My favorite clips to share, like the pinnacle of any art form, inspire their audience to a greater vision of life — a vision of what’s possible that they might not have had before.
1 The smallest movie ever made! A complete narrative made with only ATOMS! Mind. Blown. Another example of epic branded content.
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We live in an age where smartphones can tell us when we need to leave for the airport and Turing test competitors inch ever closer to a passing grade, but true artificial intelligence remains out there on the horizon, frustratingly out of reach. At the Tribeca Film Festival a new sci-fi action film imagines one way we might finally achieve that goal — and some of the moral and ethical problems we might not see coming. It’s called The Machine, and you’re going to want to see it.
The second feature from writer and director Caradog James, the film tells the story of Dr. Vincent McCarthy (Toby Stephens). It’s the near-future. A cold war with China has pushed the Western world into a continued economic depression, and building the first intelligent machines has become the new space race. McCarthy works for the United Kingdom’s Ministry of Defense, designing implants for brain-damaged soldiers. He’s a brilliant and driven man seemingly doing noble work — but there’s something darker there pushing him on. There’s also the matter of how well his research is going; there have been accidents along the way, and he’s treading in a particularly grey area of the moral spectrum.
CONTINUUM is about the awakening of our planet.
It is a feature documentary telling the story of our interconnection with each other, the planet, and the universe.
We hope that this documentary will change the way we think as a species – to stop seeing ourselves as separate from each other, from the planet and the cosmos – and inspire us to work together to transform our planetary crises.
By weaving together perspectives and ideas from some of the key theorists and thinkers in the fields of cosmology, environmentalism, sustainability, social theory, anthropology and systems dynamics, Continuum tells the story of where we have come from, where we are now, and the possibilities for our future.
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Definitely deserves to be full-screened.
Activision showed off the state of the art of real-time graphics on Wednesday, releasing this mind-boggling character demo. The character’s skin, facial expressions and eyes look so real, it’s uncanny.
When you watch this video, see if you think this character has reached the other side of what’s commonly called the “uncanny valley,” a term first uttered by early robotics guru Masahiro Mori in 1970. It describes the range of sophistication of animated graphics, from one side of the valley where human figures simply look unrealistic, to the middle of the valley — where they look just realistic enough to be creepy — to our side of the valley, where animation is indistinguishable from reality.
Must-watch teaser on what it will be like to wear Google Glass, Google’s augmented reality head-mounted display.
to spread the wonder | 2 months ago This film looks epic despite some possibly precarious science—wouldn’t the gravitational pull from each planet cause utter tidal chaos at the very least? In any case, can’t wait to see this ambitious and masterfully-shot sci-fi love story.
The trailer score is “Breath and Life” by Audiomachine.
“Why is every superhero movie an origin story?” complained Entertainment Weekly film critic Adam Markovitz after seeing a trailer for this summer’s Man of Steel—yet another version of the 75-year-old Superman saga. Perhaps we love origin stories, Markovitz suggested, because they “show the exact moment when a normal guy goes from being Just Like Us to being somehow better, faster, stronger.”
Despite critical and fan acclaim, Joss Whedon’s summer superhero blockbuster The Avengers earned only a single Oscar nod in 2013′s Academy Award nominations, Achievement in Visual Effects, thanks to the VFX wizards at Industrial Light & Magic who devised a slew of whiz-bang tricks using the Autodesk platform and their own ZviZ pre-visualization system (see video at link).
But perhaps the most impressive special effect in the top-grossing superhero flick was the Hulk, an ILM construct that built 1,400 pounds of muscle-bound CGI freakiness around the monster’s mild-mannered alter ego Bruce Banner (and actor Mark Ruffalo). ILM’s Jeff White told Wired that job number one in building a better Hulk was building the elements of character within the CGI, and shared five key steps that helped them create the most impressive visualization of the Hulk to hit any screen, big or small.
to spread the wonder | 4 months ago And here’s the footage! Well, a teaser. But that’s all we’re going to get for now.
While the remains of monstrous specimens have been collected in museums around the world, it wasn’t until 2005 when a team of scientists, led by Tsunemi Kubodera of Japan’s National Science Museum, were able to photograph the 26-foot-long monster trawling the ocean depths for food for the first time in recorded history.
And later this month, the same team will premiere first-ever video of a similar beast spotted at a depth of 2,067 feet, just east of Chichi Island in the north Pacific Ocean. Check out a teaser:
What do you think?
