Spam of the day: “Radio Control Nano Chopper hottest toy this season”
Just tell your kids you bought one. If it’s really nano-sized, how will they ever know?
Day: December 2, 2006
Some random links — can you tell I’m trying to burn through these?
- All the Nebula Award Winners–in Haiku [via]
- “Wikipedia Brown and the Case of the Captured Koala” [via]
- Fleece Dog. There’s something vaguely creepy about the idea of using real dog hair to make these things… [via]
- Stationery Movies — movie scenese recreated using office supplies. I got 14. How many can you guess? [via]
- Animals in the Womb [via]
- America by the numbers — graphical representation of U.S. population density [via]
- “Galactus is Coming” — Stan Lee meets Jack Chick [via]
- Monkey portraits [via]
- Machu Picchu — in incredible detail [via]
More from the Sci-Fi Wire:
Writer/director Darren Aronofsky wants to make one thing clear: His upcoming epic film The Fountain is definitely science fiction, he told SCI FI Wire. “I’m glad we’re talking about this,” Aronofsky said in an interview. “It’s a really upsetting thing, because I’ve met people on the road who go, ‘This isn’t sci-fi because there aren’t ray guns.’ They haven’t said it that obviously, but that’s their point. And the fact that science fiction in movies has been so hijacked by techno-lust and by hardware ‘button sci-fi,’ as we call it, where everything is, if it’s not buttons, it’s now holographs.”
We so often hear the exact opposite from filmmakers, as if “science fiction” was some kind of dirty word, a genre ghetto to be avoided at all cost, that this is really refreshing. I’ve been reading really mixed things about The Fountain — even the critics who like it are cautious in their enthusiasm — but I’m definitely interested in seeing it.
Well this is really going to piss Alan Moore off: Warner Brothers is apparently considering a sequel to V for Vendetta.
Also, they’re making a Smurfs movie. First The Transformers, now this. Can Thundercats 2008* be far behind?
* I should add that I’m exactly sure if this would be a bad thing, necessarily. I was interested in reading the recent comics re-imagining of the series, and I have to admit I probably have fonder memories of Thundercats than of either The Transformers or The Smurfs. I’m just saying: original ideas — whatever happened to those?
From the Sci-Fi Wire:
Alfonso Cuaron, director of the upcoming SF drama Children of Men, told SCI FI Wire that he loved the stylistic world in the novel by British mystery writer P.D. James on which the movie is based. But he added that he wanted to depart from the science-fiction aspects from the start. “I loved the world she created in the book, but it was not something I could see myself doing,” Cuaron said. “I used the book as a jumping-off point.”
Having been disappointed, ultimately, in James’ original novel, I don’t really have a problem with these changes. (The decision to make it the women who are infertile instead of the men, on the other hand…)
I just hope the film can improve on the novel, which I thought established a really frightening and plausible vision of the future — only to waste it on what was essentially one long chase scene. The trailer for the film, I thought, looked interesting, but we’ll see.