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| Friday, June 22, 2012 03:57 PM |
| Recyclotron |
 by Fëanor |
Fëanor pours the entire internet into the Recyclotron, and only the best links come out the other end for you to enjoy.
- New Hark! A Vagrant!
- A panda enters.
- There a whole lot of blogs involving artists redrawing/reimagining other art, but... well, here's another! It's a series of artists redoing all the character portraits from The Official Handbook to the Marvel Universe.
- One of my favorite artist/bloggers, Noelle Stevenson, has launched her fantasy web comic Nimona. It's pretty good!
- The very last Life In Hell strip was recently printed. Never really got into this strip too much, but definitely feels like the end of an era.
- This guy is redoing Blade Runner as a series of watercolor paintings, which is insane.
- A teaser trailer for the Monsters Inc. prequel, Monsters University. Looks like fun!
- A few drinks while you're pregnant is not going to permanently damage your baby. There's science now to back this up. So let's all calm down just a little bit.
- Here's a trailer for a movie called Prototype, which is about an experimental robot going rogue. Or a human being who turns into a robot? Or something? Looks neat.
- Apparently the best predictor of how well a movie will do at the box office is online buzz.
- There's going to be a Sesame Street movie! Who knows how this will turn out, but I'm cautiously optimistic.
- Apparently Hobotopia did a series of Lord of the Rings-related comics. Nice! The 2000th entry of that strip is coming up, which should be fun.
- Hey, Sin Titulo started updating again.
- The ISS re-cut The Avengers.
- A chart explaining the evolution of the alien as described in Prometheus. (Spoiler alert!)
- Crazy video of a dude killing bosses in Diablo III in ridiculously short amounts of time. Like, he polishes off the Skeleton King in less than a second. (Via)
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| Tagged (?): Aliens (Not), Animals (Not), Animated GIFs (Not), Art (Not), Avengers (Not), Business (Not), Cartoons (Not), Comedy (Not), Comic books (Not), Diablo (Not), Diablo 3 (Not), Links (Not), Movies (Not), Muppets (Not), News (Not), Parenthood (Not), Parenting (Not), Recyclotron (Not), Robots (Not), Science (Not), Tolkien (Not), Video (Not), Video games (Not), Web comics (Not) |
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| Saturday, June 9, 2012 07:27 PM |
| (Last updated on Sunday, June 10, 2012 08:01 AM) | | On the Viewer - Prometheus |
 by Fëanor |
Ridley Scott's Prometheus (written by Jon Spaihts and Damon Lindelof) is technically a prequel to Scott's own Alien (with a gap of some 33 years between the two movies). But don't get too hung up on that fact. If anything the movie has more in common - in terms of its subject and themes and the Great Big Deep Questions it asks - with Scott's other science fiction classic, Blade Runner (which, if you're still counting, came out 30 years ago). Despite the thrill I got from recognizing the various references back to the other film - visual and verbal - I almost wish it hadn't been developed as a prequel to Alien at all, as focusing on the places where the two stories don't quite fit together can distract you from the fact that Prometheus tells its own complete tale and is easily strong enough to stand on its own as a work comparable in excellence with its masterful predecessor.
The movie opens with a slightly puzzling sequence that - given what comes after, and given the title of the film - we eventually understand to be depicting a God-like being descending from the heavens onto primordial Earth and sacrificing himself to provide the spark that will give rise to humanity as we know it. A tremendous leap forward in time, to our near future, introduces us to scientists (and lovers) Elizabeth Shaw (Noomi Rapace) and Charlie Holloway (Logan Marshall-Green), who have discovered evidence of these God-like beings in ancient art all over the world. The art takes the form of a kind of map that seems to point the way to where those being came from. Thanks to the monetary assistance of an interested party - Peter Weyland (Guy Pearce), the founder and CEO of Weyland Industries (a company that fans of the Alien franchise should already be very familiar with) - the scientists get the chance to follow the map and meet their makers. Accompanying them on the expedition is Mr. Weyland's "son," a polite android known as David (Michael Fassbender, in a subtle but tremendous performance - as in the other Alien films, the robot is one of the most fascinating characters). A short but fantastic sequence gives us an idea what his life is like on the ship during its over two year long voyage to its destination. While the human crew and passengers are packed away and preserved in cryo-sleep, he plays basketball from a bicycle, watches Lawrence of Arabia (identifying with T.E. Lawrence perhaps a bit more than is healthy), and takes video lessons on ancient languages.
Meredith Vickers (Charlize Theron), another representative from the company, is such a bad-ass that she somehow manages to wake from her cryo-sleep a bit early, and wanders off to her room to do dripping wet, half-naked push-ups while the other humans are recovering from the experience by going into shock and throwing up into buckets. She quickly bursts the bubble of the two scientists, revealing that the expedition isn't really theirs at all anymore, but Weyland's, and that they are forbidden to make contact with any alien life forms they might find. As always in the Alien films, The Company is pursuing its own, secret agenda. (I think one of the things I like the most about these movies is their healthy distrust of Big Business.)
But Shaw, at least, isn't the kind of person to come all this way and then back down in the face of a few obstacles. She's a hunter, a fighter, and, perhaps most importantly, a believer. Holloway nearly matches her passion, but only nearly. When the two of them reveal what they're willing to risk to get the answers they seek, the biologist (Rafe Spall) turns to the cranky, anti-social geologist (Sean Harris) and says, "I thought you were the crazy one." (Aside: I thought it was a little weird the biologist wasn't more interested in examining a giant alien corpse, but whatever.)
And what is it exactly that they find on that alien world? Well, I think I've already spoiled enough. Suffice it to say, the film is about what would happen if we met our maker, and it turned out he was a scumbag. How would we react? What would we do? Would it break us? Would it shake our faith? When Holloway doesn't get the answers he wants, he falls into a funk, and David has a wonderful conversation with him about what it's like to talk with your makers about why they made you, the subtext being that how someone treats what they make says a lot about them. Meanwhile, Shaw just gets to work. And keeps working. Keeps asking. Her faith never wavers.
Prometheus is a wonderful and effective horror thriller, in part due to excellent effects and stunning visuals, but mostly thanks to good writing, great acting, and interesting characters. Although a scene involving surgery is one of the most viscerally horrific moments, the most lasting and chilling scare in the film is the existential horror at the center of its story. But what I like most about it is that it's not about monsters killing people. In fact, it's not really about the monsters at all. It's a deep and thoughtful film about people - who we are, where we came from, what makes us worthwhile. If, at the end of the film, you are frustrated that it has left you with unanswered questions and are hoping a sequel will answer them, I'm afraid you've missed the point. The point is asking the questions. Shaw's last line in the film is, "Still searching." And that's what it's all about: the searching. |
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| Friday, December 23, 2011 12:03 PM |
| (Last updated on Friday, December 23, 2011 02:20 PM) | | Recyclotron |
| by Fëanor |
Fëanor pours the entire internet into the Recyclotron, and only the best links come out the other end for you to enjoy.
- Aww, happy holidays from the Broship of the Ring!
- You should check out Draw a Stupid Animal. And maybe contribute, if that's your thing.
- Here's a fun holiday news story for you.
- Heh. Yeah.
- This is amusing.
- Inflatable tentacle arm! Nice.
- That Buffy movie they were going to make without Joss Whedon is probably not going to happen. Which is probably good news.
- In case you have somehow not seen them yet, here are the trailers for Prometheus and The Hobbit. It's now extremely clear that Prometheus is indeed an Alien prequel. The logo even slowly builds up line by line, just like in Alien! And yeah, I'm still not sure about how the dwarfs look in The Hobbit, but that trailer is pretty great. When they start singing the song at the end? Chills!
- Dude, a LEGO Zelda would be amazing.
- How about some Princess Leia hair bun headphone covers? I'd wear those.
- The cover for Alan Moore's The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen - Century: 2009, the final installment of the "Century" trilogy. It's coming in June, 2012. I only read the first entry in this trilogy, and wasn't that impressed, but I still have a fondness for the series as a whole. And anyway, it's a great cover. (Via)
- Some news on the cast of the upcoming Ender's Game movie, the biggest item being that Colonel Hyram Graff will be played by Harrison Ford. (Via)
- New evidence suggests that children start forming solid memories as early as two years of age. So we only have a few months before we have to really start worrying about scarring our son for life? Good to know.
UPDATE:
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| Tagged (?): Alan Moore (Not), Aliens (Not), Animals (Not), Art (Not), Buffy (Not), Children (Not), Comedy (Not), Comic books (Not), Dinosaurs (Not), Game of Thrones (Not), Holiday (Not), LEGO (Not), Links (Not), Movies (Not), News (Not), Parenting (Not), Products (Not), Recyclotron (Not), Science (Not), Star Wars (Not), The Hobbit (Not), The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (Not), Tolkien (Not), Toys (Not), TV (Not), Video (Not), Video games (Not), Web comics (Not), Wolverine (Not), Zelda (Not) |
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| Monday, December 19, 2011 12:21 PM |
| (Last updated on Monday, December 19, 2011 01:49 PM) | | Recyclotron |
| by Fëanor |
Hey, remember when I used to post things like this to this here blog?? Thought I'd try it again, just to see how it goes. Enjoy!
Fëanor pours the entire internet into the Recyclotron, and only the best links come out the other end for you to enjoy.
- Some fun recent posters on Reelizer: My Neighbor Totoro, Blade Runner, and Seven Samurai.
- Speaking of Blade Runner and My Neighbor Totoro... And here's another amusing mashup.
- Make your own chocolate D&D dice. (Via)
- This bootleg copy of the Dark Knight Rises trailer is crazy exciting. (UPDATE: Here's the official trailer.)
- A holiday-themed Wondermark! And here's one that's far too accurate to my experience.
- Dude! Officially licensed Lord of the Rings LEGO toys?? There goes all my money.
- Commercials are now legally obligated to not be so damn loud, which makes the fist-waving old man inside me very happy.
- The house banners from A Song of Ice and Fire, redone in super-cute, chibi style.
- The trailer for Expendables 2. Just a teaser, really, but how about that cast!
- I was surprised that Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol was getting such good reviews until I remembered it's directed by Pixar genius Brad Bird. Yeah, I might have to see that.
- The Avengers trailer! You think you've seen it already, but have you seen this version?? It has extra scenes, and it's in German!
- So even though Ridley Scott's Prometheus is essentially a prequel to his Alien film, it will not actually feature the alien, or xenomorph, at all. Huh. Okay then.
- Every year Matthew "defective yeti" Baldwin writes a guide to the best new board games. Always fun! Here's this year's.
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| Tagged (?): Advertising (Not), Aliens (Not), Art (Not), Avengers (Not), Batman (Not), Boardgames (Not), Comedy (Not), Commercials (Not), Craft (Not), Food (Not), Gaming (Not), Holiday (Not), LEGO (Not), Links (Not), Lists (Not), Mashups (Not), Movies (Not), News (Not), Recyclotron (Not), Song of Ice and Fire (Not), Star Wars (Not), Tolkien (Not), Toys (Not), TV (Not), Video (Not), Web comics (Not) |
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| Monday, August 22, 2011 12:24 PM |
| (Last updated on Monday, August 22, 2011 12:28 PM) | | Recyclotron |
| by Fëanor |
Fëanor pours the entire internet into the Recyclotron, and only the best links come out the other end for you to enjoy.
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| Tagged (?): Aliens (Not), Art (Not), Avengers (Not), Cartoons (Not), Comedy (Not), Comic books (Not), Craft (Not), Fast food (Not), Links (Not), Lovecraft (Not), Monsters (Not), Movies (Not), Music (Not), News (Not), Pixar (Not), Recyclotron (Not), Robots (Not), Star Wars (Not), Tolkien (Not) |
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| Friday, June 24, 2011 12:55 PM |
| Recyclotron |
| by Fëanor |
Fëanor pours the entire internet into the Recyclotron, and only the best links come out the other end for you to enjoy.
- Shirt irony!
- A nice piece depicting a tense moment from Aliens.
- Dan Hipp knows how to push my buttons.
- The latest Awesome Hospital amused me. "That'll get you thirty CCs of Ripitupazine, braff." Heh.
- io9 talks about some legendary cryptids that turned out to be real. Yay, platypus! Also, dream on, bigfoot believers! Btw, send your cryptid photos to io9 - they're offering a $2,000 bounty!
- Wizard World was in town recently - right near where I work, in fact - but I still didn't make it over there, because it's super expensive and I just would have wanted to buy everything I saw. Also, kinda busy here. Get off my case! Ahem. Anyway, I can simulate a visit to Wizard World by clicking here and looking at these pictures! And so can you!
- Have I posted about Yog-Blogsoth yet? I should have if I didn't. It's a dude trying to draw every creature in every H.P. Lovecraft story. Love the title, the concept, and the art! But beware - some of the images are NSFW. (Via)
- A camera that lets you adjust the focus after the picture has been taken?? Wow. The future is cool.
- Turns out the Red Skull started life as the cherry on an ice cream sundae.
- I'm not convinced Steven Spielberg's dinosaur show, Terra Nova, is going to be any good, but these posters are fun.
- Click through for links to many beautiful photos of a wedding at a museum.
- Emergency stakes.
- I would like to have this cookies n' cream cake, please. (Via)
- Enjoying this nostalgic Zelda comic and this NSFW Tyrion fan art from this Super Punch link roundup.
- Check out a bunch of cool posters for Immortals, the mythological epic from Tarsem Singh that I continue to be very excited about.
- If you haven't seen the new Captain America trailer yet, you really should. It looks like they got Cap's character just right. So many scenes and lines of dialog in here are so perfect. Really looking forward to this one!
- A six-foot LEGO model of Sauron's Dark Tower. Sweet!
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| Tagged (?): Advertising (Not), Aliens (Not), Art (Not), Captain America (Not), Clothing (Not), Comedy (Not), Comic books (Not), Cosplay (Not), Costumes (Not), Craft (Not), Dinosaurs (Not), Food (Not), Gadgets (Not), Game of Thrones (Not), LEGO (Not), Links (Not), Lovecraft (Not), Movies (Not), Mythology (Not), Photography (Not), Recyclotron (Not), Shirts (Not), Star Wars (Not), Steven Spielberg (Not), Technology (Not), Tolkien (Not), Toys (Not), TV (Not), Vampires (Not), Video (Not), Video games (Not), Web comics (Not), Zelda (Not) |
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| Wednesday, May 4, 2011 12:44 PM |
| Recyclotron |
| by Fëanor |
Fëanor pours the entire internet into the Recyclotron, and only the best links come out the other end for you to enjoy.
- LOLDinosaur!
- I'm kind of in love with Dan Hipp, you guys.
- In a recent comic book, Superman renounced his American citizenship, declaring himself a citizen of the world. Which makes sense to me, given how he's always facing off against potentially world-shattering threats and doesn't limit his patrols to one country. It didn't seem like that big a deal to me, actually - it's really more of a stunt that probably won't change much - but for whatever reason, the news blew up into the mainstream media and upset a lot of people (most of them conservative idiots, apparently). More importantly, it led to the creation of an inspired hashtag on Twitter.
- This has to be one of the best YouTube videos ever: every one of Hudson's lines from Aliens. (You should already know this, but the audio is NSFW.)
- I'm pretty sure I linked to this site before, ages ago, but it's worth another link: Hobbitish, featuring Hobbit-related art from around the world. (Via)
- The next James Bond film is getting about one-third of its funding from product placement: a whopping, record-breaking $45 million. I'm looking forward to the scene where Bond has a refreshing Mountain Dew instead of his signature martini.
- Check out the Geek Zodiac. I'm a Daikaiju. Godzilla FTW! (Via)
- Here is a website devoted to Fox Mulder's wristwatch. Yes, all it is is pictures and video of the character wherein his watch is visible. Somehow, even after all these years on the internet, things like this can still blow my mind. The rabbit hole is deep, my friends. (Via)
- Heh. Apparently a new Green Lantern display made to draw people into comic shops can occasionally catch fire. Definitely eye-catching!
- Details on Shatner's deleted scene in the 2009 Star Trek film.
- On May 15th, the Wii is dropping to $150, and will come bundled with Mario Kart and the Wii Wheel. Guess it's time to dump all those extra consoles now that Wii 2 is on the way!
- I enjoy Portal Tetris.
- Somebody's going for The Most Bad-Ass Tattoo Ever Award: a T-Rex with chainsaw arms!!
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| Tagged (?): Aliens (Not), Art (Not), Books (Not), Business (Not), Comedy (Not), Comic books (Not), Dinosaurs (Not), Green Lantern (Not), James Bond (Not), Kaiju (Not), Links (Not), Mashups (Not), Movies (Not), News (Not), Nintendo (Not), Photography (Not), Recyclotron (Not), Star Trek (Not), Star Wars (Not), Superman (Not), Tattoos (Not), The Hobbit (Not), Tolkien (Not), TV (Not), Twitter (Not), Video (Not), Video games (Not), Wii (Not), X-Files (Not) |
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| Friday, April 15, 2011 12:06 PM |
| Recyclotron |
| by Fëanor |
Fëanor pours the entire internet into the Recyclotron, and only the best links come out the other end for you to enjoy.
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| Tagged (?): Aliens (Not), Art (Not), Books (Not), Cartoons (Not), Comedy (Not), Facebook (Not), Game of Thrones (Not), Links (Not), Lists (Not), Mashups (Not), Movies (Not), Neil Gaiman (Not), News (Not), Peter Jackson (Not), Photography (Not), Recyclotron (Not), Scooby-Doo (Not), The Hobbit (Not), Tolkien (Not), TV (Not), Video (Not), Video games (Not), X-Men (Not) |
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| Monday, April 11, 2011 11:02 AM |
| Recyclotron |
| by Fëanor |
Fëanor pours the entire internet into the Recyclotron, and only the best links come out the other end for you to enjoy.
- Game of Thrones family sigil desktop wallpapers!! Awesome. It's too bad that I hate all the Greyjoys (especially Theon, whose chapters I can barely read, he's such a complete dick), because their sigil and words are so excellent.
- Dan Hipp has been at it again, posting all kinds of amazing illustrations on his blog, including a Predator fighting a Wookiee, a poster for The Wolverine lamenting the film that could have been, and a truly fantastic Tintin/Alien mashup image.
- Check out the teaser for Daniel Radcliffe's next film, a period ghost story called The Woman in Black.
- The next Superman movie has its General Zod.
- Famous sci-fi scenes recreated with a cast of peeps.
- I was going to post links to all the coolest recent additions to Reelizer, but there are too many. Just go there and look around yourself.
- A great Beetlejuice illustration.
- The second item here purports to reveal the truth behind Olive Garden's claims that it sends its chefs to Italy to learn real Italian cooking. Unsubstantiated, obviously, but certainly seems believable.
- A selection of neat nesting dolls from a recent art show.
- You're stuck on an important video conference call with the Romulan ambassador, but you desperately need to go to the bathroom. What do you do? As usual, Riker has the solution. (Via)
- The first trailer for Lars von Trier's Melancholia (which is slightly NSFW, due to brief, distant nudity). It's technically a sci-fi film, as there's an important plot element involving a mysterious planet suddenly appearing and heading for Earth, but it seems to be much more about relationships and people being really emotional. Looks intense.
- A trailer for the new Mortal Kombat web series, based on that video that went viral a while back. Sadly the trailer is nowhere near as cool and exciting as the original video was. It's just a rather clumsy fight scene.
- Looks like Arnold Schwarzenegger's getting back into movies in a big way.
- Some very nice Thor art on this blog. (Via)
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| Tagged (?): Aliens (Not), Art (Not), Books (Not), Celebrities (Not), Comedy (Not), Comic books (Not), Craft (Not), Food (Not), Game of Thrones (Not), George R.R. Martin (Not), Links (Not), Mortal Kombat (Not), Movies (Not), News (Not), Predator (Not), Recyclotron (Not), Song of Ice and Fire (Not), Star Trek (Not), Star Wars (Not), Superman (Not), Thor (Not), Video (Not), Web comics (Not), Wolverine (Not) |
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| Wednesday, March 9, 2011 12:15 PM |
| Recyclotron |
| by Fëanor |
Fëanor pours the entire internet into the Recyclotron, and only the best links come out the other end for you to enjoy.
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| Tagged (?): Aliens (Not), Art (Not), Battlestar Galactica (Not), Blade Runner (Not), Celebrities (Not), Clothing (Not), Comedy (Not), Comic books (Not), Craft (Not), Food (Not), History (Not), Indiana Jones (Not), Links (Not), Lovecraft (Not), Mashups (Not), Michael Chabon (Not), Movies (Not), Muppets (Not), News (Not), Photography (Not), Products (Not), Recyclotron (Not), Shirts (Not), Star Wars (Not), Toys (Not), TV (Not), Twitter (Not), Video games (Not), Zelda (Not) |
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Jim Genzano's books on Goodreads
