Yes he’s singing, dancing and charming the masses now, but what about when his predecessors become a little more tyrannical, diabolic, and manipulative in a near dystopic future? Alright, I’m getting a little a head of myself, and messing when ya’ll. But if this footage of the the “Gitex” robot recently featured at the panasonic stand in Gitex Exhibition at the Sheikh Saeed Halls at Dubai International Exhibition Center at Dubai World Trade Center, is indicative of anything, it’s that the day inches nearer when Robots and/or Androids will be a function of our everyday life. Be amazed at the included footage of the extraverted “Gitex” in the footage below ladies and gents…

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Recent participant in the designers in residence programme at the design museum in london, Marc Owens has constructed the avatar machine. Replicating the aesthetics and visuals of virtual gaming, the “Avatar Machine” provides patrons with the ability to become virtual characters, in real space through a head mounted interface. Get a better feel for the work of Marc Owens in the below footage…

“He designed costumes which represent the various characters that populate the virtual world. To develop each costume, he captures three dimensional data from virtual worlds such as second life and world of warcraft. He then edits the data in rhino, a three-dimensional CAD (computer aided design) programme. a three-dimesional scan of himself is then taken, with the outline of the figure represented as a triangular mesh format consisting of a series of verticals and triangles which define the shape of the body. using this outline, the costume is then simplified and scaled to fit an adult figure. the files are then exported to a computer programme called pepakura designer which ‘unfolds’ the three-dimensional data into flat nets. these nets are then scored and cut using a polypropylene manufacturing process and constructed to create real-life low resolution body parts that make-up the avatar characters…”

[via]

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Inspired by the strong correlation of shape and that of function. The polycarbonate lens further embraces this concept by 3 dimensionally framing the inner components. Nicholas DiLoreto and Kort Neumann apparently worked in the car industry before finding their true passion in product design. Get a better glimpse of the “Hundred Watch” in the extra photos below the break, and all other product inquiries should be to directed to www.KnotDesignLLC.com

[via]

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Rocking a lightweight aluminium frame and powered by a lithium-ion battery driving a 0.6kWh electric motor, the EC-f has a charger built into the frame for easy plug-in recharging. Currently on display at the Tokyo motor show, it’s being marketed as a smart electric commuter bike based on the more staid-looking EC-03 commuter scooter, and also to those that reside in small towns…

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Apparently Crackberry was the first to get their hands on the impending Blackberry Watch that’ll ultimately communicate with your smartphone:

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Created by Soomi Park, the LED eyelashes were announced as a “product that speaks to many Asian women’s desire for bigger eyes.” Now we don’t know if it accomplishes that feat, but two things are for sure; it’s definitely cool, and it’ll definitely be seen in the nightlife soon enough. One more interesting tidbit that’s notable? The lashes are connected to a tilt sensor so when you shift your cranium in specific directions, they light up. Keep it locked for availability, and your definitely going to want to peep the video after the break for more in depth look…

[via]

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Although their choice of casting is a bit iffy, we’ll give them a pass being that it’s completely fanmade. Conceived by the good folks at QuantumOptic, it was apparently made for a G4 video game trailer contest, but they managed to miss the deadline. Unfortunately not slated for production, QO also mentions that they have no affiliation with Bandai Namco nor do we posses any rights to the Tekken franchise. Catch it in all it’s glory after the break folks…

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This intuitive watch is entitled “DOGNE” and displays time in a most unusual manner, vertically by the sign of infinity. The upper part of 8 hours are for AM and the bottom is for hours PM, with 8 being the center of a circle of 60 increments for minutes & seconds. Are you a Nerd with Swag in need of connectivity? Then the watch laso has the ability to charges via USB and synchronizes with Outlook, Gmail and even displays the events on the screen. Inquiring on the price? Snatch one up for $1200 by means of XceptionalWatch.

[via & via]

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As you all know 2009 has been pretty damn disappointing as far as studio films have gone. There have been quite a few indie & international flicks I’ve enjoyed thus far this year (The Hurt Locker, Sleep Dealer, Sunshine Cleaning, Dead Snow, etc.) but I’m still annoyed by the fact there’s no better distribution system for UK films (it’s right across the water, what’s the goddamn problem?) and Hollywood being a year or more late to bring other international films to the US (Gomorrah, Ong Bak 2, Red Cliff, etc.). I really need to see a fun, clever, well written & executed flick that could end up being a cult hit/sensation to restore my faith in the medium (or just the North American film machine). Along came “Zombieland”.

“Zombieland” tells the tale of a world where an infection spread that turned what seems to be the entire globe into zombies in about two months time. The story picks up with a young loner who narrates the story, explaining how his frail, neurotic ass managed to be one of the survivors as well as demonstrating his list of methods that have kept him alive so long in a world full of the undead. This film is hilarious from the moment it opens and the quick start has you hooked. In films like “Gamer” & “Surrogates” the quick explanation at the beginning made you feel like key parts of the back story have been left out. Not here. That’s excellent execution of a film’s opening (for a damn change)

No one in the film really uses their government names anymore. Since your name identifies you in the context of a society or family one really isn’t necessary. There’s no one to talk to anymore. There’s no need to pay bills. There’s no more work to go to. Damn near everyone you once knew or loved is an undead godless creature that wants to eat your flesh. Using your real name just reminds you of all that over again. Besides, rather than get attached to people that might just turn on you or die later let’s keep this shit at business. I’m from X, where are you from? Oh, for real? That’s your name from now on. Where are you headed? That brings us to Woody Harrelson’s character.

Our tiny, meek, neurotic loner encounters expert zombie killer and all around nutjob Tallahassee and things instantly begin to take off. Tallahassee dubs our young protagonist/narrator Columbus as he’s headed for Columbus, Ohio. They team up together in an unlikely alliance in search of a place that isn’t infested with the infected. Tallahassee is convinced that such a place doesn’t exist but he’s willing to humor Columbus. Besides, he’s on a quest of another sort…he’s trying to locate a box of Twinkies before the expiration date runs out and they become extinct. Yes, he enters dangerous places teeming with the undead such as convenience stores, supermarkets and the like and kills his way to make the search for Twinkies easier. I didn’t make that up. Brilliant.

While Columbus and Tallahassee have their hilarious adventures and trade philosophies about surviving a world where damn near everyone else is out to eat them they encounter the first other living humans in their travels. Needless to say the encounter doesn’t go smoothly (I’m not on the spoilers with this one. I only use spoilers heavily when I don’t like the movie in hopes to discourage my readers from spending money on it). After a few more uneasy encounters they finally decide to roll together in the face of being the only survivors they’ve encountered thus far in their extensive travels of the United States. The two sisters agree to join Columbus and Tallahassee in search of signs of life and shelter devoid of zombie infestation.

The appearance of the sisters Wichita and Little Rock (Stone and Breslin, respectively) adds another dimension of intrapersonal dynamics to the group. Being that they’re both female, one is hot and has caught the eye of the meek Columbus and the other is a cute wisecracking kid. The foursome immediately seek out lodging, a place devoid of zombies and in Tallahasee’s case the quest for a goddamn Twinkie rages onward. They all travel to Hollywood and I won’t reveal what happens there but it’s absolutely brilliant & hilarious. I can’t stress how much I realized I was enjoying this movie and that was when it wasn’t anywhere near being over yet.

The film’s climax happens when the girls decide to travel to an amusement park to give Little Rock some semblance of a fun filled childhood in the face of a world that has gone to complete shit. No 12 year old should have to run around with a shotgun all the goddamn time while keeping a lookout for ferocious undead creatures. In any event, it’s time for a big fat kill. It’s time for Columbus to step it up and become a man and the perfect opportunity for Tallahassee to try to get the much coveted Zombie Kill Of The Week he seeks almost as much as a Twinkie.

“Zombieland” closes in grand form. The second it faded to black I had three thoughts: 1. This is going to be a hit. 2. I’m going to see this again with more people 3. They need to get everyone back and work on a sequel immediately. There are so many things you can do with this property in respect to having it become a franchise. Not only was it well written, clever and funny but the action was well executed as well. You actually care about what happened to Tallahassee, Columbus, Wichita and Little Rock after they got out of that damn amusement park and left California. I’m sure they’ll announce a “Zombieland 2″ soon…I mean there’s gonna be a “Saw 6″ for God’s sake! Now that’s an undead franchise that needs to be killed.

Since the original writing of this review. I’ve seen this film 3x and I catch things I didn’t see before. That’s commendable considering it’s only about 80 minutes long (that’s usually a red flag but in this case? It makes you want more). When this movie finally hits DVD & Blu-Ray near the holiday season or New Year I imagine it’s going to make a gang of dough then, too. I was more than impressed with this effort from the team of writers Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick alongside director Ruben Fleischer. Let’s do it again, fellas. I give “Zombieland” a mos def.

One.

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The Christian Alvart directed and Travis Milloy scripted Sci fi psychological drama/action film premiered last Friday and after the disappointment “Surrogates” turned out to be I sincerely hoped that “Pandorum” would be better. Maybe I’d actually care about what happened to these characters for a change? Maybe this story will actually be somewhat compelling? Not only has this year been one wrought with tragedy of a human nature but it’s been full of terrible films. I honestly can’t recall a weaker crop of blockbuster films in a movie season off hand. C’mon Pandorum!

The story opens with Corporal Bower awakening from cryogenic slumber aboard a spaceship created specifically to terraform another planet that can support human life. Humans ultimately overran Earth and used up all of it’s natural resources. The Earth was experiencing serious climate issues and on the verge of dying when another Earth like world was discovered by probe. A spaceship called Elysium containing thousands of humans, a crew & numerous samples of life from Earth were sent to the future home of humanity. Only one problem..Bower isn’t aware of any of these things at the moment he awakens. He doesn’t even know his own name.

Bower takes a while to combat his body rebelling against him and a serious case of memory loss. Luckily for him, he has his CO Payton who just woke up as well. Together they try to piece together who they are, what their individual jobs are and assess how to get out of the room they’re stuck in and where the hell is the Elysium. Since the ship is having power surges, it’s clear that they need to find a way to the reactor and discover what the hell happened to the rest of Elysium’s crew. Not only that but how long have they been in flight?

Payton and Bower devise a plan. Bower will try to sneak out to the other sectors of the ship and with the guidance of Payton from the deck, he’ll find his way to the reactor core. Re-cycle the ship’s power and from there they can figure everything else out. Bower manages to find his way onto other parts of the ship but he discovers that everything is completely fucked up. He’s supposed to be part of the 5th flight crew of the Elysium that were supposed to each work in two year shifts. Bower discovers that people that were supposed to be on flight crew rotations after his shift have already have awakened and are on the ship. What the fuck is going on?

While we’re on the subject of “What the fuck is going on?” it seems that there’s a deep seeded psychological side effect of being awakened from hypersleep during space travel called “Pandorum”. The symptoms are varied but you often don’t realize that you’re suffering from it, someone else has to tell you. Problem is, when you’re suffering from pandorum you tend to become completely paranoid and think that everyone else has it but you. Then you go into a completely bloody murderous rage and kill everyone around you. Sometimes, you just kill yourself. Fun times, huh?

Bower discovers a few other survivors on board then discovers that things have gone horribly awry on board the Elysium. For one, they’re getting attacked by some hybrid mutant creatures that feed on the other human survivors that have recently awoken from hypersleep. The ship’s turned into “Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome” and everyone is fighting for their own individual survival. Bower manages to forge an alliance between himself and two others, Manh and Nadia. They watch each other’s back in hopes of making it to the reactor core in time to save the ship & the rest of the thousands of humans onboard that have yet to wake from cryogenic hypersleep.

Along the way they find Leland, a Black guy who apparently has been awake for a long ass time and has survived long enough to piece together a significant amount of history together culled from the ship’s history in transit. He makes a bunch of revelations that add to the overall suspense of the film and eventually they all make their way to the reactor core in hopes of getting the ship’s power issues handled so we can get to the big reveals. I was literally on the edge of my seat during the last 45 minutes of this film.

“Pandorum” finally managed to deliver in a stretch of films where I had sit through clusterfuck upon shit sandwich week in and week out. Let’s recap, shall we? “Knowing?” Yawn. “Fast & Furious”? Shit. “X-Men Origins: Wolverine”? Shit. “Terminator: Salvation”? Shit. “The Taking Of Pelham 1 2 3″? Yawn. “Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen”? Shit. “G.I. Joe: The Revenge Of Cobra”? Flaming hot garbage. “Gamer”? Trash. “Whiteout”? Garbage. “Surrogates”? Fuck outta here! At least after I finished seeing “Pandorum” I said to myself “I can’t wait to see this jawn on Blu-Ray”. I give “Pandorum” a mos def because I’m grading on a curve.

One.

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I saw the new Bruce Willis vehicle, “Surrogates” and let me just say that based off the trailer alone and the strength of the subject matter and content of the source material I expected this film to at least be worthy of a Netflix rental once it left theaters. I’m sad to say that I once again ended up disappointed after this film faded to black before my eyes. There were so many plot elements and storylines from the original graphic novels that wasn’t even explored it wasn’t even funny. It had been Hollywoodized. How did two fully fleshed out graphic novels get stripped down to an 88 minute popcorn movie with excellent CGI & SFX? Damn!

“The Surrogates” was a cyberpunk tale told in two graphic novels, “The Surrogates” & “The Surrogates: Flesh & Bone”. They dealt with issues of human identity, the growing dependency on technology in everyday life as well as the individual’s digital footprint. There were also questions of class & race still addressed in the graphic novels, the film decided to remove all these issues by saying that surrogacy had erased classism, prejudice & racism in future society…not the case in the original source material! As soon as I saw how quickly they explained the back story at the beginning I had flashbacks to ‘Gamer”. Would “Surrogates” b yet another under 90 minute CGI & SFX popcorn movie with faux social commentary?

The film jumped right into the story and wasted no time whatsoever. A couple of detectives discover a few destroyed surrogates at a crime scene. Oddly enough, neither operator had called the police to report that their surrogates (or “surries”) had been destroyed or report the crime themselves. After retrieving the operator information from one of the surries (the other was unregistered) they discovered a dead body in the operators apartment still in it’s Stim Chair (where humans lay/sit while they operate their surrogates). Just one problem..operators aren’t supposed to die when harm comes to their surrogates. It’s the first possible homicide case in years.

Detective Tom Greer & his partner Peters also discover that the unregistered male surrogate actually belonged to a famous man named Canter, the father of Surrogacy, He created the technology and was an early advocate of it. The operator that died using his surrogate, however, belonged to his college aged son. The detective team has to try to figure out who was behind the murder and how it’s possible for a human to be killed when a surrogate is destroyed. It sends the Boston Police into a huge corporate conspiracy since they can’t disclose to the public that you can die using a surrogate. It would cause widespread panic and hurt the pockets of the huge corporation that produces them, VSI. Oddly enough, as fast as this movie flew by I did notice that there seemed to be no Asians or children in Boston anywhere. Odd..I see ‘em both all the time. Sometimes, even Asian children! *Gasp*

Greer has to get to the bottom of the mystery of who developed the weapon that can both destroy surrogates and their human operators and why. Then has to figure out how deep the conspiracy goes. Then Greer decides to ditch his surrogate to go to the Dorchester section of Boston where The Prophet leads “The Dreads”, a community of humans that eschew the usage of surrogates and destroy any that they see. In the graphic novels, they address the whole process that led to the Dreads movement and the eventual uprising that secured them a surrogates free zone in the first place. Compelling reading, unlike this a mile a minute chase/whodunnit shit to make up for the lack of a truly compelling story.

In the end, Greer uncovers the huge conspiracy and discovers who’s really behind everything (the guy you think it is 20 minutes into the movie). He’s then faced with a Plissken’s Dilemma near the end of the film but the suspense is so badly handled at the time the decision is made that it ends up having zero impact with the viewer/audience later. “Surrogates” is yet another forgettable blockbuster/popcorn flick you can get high and go to the movies to watch then rent it again on Netflix months later just to say it was “a’ight”. How many more graphic novels is Hollywood gonna butcher & suck the marrow out of? Fuck! I give it a maybe for everyday people but I suggest just reading the graphic novels instead of seeing the movie.

One.

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Conceived out of the mind of artist IceStone, he has invested approximately 20 hours into the “Glass Rubik’s Cube”, and is under the impression that this design can beat that of Erno Rubik’s.

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Now finding a Queen Alien on the other hand… Good luck with that. The “Power Loader Exoskelton” was recently introduced by Japan’s Activelink, and the 500-pound suit will facilitate its human user the ability to carry up to 250-pounds of stuff with precision-guided electromagnetic motors. Slated for a release in the commercial market in 2015, don’t miss footage of the suit in action below…

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