-
Must mark on my calendar to avoid that one then. RT @tvsquad: Fox News Airing Sarah Palin Special on April 1 http://bit.ly/bkg3Wn
http://twitter.com/EoghannIrving/statuses/11363346893
March 31 2010, 5:17am | Comments »
-
Syfy talks SGU’s scheduling strategy
http://www.gateworld.net/news/2010/03/syfy-talks-sgus-scheduling-strategy/
Why the 4-month-long long break between new episodes? We asked, and Syfy answered!
March 31 2010, 5:00am | Comments »
-
First Look At Movie Version Of Space Pirate Captain Harlock Surfaces [Space Pirate Captain Harlock]
http://io9.com/5506063/first-look-at-movie-version-of-space-pirate-captain-harlock-surfaces
Captain Harlock's CG-animated movie face has surfaced at Tokyo's Anime Fair. We're pretty impressed with the space pirate's look, including the swoon-inducing scar. But according to people who saw the footage, he's not the only sexy thing in the movie.Harlock the lone space pirate, romantic hero, and massive source of inspiration to the many cosplayers out there, is getting his own feature length film. Plus a bit of an updated CG look - here's how he appears in Leiji Matsumoto's original anime.
According to Wired, he's not the only good looking character that premiered in the footage for Space Pirate Captain Harlock. The 90-second trailer also included Kei Yuki, who was described as, "very sexy for CG." Let the inappropriate computer-animated thoughts commence. Here's the original synopsis for Captain Harlock:
Matsumoto presents a future in which the Earth has achieved a vast starfaring civilization, but is slowly and steadily succumbing to ennui or despair, often due to defeat and subjugation by a foreign invader. Rising against the general apathy, Harlock denies defeat and leads an outlaw crew aboard his starship Arcadia to undertake daring raids against Earth's oppressors. Even though they have defeated Earth and devastated its peoples, the invaders are often presented in a sympathetic light, being shown as having some justification for their action.
For a bigger and better look, check out Wired.
March 31 2010, 4:00am | Comments »
-
The Eleventh Hour - new clip
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/BlogtorWho/~3/0sG-qJMY62o/eleventh-hour-new-clip.html
UK children's TV channel CBBC broadcast a new clip from the first episode in the news series, The Eleventh Hour, earlier today. See it in the player below.
- Tags:
- Karen Gillan
- Series 5
- Matt Smith
- Videos
- the eleventh hour
- 11th hour
- Leadworth
- eleventh hour clip
- cbbc clip
March 31 2010, 3:29am | Comments »
-
RT @bigdumbobject: Arthur C. Clarke Award Shortlist http://bit.ly/ct9Uul
http://twitter.com/EoghannIrving/statuses/11358965475
March 31 2010, 2:51am | Comments »
-
RT @neilhimself: Great meeting with Moffat. 10 mins on how to rewrite script for series 6, 30 on fantasy casting. Ace new title sequence.
http://twitter.com/EoghannIrving/statuses/11358940463
March 31 2010, 2:50am | Comments »
-
MIND MELD: The Best Aliens in Science Fiction
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Sfsignal/~3/VjB-UBvMbUE/
Aliens are a classic trope dating back to the earliest days of science fiction, so we asked this year's panelists this question:
Q: What are some of the best aliens in science fiction? What makes them superior to other extraterrestrial creations?
Here's what they said...
Tobias S. Buckell Tobias S. Buckell is a Caribbean-born speculative fiction writer who grew up in Grenada, the British Virgin Islands, and the U.S. Virgin Islands. He has published stories in various magazines and anthologies. His novels include Crystal Rain, Sly Mongoose, Ragamuffin, and Halo: The Cole Protocol. He also has a short story collection titled Tides from the New Worlds. I always thought the alien in The Thing was great, because at its heart, it deviated from the 'actors with bumps on their forehead' sort of approach you get in movies so much. A parasite, with some intelligence (it builds that spaceship out of spare parts), it really is quite a fun stretch that you don't see too much of. It never communicates (language is already such a gulf between us, let alone something truly alien). You get a strong sense out of that movie that you've encountered something truly alien.Louise Marley Louise Marley is a recovering opera singer who writes science fiction and fantasy. Her science fiction has twice won the Endeavour Award, and she's been shortlisted for the Nebula, the Campbell, and the Tiptree Awards. Her publications include the three books of The Horsemistress Saga, an omnibus edition of The Singers of Nevya, and Mozart's Blood, the story of a vampire opera singer coming out in June 2010. To me, the best aliens are those that have characteristics which make them more than just "other" -- that give them motivations and desires and codes of behavior. While the aliens in the Alien and Aliens films are fantastic, and terrifying, their simple "devour everything" characters make it impossible, to say nothing of unwise, to relate to them at all. I don't love aliens who just act like human beings in strange bodies, either, although they're fun to read. I like novels of character, and two-dimensional characters don't draw me into a story.
Two books come to mind. One is long out of print, sadly, and was one of my favorite novels of the '90s, a lovely book by Carolyn Ives Gilman called Halfway Human, which features a character who never was granted the gender specification of its society. The other is Elizabeth Moon's wonderful Remnant Population, which not only features an elderly woman as its protagonist, but has some truly alien aliens whose needs and motivations it takes an old woman to figure out.
Neal Asher Having written for the small presses for many years, Neal Asher was taken on in 2000 by Macmillan who have since published ten of his books. These have gone on for translation in twelve countries across the world. His latest novel, Line War, completes his Cormac Sequence and he is currently working on Orbus, a follow-up to The Voyage of the Sable Keech. Later this year Scorpion Memory (Night Shade Books) and The Gabble and other Stories (Macmillan) should be hitting the shelves. Neal blogs at http://theskinner.blogspot.com For me the best has to be H R Giger's creation...no I refuse to misuse the word eponymous...from the film of that name. In my time I've ranted about what I consider to be art and generally have seen very little I could call both art and truly original (Maybe that's because I hadn't see enough art, and certainly my view is changing now with what I'm seeing produced by the CGI crowd.), but way back in years of yore when I opened up a copy of Omni, turned over a page and saw my first H R Giger picture, I felt I was seeing something truly original and bloody good. I'm not sure if I even knew, when I went to see Alien, that he was the designer of both alien and weird sets, but I certainly knew afterwards. At that point I felt that the curse of the rubber head had died. The alien in that film and its sequels was not something you could laugh at - aliens had just grown up.
As for aliens in SF books, in them there seems to be a general failure of imagination, perhaps because the roles the aliens fill are so often too human: aliens as oppressed natives, the subject of bigotry, dominant overlords, invaders etc. Whilst they are often described in loving detail, that which is alien about them only goes as deep as the bone (or substructural biology of choice) and very often doesn't extend to the mind. There's still some damned good ones out there - Niven's puppeteers spring to mind, as do the manta in Piers Anthony's Of Man and Manta - but generally that which is alien falls foul of story, which can be hampered when, to retain the essentially alien, the writer must not allow the reader to understand it.
Nina Munteanu Nina Munteanu is an environmental scientist, blogger and author. Her current novel, Darwin's Paradox, is available now and she blogs at The Alien Next Door. The best aliens for me have been those that served to illuminate our history and our very humanity, whether they played the archetype of simple antagonist or as misunderstood "commentator" on human prejudice, insecurities, greed, heroism, compassion and honor. I can think of several aliens who have provided excellent examples of this: the Martians in Ray Bradbury's Martian Chronicles, Klaatu in The Day the Earth Stood Still, the aliens in Alien, and the "prawns" of Peter Jackson's District 9. Each provided a platform for the exploration and exposition of human's strengths and weaknesses. How we handle "the other" is a very compelling and illuminating topic. One worth revisiting. Author Brian Ott notes, "it is a profound mistake to interpret the genre [of science fiction] literally." Science fiction is both "the great modern literature of metaphor" and "pre-eminently the modern literature not of physics but of metaphysics," says Peter Nicholls, Australian scholar and critic. Ott reminds us that it is not what the aliens are but what they represent that matters.
Two of my favorite aliens span the gamut: Spock in Star Trek and the "self-aware" planet Solaris of the Stanislaw Lem's Solaris. Before you laugh me off the universe, hear me out. Both provide excellent commentary on the human condition and what it means to be human (the prime focus of science fiction). Although Spock is very human-like in appearance, he behaves quite differently in culture, physiology and philosophy. This makes him a less intimidating commentator on humanity's strengths and foibles. The audience identifies with Spock and feels compassion for him while acknowledging that he is different and accepts his commentary.
Solaris, on the other hand, is the epitome of the "other", a force and entity unrecognizable and unfathomable. Lem's existentialist portrayal of "the other" --and of humanity--serves as excellent commentary on what is important to us and our identity. Unlike the familiar human-like figure of Spock, Solaris accomplishes this through arcane manipulation of our dreams and yearnings. We never understand its motivations or intelligence, yet we are drawn to its reflective force and mirror of our souls.
Dean Wesley Smith Dean Wesley Smith is a bestselling author of over 90 novels under varied names.
I think my all time favorite alien ever invented was in a Gary Shockley short story titled "The Coming of the Goonga" which the aliens fought humans by stroking plant stems that were a part of them, sort of. You get the idea from the title. It was in a Damon Knight edited anthology back in the 1980's called The Clarion Awards.
But when push comes to shove, I think the rip-off of the Beserkers done by Stargate Atlantis called the Replicators are my favorite aliens. Spock-like in their lack of emotion, yet spider-like in look, they are just flat scary and I always enjoyed those episodes. As to what makes them better? I think the true alien feeling they had. Spiders made out of metal who ate you and couldn't really be killed and had no emotions and fed on anything and everything. The Beserkers were great, but the Replicators just were flat scary and a chance to actually write a Stargate novel with Replicators would bring me back to media work after five years without a hesitation.
But I also like The Fuzzys by Piper. I have very wide alien tastes.
David D. Levine David D. Levine is a lifelong SF reader whose midlife crisis was to take a sabbatical from his high-tech job to attend Clarion West in 2000. It seems to have worked. He made his first professional sale in 2001, won the Writers of the Future Contest in 2002, was nominated for the John W. Campbell award in 2003, was nominated for the Hugo Award and the Campbell again in 2004, and won a Hugo in 2006 (Best Short Story, for "Tk'Tk'Tk"). His "Titanium Mike Saves the Day" was nominated for a Nebula Award in 2008, and a collection of his short stories, Space Magic, is available from Wheatland Press. He lives in Portland, Oregon with his wife, Kate Yule, with whom he edits the fanzine Bento, and their website is at http://www.BentoPress.com. It has often been pointed out that in Star Trek, humans have the smallest heads in the universe. All other alien species, for some unknown reason, look just like humans but with something stuck onto their foreheads, ears, or noses. By the same token, in many fictional universes humans have the largest souls. All other alien species consist of humans with much of their culture and mentality hacked away, leaving only one dominant factor such as logic or warrior honor to define their entire character. The most simplistic aliens are merely animals, such as the title character in Alien, or are enigmatic nonentities like the ones in Close Encounters -- neither of these is satisfying as an alien, because neither has any apparent inner life. Another form of unsatisfying alien is the "human with a cat head" in which the primary physical and behavioral characteristics of an Earth animal are grafted onto a being that is otherwise fundamentally human.
The aliens that are most interesting to me are those that are not just humans with stuff added on or hacked away, but creatures that are truly different both in their physiology and in their outlook -- aliens who, in the words of John W. Campbell Jr, "think as well as a man or better than a man, but not like a man." I'm particularly fond of aliens whose personalities arise from their unique environment and biology. Some of my favorites are Tweel from "A Martian Odyssey" by Stanley G. Weinbaum (1934), perhaps the first truly alien alien; Coeurl from "Black Destroyer" by A. E. van Vogt (1939), an early alien viewpoint character who is sympathetic despite being the story's antagonist; Barlennan from Mission of Gravity by Hal Clement (1954), a classic alien hero who finds humans incomprehensible because their environment is so different from his; Nessus from Ringworld by Larry Niven (1970), a distinctly non-terrestrial life form whose psychology has been keenly worked out from the premise of an intelligent herd animal; and Uncle Vanya from "From Babel's Fall'n Glory We Fled" by Michael Swanwick (2008), who manages to be a distinct character despite a mentality and language about as alien as any I can recall.
Marianne de Pierres Marianne de Pierres is the author of the multi award-nominated Parrish Plessis and Sentients of Orion science fiction series. She is also the author of the humorous Tara Sharp crime series, written under the pseudonym Marianne Delacourt. In 2011 she'll release the first of her new young adult dark fantasy duology entitled Burn Bright. Visit her websites at http://www.mariannedepierres.com and http://www.tarasharp.com My immediate and emphatic response to the question is, Octavia Butler's Oankali in her Lilith's Brood series. Butler managed to encapsulate 'alien' and 'familiar' at once, something incredibly hard to achieve. Mostly, writers tend to stray too close towards one or the other.
In film though, my first place will always be Giger's Alien. The predatory, primordial ruthlessness is hard to best and I still find it convincingly terrifying. Farscape received a lot of criticism for its alien puppets but I thought this series showed imagination. Zhaan the blue, vegetable based 'Delvian' alien was a beautifully portrayed creature that balanced on a knife edge between pacifist and supreme aggressor.
Jeffrey A. Carver Jeffrey A. Carver is the author of the Sunborn (Tor Books, recently re-released in paperback) and other novels of The Chaos Chronicles. You can learn more about his books, and even download some of them for free, at http://www.starrigger.net. For more of his thoughts on writing and other fine madnesses, check out his blog at http://starrigger.blogspot.com/. My vote for best alien?
The Horta, from Classic Trek--hands down. How can you not love an alien made of silicon? And I don't mean a computer. Before I ever saw that episode, "A Devil in the Dark," I'd written a short story about a sentient, silicon-based asteroid. This is not a story you will ever see, as I didn't know what I was doing at the time, in terms of storytelling. But when I later saw the Star Trek episode in syndicated reruns--I'd missed it somehow on its first showing--I felt vindicated! So, what's good about the Horta besides the fact that it was a silicon-based lifeform in a universe where everyone seemed relentlessly determined to be carbon based? Well, how about its cryptic yet stirringly evocative communication:
No kill I
Was it promising not to kill? Or asking not to be killed?
Once Spock was in mind-meld with the beast, we heard quite a heart-breaking soliloquy on the children, the Hall of Ages, and the end of all things.
Now, the Horta was reportedly inspired by a rug, and the special effects weren't much better than a rug--certainly a far cry from the wondrous creations of, say, Avatar. But for pure heart, and going where no one had gone before, at least on TV, the Horta takes the prize.
As a side benefit, it gave McCoy a chance to say, after fixing it with patching plaster, "By golly, Jim, I'm beginning to think I can cure a rainy day!" -- a line I quote to my family to this day, on those rare occasions when I come up with a particularly clever solution to a problem.
I'm sure there are more inventive and original aliens, and possibly cuddlier ones, that I just can't think of right now. But never mind. Just give me a Horta.
Gini Koch Gini Koch lives in the American Southwest, works her butt off (sadly, not literally) by day, and writes by night with the rest of the beautiful people. The first book in her Alien series from DAW Books, Touched by an Alien, releases April 6, 2010, with Alien Tango coming in December 2010. Visit her at her website: http://www.ginikoch.com.
I'm a huge comics fan, but I don't actually love alien representation in most comics. In the medium where I think we could have the most imagination, the alien characters tend to be no more or less interesting than the Earth-based heroes and villains, and in many cases, the aliens are just humans with one funky difference. (Don't start me on Galactus, either -- so not my cuppa right there.)
Superman, however, is my favorite alien in the comics (not my favorite comics character, however -- I appreciate Supes but my heart will always belong to Wolverine). He's a superior creation some simply because of his longevity, but also because he's someone you care about. He has a truly vested interest in Earth, it becomes his home, and he cares about it possibly more than most humans do. Sure, he's fighting evil, but he's doing it to protect his adopted home. He's the quintessential alien story to me -- the example of all that can be good within humanity, as reflected by someone who isn't human.
Beyond that, I'm almost embarrassed that the one thing I keep coming back to while thinking of how to answer this question is the 1984 movie Starman, starring Jeff Bridges and Karen Allen, as opposed to a book or short story, or a movie or TV show made more recently. It's a John Carpenter film, which is probably why it's stuck with me for over 25 years, because I tend to love his movies.
What I loved then and still love now about Starman is the way I could believe Jeff Bridges' alien, why he'd come to visit, and why he had to leave. He had some "E.T." qualities, but I forgave them because they made sense to me the way the script was written. (I happen to be one of the only people I know who loathed E.T. at first viewing and have never liked it since -- it's banned from my home, just like Showgirls, Batman and Robin and any slasher flick, 'cause I have standards.) It's also almost unabashedly romantic, and while there's been a lot of SF romance out there, for me, this was probably the first one I experienced where the romance was so integral to the plot that the movie wouldn't have worked without it.
The alien character was real to me -- the way he was written and acted made him a character I believed could actually be here on Earth. The morality in the movie never felt forced or preachy, just real and honest. Much as I love Star Trek and Star Wars (well, parts of both anyway), the moralizing in them can, did and does get ponderous and heavy-handed at times. I never felt that from Starman.
Then there are two other movies where I just love the way aliens are portrayed -- Men in Black and Galaxy Quest. It's no coincidence that they're both comedies, but I really liked the way the aliens were created in each one. In both cases, the aliens aren't that interested in Earth, we're just there as part of a larger galactic existence. I find it difficult to believe we're the only life out there, and I find it easy to believe we wouldn't necessarily be the focus of the entire galaxy. It makes it easy for me to believe these aliens are real, even after the closing credits.
Brenda Cooper Brenda Cooper is a technology professional, a science fiction and fantasy writer, and a futurist. Her recent books include the Endeavor award winning Silver Ship and The Sea and a sequel, Reading the Wind. See http://www.brenda-cooper.com for more info, and for periodic reading recommendations.
I'm going to use this mind meld to pay a little homage, here. I started my career writing with Larry Niven, which was an altogether magical experience. The man is brilliant. The Puppeteers, the Fithp, and the Kzinti all came from Larry's pen (some with help from Jerry Pournelle, and later with additions by Ed Lerner). Every story I've ever published with aliens in it is a collaboration with Larry. On one level, militant cats and herds of alien elephant-like beings are hard to take seriously, but Larry is always able to make them do the real job of science fictional aliens: illustrate what it is to be human. The puppeteers show how important our caution is by having too-much of it, and the fithp show us the strengths of our noisy argumentative society. The Kzinti now have thirteen anthologies devoted to them. I'm pretty sure that no other alien species has done so well commercially here on Earth. The Kzin even have a Wikipedia page (and I don't).
Of course, the mad success of the Kzinti warriors may really be because so many writers have cats...
Jay Lake Jay Lake lives in Portland, Oregon, where he works on numerous writing and editing projects. His novels include Escapement and Green (both from Tor Books), Madness of Flowers (Night Shade Books), Death of a Starship (MonkeyBrain books), and his latest, Pinion (Tor Books). Jay's short fiction appears regularly in literary and genre markets worldwide and he's also editor of the anthology Other Earths. Jay is a winner of the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer, and a multiple nominee for the Hugo and World Fantasy Awards. Jay can be reached through his blog at jaylake.livejournal.com or his Web site at http://www.jlake.com.
My favorite aliens in fiction these days are C.J. Cherryh's Atevi, from the Foreigner series. Her portrayal of their culture has a depth and strangeness that's just lateral enough to the human experience to be fascinating, while familiar enough to still make sense.
The challenge of course is writing (or filming) aliens that strike that balance. The funny nose/funny forehead school of alienation never worked well for me, beyond a fairly narrow application of a story-telling trope. By the same token, if you go right off the charts with alien-ness, you get Cherryh's Knnn, from the Alliance-Union books. Methane breathers who are so utterly alien that at most they serve as window dressing. There's a challenge in balancing biology, culture and accessible story-telling which can be a tough corner to get round, and very much depends on the intent of the author in their particular piece.
In some ways, the most convincing aliens are the ones who are (almost) just like us. Specifically, in Ursula K. Le Guin's Left Hand Of Darkness, for example. We as readers think we're relating to the characters until suddenly we're not. James Tiptree, Jr. does a more severe version of this in "Your Hapoid Heart", which is a brilliant fusion of biology and culture in alienation. The notable counterexample to this, of course, is Ted Chiang's "The Story of Your Life", which for my money is hands-down the most brilliant and convincing portrayal of profoundly non-human alienation I have ever seen.
As for film and television, I am rarely as impressed with aliens there as I am in print literature. This is probably my observer bias as a writer, but also the practicalities of design, production and acting certainly come into play. Of recent note, the aliens in District 9 were very interesting to me, but that had more to do with their own internal culture than the process of alienation. Unfortunately I don't really have any long-term favorites in film and television, the way I do in print
Sarah A. Hoyt Sarah A. Hoyt was born in Portugal and lives in Colorado. In between she acquired husband, sons and cats and has written and published around three dozen short stories and over a dozen novels in fantasy, mystery, historical fiction and science fiction. The most recent of those are Gentleman Takes A Chance; Dipped, Stripped and Dead (as Elise Hyatt); and Darkship Thieves. Upcoming are A French Polished Murder (also as Elise Hyatt) and No Other Will Than His (historical fiction under her own name.) She's at work on sequels for her fantasy and science fiction novels. The absolute best in aliens written OR movie are the aliens in Frederick Brown's Martians Go Home. They are the only aliens that do feel alien and inscrutable, even when they are speaking English and behaving like... well, little green men from Mars.
Of course the reason they feel that way is that they are human-aliens. I've always thought that if true aliens existed, we might not even know if they were sentient, much less be able to communicate. At any rate, not yet. But Martians that are generated from our own subconscious are perfect. They are, of course, ultimately, what any science fiction alien is, but in this case -- not so much more openly -- while pretending to be aliens that are part of the human mind. It's like those Shakespeare plays in which the boy playing a girl played a girl playing a boy. I love the irony and think it adds depth and a mordant wit to a work that would otherwise be silly and fluffy.
Sandra McDonald Sandra McDonald's novels - The Outback Stars, The Stars Down Under, and The Stars Blue Yonder - are about an Australian military lieutenant, her handsome sergeant, and their adventures in deep space. She also write short stories that have appeared in Asimov's, Strange Horizons, Realms of Fantasy and other magazines and anthologies. I'm an 80's kind of gal, but I'm going to go with the 1977 for my favorite aliens of all: those mysterious, ethereal visitors in Stephen Spielberg's classic Close Encounters of the Third Kind. CETK doesn't get as much glory as Star Wars, but it's a film gem. The top three reasons why these aliens rock:They have a sense of humor. Darting around the countryside, buzzing gathered crowds, sneaking up on Roy Neary (Richard Dreyfuss) at the railroad crossing -- they're just teenagers out to have a good time on a Saturday night. They're mischievous little folks. Playing with Barry's toys, planting mental images of giant landmarks into people's heads, whisking people off for interstellar adventures before depositing them back on Earth -- you just never know what they're going to do next. They're musical! 5 notes is all it takes to cross the galactic divide of communication.
They like Christmas lights and birthday cakes. Look at that sparkly mothership. No sleek battlecruisers of gloom for these gals and guys.
They don't get pushed around. At the end, the U.S. government lines up a dozen grim-faced astronaut volunteers to send away. Never have you seen a less enthusiastic bunch. But they pick Roy! Doesn't everyone want to be the one chosen by the aliens? The CETK aliens have similar-looking cousins who show up at the end of the 2001 movie Artificial Intelligence, which was also directed by Spielberg. Those aliens look similar but are pretty joyless: they reactivate little robot Haley Joel Osment and give him a day's worth of happiness with his human mom, then let her die and let him die, too. Talk about glum. Give me galactic adventure on the sparkly birthday cake with the little musical folks!
- Tags:
- Mind Meld
March 30 2010, 11:29pm | Comments »
-
SciFi + Espionage = Project Arbiter
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Sfsignal/~3/MbBWwgQjgDk/
Project Arbiter is a sci-fi espionage story showing how a small, quiet victory tips the balance of power and foretells the outcome of World War II. Here's the trailer:
- Tags:
- Movies
March 30 2010, 11:12pm | Comments »
-
Learn to Use Depth of Field to Focus Attention, Take Better Photos [Photography Tip] - Lifehacker http://bit.ly/aUy9Cj
http://twitter.com/EoghannIrving/statuses/11338295983
March 30 2010, 5:47pm | Comments »
-
RT @BreakingNews: One dies, 8 injured in Washington, D.C. shooting; 4 police officers injured in car chase of suspect - WRC TV
http://twitter.com/EoghannIrving/statuses/11337926313
March 30 2010, 5:39pm | Comments »
-
SciFi News Bites 3-30-10
http://www.eoghann.com/2010/03/scifi-news-bites-3-30-10/
All right what’s been going on around the internet since my last roundup? Flash Gordon casting rumors; Pictures of the TARDIS interior; new Independence Day movies; Shyamalan on Airbender and more:
Image via Wikipedia
Is Zac Efron The New Flash Gordon? [Movies] – io9 High School Musical dreamboat Zac Efron is rumored to play spacefaring hero/Freddie Mercury muse Flash Gordon. Could this all be just a disinformation campaign by Ming the Merciless? According to Digital Spy, the fresh-faced Efron is in the running for Alex Raymond’s comic strip hero. Is Iron Man 3 Really Coming Out Before The Avengers? [Iron Man] – io9 Did a slip of the tongue reveal Paramount’s plans for a third Iron Man movie, even a month before Iron Man 2 is coming out? Which movie will come first: Iron Man 3 or The Avengers? Doctor Who – inside the new Tardis – Radio Times MGM Web site unveils SGU’s alien race – GateWorld News Here’s a closer (really close!) look at the newest bad guys in the Stargate universe Will Smith Signs On For ‘Independence Day’ 2 & 3? – AMC Entertainment Script To Screen Movie Blog
Shyamalan Addresses Airbender’s Race Controversy And Answers Your Questions [Airbender] – io9 We sat down with The Last Airbender’s twist-obsessed director, M. Night Shyamalan, and grilled him about everything you wanted to know about. Is Will Smith preparing to defend the earth again? Will Jeff Goldblum help him out again? More Hobbiton Set Pics! – Hobbit Movie News and Rumors | TheOneRing.net™ This feels like 1999 all over again, we have another collection of set pictures from the New Zealand set of Hobbiton.
And that’s it for this roundup. Related articles by Zemanta
The Last Airbender Trailer #2 (screenrant.com) Could M. Night Shyamalan Direct ‘Breaking Dawn?’ (screenrant.com) New ‘Iron Man 2′ & ‘Last Airbender’ TV Spots (screenrant.com) Your Episode Guide For Doctor Who Season 5 [Doctor Who] – io9 Britain’s Radio Times (which also featured those fantastic TARDIS pictures yesterday) published a list of all the episodes in Doctor Who’s fifth season, with titles for most of them Sam’s True Blood Wake-Up Call Is More Than It Seems, In New Clip [True Blood] – io9 Check out the latest behind-the-scenes video on the set of Alan Ball’s True Blood. Looks like Sam has gone and made himself some new friends Japanese Trailer for The Last Airbender (screenrant.com) ‘The Crazies’ Director Says His ‘Flash Gordon’ Movie Is ‘Not A Remake’ (splashpage.mtv.com)
Share this on del.icio.us
Digg this!
Share this on Reddit
Stumble upon something good? Share it on StumbleUpon
Share this on Mixx
Share this on Facebook
Tweet This!
Share this on Linkedin
Share this on FriendFeed
Post this to Posterous
- Tags:
- iron man
- M Night Shyamalan
- Flash Gordon
- Last airbender
- Scifi
- New Zealand
- Alex Raymond
- Comic strip
March 30 2010, 5:36pm | Comments »
-
RT @daveac: Worthington confirms 'Dan Dare' involvement - Digital Spy - http://bit.ly/cYIOS3 #cultdom #scifi #dandare
http://twitter.com/EoghannIrving/statuses/11337351561
March 30 2010, 5:27pm | Comments »
-
More Hobbiton Set Pics!
http://www.theonering.net/torwp/2010/03/30/35817-more-hobbiton-set-pics-4/
This feels like 1999 all over again, we have another collection of set pictures from the New Zealand set of Hobbiton. Thanks to Paul for sending these along!
March 30 2010, 4:11pm | Comments »
-
Sam's True Blood Wake-Up Call Is More Than It Seems, In New Clip [True Blood]
http://io9.com/5505831/sams-true-blood-wake+up-call-is-more-than-it-seems-in-new-clip
Check out the latest behind-the-scenes video on the set of Alan Ball's True Blood. Looks like Sam has gone and made himself some new friends. (Let's hope they like that changeling puppy smell.) Who is this flannel-shirted man? Spoilers below! People are speculating that this is Tommy Mickens (played by Marshall Allman) — Sam's brother. And since a large part of the new season is Sam trying to find his long-lost family, this lines up rather well. The next behind-the-scenes clip was released a few days ago, but one thing we noticed this time around was Sookie's ring finger. Looks like even though Bill's been vampire-napped, she's still holding him to his fanged word.
True Blood premieres June 13th.
March 30 2010, 4:10pm | Comments »
-
Learn to Use Depth of Field to Focus Attention, Take Better Photos [Photography Tip]
http://lifehacker.com/5505617/learn-to-use-depth-of-field-to-focus-attention-take-better-photos
Getting pictures in focus is important, but if you know what you're doing, a bit of unfocusing can be even better. Take more interesting photos by choosing a depth of field, drawing your viewer to what's really important in the picture.Photo by Mike Baird. The basic idea of depth of field is fairly simple—the shallower the depth of field, the more of the photo is likely to be out of focus. A depth of field of two inches, for example, means that anything within two inches of your point of focus will be in focus. Take a look at the photo below—the entire photo is in focus because it has a deep depth of field. On the other hand, in the above picture only the closest flowers are in focus, bringing your attention to them and not the stems and other flowers surrounding them.
Photo by Mike Baird. In order to adjust depth of field, you need to have a DSLR camera, or other camera with which you can adjust aperture settings. By putting on aperture priority mode, usually denoted by an A, you can choose different presets for depth of field. Apple-focused site Macworld has a great introduction to using depth of field, complete with quite a few tips to get you started, so hit the link if you'd like to learn more. Also check out the full Flickr series of the above photos, as they do a good job of going through all the aperture presets and showing the difference between them. Got your own expert depth of field tips? Sound off in the comments! How to use depth of field to take better pictures [Macworld]
- Tags:
- Photography
- Cameras
- Photos
- Digital Photography
- Digital Photos
- Photography Tip
- Digital Photographs
- Images
March 30 2010, 3:00pm | Comments »
-
Your Episode Guide For Doctor Who Season 5 [Doctor Who]
http://io9.com/5505704/your-episode-guide-for-doctor-who-season-5
Britain's Radio Times (which also featured those fantastic TARDIS pictures yesterday) published a list of all the episodes in Doctor Who's fifth season, with titles for most of them and a little synopsis and quote for each of them. TARDIS Base transcribed the list (via Radio Free Skaro) and here it is: 1. The Eleventh Hour Writer: Steven Moffat Guest Starts: Annette Crosbie, Nina Wadia, and Arthur Darvill Geronimo! A brand-new Doctor crashing to Earth. New face, new body, new man. And he's barely staggered out of the blue box, before he's found himself in the middle of the Crisis That Just Won't Stop! No time to rest and recover, no Tardis, no screwdriver – just six billion human beings about to die and only one man to save them. But the new Doctor encounters more than danger – this is the day he meets Amy Pond. Can he persuade her to trust him, when he's been letting her down all her life? Quote: "Who da man?" 2. The Beast Below Writer: Steven Moffat Guest Stars: Sophie Okonedo, Terrence Hardiman The Doctor takes Amy to the far future, and Starship UK. The British people, adrift among the stars on a giant spaceship, in search of a new home. But there are secrets here, in the rusting corridors and clanging hallways. A masked figure, who knows the Doctor of old, begs his help, while Amy encounters the terrifying Smilers, and uncovers a secret so dreadful, no one can remember it… Quote: "Nobody talk to me! Nobody human has anything to say to me today!" 3. Victory of the Daleks Writer: Mark Gatiss Guest stars: Ian McNeice and Bill Paterson From the terrifying future of the United Kingdom to one of the darkest chapters of its past – World War Two. The Doctor and Amy find themselves in a top-secret cabinet war room deep beneath the London streets. And there, gliding among the nicotine walls and Bakelite telephones, the Daleks are hatching their deadliest scheme yet. Only one man can help the Doctor – whose side is Winston Churchill on? Quote: "I wanted to know what their plan was. I was their plan!" 4. The Time of Angels 5. Flesh and Stone Writer: Steven Moffat Guest Stars: Alex Kingston and Ian Glen A two-part story. A crashed spaceship, a shattered temple and a terrifying climb through the maze of the dead – River Song is back in the Doctor's life, and she's brought more trouble than even he can handle. The last of the Weeping Angels is loose in the ruins of Alfava Metraxis, and the Doctor is recruited to track it down. "Dont Blink!" everyone tells Amy – but as Amy is about to discover, not blinking, might just be the worst thing you can do… Quote: "Is River Song your wife?" 6. Vampires in Venice Writer: Toby Whithouse Guest Star: Helen McCrory In Venice, even danger is beautiful. The House of Calvierri has the whole city under its protection, but something is very wrong. There are blood-drained corpses in the street, something lurks in the canal, and the Calvierri girls are the loveliest in town, except when you glance in the mirror… Quote: "You know what's dangerous about you? Not that you ask people to take risks, but that you make them want to impress you!" 7. Amy's Choice Writer: Simon Nye Guest Star: Toby Jones It's been five long years since Amy travelled in the Tardis with her mysterious Doctor – and when he shows up again, on the eve of the birth of her first child, danger is not far behind him. Amy is faced with a heartbreaking choice that will change her life forever. Quote: "I know who you are. There's only one person in the universe who hates me as much as you do." Episodes 8 and 9 Writer: Chris Chibnall Guest Stars: Meera Syal, Stephen Morre and Neve McIntosh In 2015, the most ambitious drilling project in history is under way. Dr Nasreen Chaudhry and her team have reached 21 kilometres into the Earth's crust – but something is stirring far below. Amy Pond discovers there's nowhere to run when you can't even trust the ground at your feet. Quote: "While you've been drilling down… something else has been drilling up." Episode 10 Writer: Richard Curtis Guest Star: Tony Curran Terror lurks in the cornfields of Provence, but only a sad and lonely painter can see it. Amy Pond finds herself shoulder to shoulder with Vincent van Gogh, in a battle with a deadly alien – saving the world has never been so ginger! But can even the Doctor save Vincent? Quote: "Art can wait, this is life and death. We need to talk to Vincent van Gogh!" Episode 11 Writer: Gareth Roberts Guest Stars: James Corden and Daisy Haggard The Doctor faces his greatest challenge yet – a flat share! People are disappearing on Aickman Road, and the Doctor must solve the mystery of a staircase that people walk up – but never down. Quote: "All I have to do is pass as an ordinary human being. What could possibly go wrong?" Episode 12 and 13 Writer: Steven Moffat A message on the oldest cliff-face in the universe, a puzzle box opening from the inside and a love that lasts thousands of years…The fates are drawing close around the Tardis – is this the day the Doctor falls? Quote: "There was a goblin. Or a trickster, or a warrior. A nameless, terrible thing, soaked in the blood of a billion galaxies. The most feared being in all the cosmos. Nothing could stop it, or hold it, or reason with it – one day it would just drop out of the sky and tear down your world."
- Tags:
- Television
- doctor who
- tweet
March 30 2010, 1:21pm | Comments »