint and guns. If you jerk off or spend more time watching the galleries, that's fine. Melodie Gore would need to pull off at least a three-combo chain of plastic surgeries to start looking like Motoko, though. (via girlsentertainmentnetwork)
brides of kimiko yoshida
The Green Tea Bride, 2006
The Cyber Bride, 2003
The Mao Bride, 2006
Photos of Kimiko Yoshida, representing herself as a bride in various cultures. Link to Yoshida-san's official but not completely worksafe site (landing page still okay), via pinktentacle.