Teachers around the world, you best avert your eyes. We know at times science can be difficult to understand at times, and a Tumblr blog called Fake Science is attempting to take a little of the confusion out of the subject by giving you trivia that is outrageously false but so very amusing. The misleading factoids cover a variety of topics such the key ingredients of volcanic explosions to how fish breathe underwater to the amazing tech behind 3D glasses.
Have a look at some of these factoids after the jump.
The first trailer for Christopher Nolan’s upcoming film Inception merely told us it was a sci-fi mystery set within the architecture of the mind (see it here). It was painfully vague yet so very tantalizing. The newest trailer dropped this past weekend and gives a better look into the life of Dom Cobb, a corporate spy who nicks secrets from deep within the subconscious of his victims. The thief has lost things dear to him but has a chance at redemption with one last, almost impossible job.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z75o-F6ja2I
Inception is written and directed by Christopher Nolan and has a first-rate cast including Leonardo Dicaprio, Ken Watanabe, Marion Cotillard, Cillian Murphy, Michael Caine, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, and Ellen Page. The accompanying poster looks good as well, with a M.C. Escher look about it.
Inception is due out in the U.S. on July 16th, and will air in South Africa at the end of July. It will not be in 3D. It’s certainly the movie I’m most looking forward to this year. What’s yours?
UPDATE (May 26th): Here’s a preview of the international trailer that was aired on a Japanese television station during an interview with Ken Watanabe. The new footage starts at the 39-second mark.
Here’s a little South African flavour for our international readers who visit often but rarely leave any comments. It hurts us on our studio (if you missed that reference, see here – it’s at the 49-second mark).
In the past, South African fast food chain Chicken Licken ran a series of entertaining funk-themed TV ads for their brand of “soul food”. Our friends over at 10and5 spotted a new set of ads that take the brand in a hilarious new direction. Our favourite ad involves a play on one of South Africa’s major pastimes, mispronunciation. In it, an affable chap comes homes to his housemates after picking up a delicious “beggar”.
Check out a few more Chicken Licken ads after the jump.
Yes here it is at last…I know that loyal readers (all 3 of you) have been waiting with baited breath all day for my Friday Smackdown. I apologise for the tardiness of this piece – no excuses will be given (except to say that I spent a significant amount of time panicking and driving round in circles in Athlone this morning) but I do apologise profusely.
Anyhoo let’s get down to the dirty business of superheroes. This was a very difficult choice to make, and I have tried my damnedest to consider all aspects of the characters (not just the movies lazybones).
Batman SUCKS
I know he’s a detective and a crime fighter, has pretty successfully kept his superhero identity a secret and probably has a greater chance of success trying to make his home town a safer place than Iron Man has of bringing peace to an entire planet. But seriously all that dark tortured brooding, wearing underpants on the outside, the fact that he’ll never go in for the kill, he let the girl die, and his rather dodgy relationship with Robin make him suck in my eyes. However I do feel bad about his folks going out like they did (if they didn’t maybe he’d have turned out more like Iron man?)
Iron Man ROCKS
Gotta love that machismo, and the suite, and the awesome techno gadgets, and the flying, and the earnest desire to create world peace, and the fact that he wears his underpants on the inside where they belong. Then again I suppose the womanising and the ego are a bit over the top some of the time.
I know I’m going to get a whole lotta smacks myself for this one, but I’m ready so bring it on peeps. Tell me who’s your fav Batman or Iron Man?
Randall Munroe from the webcomic xkcd clearly has some influence. Last month, he posted a comic about how hellish the game of Tetris could be (see here). It went viral and after a couple of days, the first Flash game based on said comic hit the Internet. I only spotted it now, what can I say I’m not the quickest of cats.
With a curved bottom and bouncy physics, the game is probably a Tetris fan’s worst nightmare and pretty much an unwinnable. Play the first implementation of Hell by kaolin fire or try the newer one by Banthar.
For the couple of weeks that the FIFA Soccer World Cup will be running, South Africa is going to be the centre of the world. With the tournament a mere 34 days away, sportswear giant Nike has teamed up with awesome designer/illustrator Kronk (Cape Town FTW!) to create a range of clothing that represents Mzansi and our love for the beautiful game.
Nike released a 30-second spot showing Mzansi “bleed its colours” with the greens, blacks, and yellows of the national flag seeping through the city. Kronk plays a little cameo in the clip, check it out.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHA4A760iFw
Kronk is one of six international artists who collaborated with Nike Sportswear to create an alternative national team kit. He was asked to make a crest, mascot, print, and typeface in his unique style. His designs were revealed at a media launch that happened earlier this week. For more info and images on that, hit the jump.
Enoch Bolles was an Art Deco era illustrator best known for his pin-up cover art for the movie magazine, FILM FUN. The magazine didn’t take itself very seriously and initially had comedians on its covers, but from 1923 Bolles was painting sexy, fun-loving, voluptuous pin-up girls in different states of undress, much to the joy of the male readership I’m sure. By 1943 when the magazine fell foul of the Postmaster General’s campaign against “salacious” material, Bolles has painted 200 covers for FILM FUN.
By today’s standards Bolles’ provocative pin-up are pretty tame. They’re quite quaint actually, have a look at some of them after jump. Depending on the tolerance of your coworkers, the covers may be NFSW.
Goran Konjevod is a professor of mathematics and theoretical computer science. It’s a good thing that he also loves origami otherwise we’d have a tough time convincing you how awesome computer science is.
Channeling his keen mathemagical energy, Mr. Konjevod has made some fantastic 3D paper (and copper) sculptures. He says this about his creations:
Most of my pieces so far are abstract shapes naturally formed by the tension of the paper when multiple layers of paper are arranged according to regular or irregular patterns. In that sense, they could almost be said to be discovered, rather than invented or designed…
…I try to restrict myself to working with single uncut sheets of paper or other foldable material (such as copper), and for the most part use very simple “pureland” folds. Normally, this last restriction would imply that the resulting forms are flat. However, a real sheet of paper is always three-dimensional—even when unfolded—and its thickness brings about a much more obvious three-dimensionality when multiple layers are present.
We think his abstract origami should do all the talking. See a few of them after the jump.
Back in March of this year, electronica star Moby asked his fans to create a music video for his single “Wait for Me”. He offered up USD 5,000 for the best video and USD 1,000 for the two runners-up.
Moby was quite surprised at the response, he thought 30 to 40 entries would be the max, but almost 500 videos were submitted! People voted for their favourite videos on Genero.tv and when it was narrowed down to six finalists, Moby picked the eventual winner.
The winning entry was directed by Nimrod Shapira, but the one we’re going to show you today is by one of the runner-ups, Maik Hempel. Games are supposed to be fun, so Hempel thought of creating a 2D-scrolling arcade game video to try offset the melancholic tone of the song. It’s a great effort, but still bit of a tear-jerker. Have a look at his 8-bit music video to “Wait For Me”.
Remember the Grindhouse double feature directed by messieurs Tarantino and Rodriguez, and fake trailers that were shown in between the two flicks? We won’t blame you if you don’t remember, it was so 2007.
One of those fake trailers is not so fake and soon we will get to see the grizzled Mexican-America Danny Trejo in his first ever feature film. He’ll be playing “the wrong Mexican to fuck with” in Robert Rodriguez’s exploitation flick, Machete. In it, the former Mexican federale accepts a murder contract from a shady businessman, gets double-crossed, and with help from some unsavory friends, attempts to hunt down the bad guys like bleeding dogs in the snow. The teaser trailer hit the Internet today and is crazy-fun, check it out below.
Rodriguez wrote Machete in 1993 with Trejo in mind but didn’t get around to making it until recently. Machete stars a set of great old-school (old being the operative word) actors in Robert De Niro, Cheech Marin, and Don Johnson. Mr Crime-Vision himself, Steven Seagal, will play a drug lord. The deadly eye-candy will be supplied by Jessica Alba, Michelle Rodriguez, and Lindsay Lohan.
Machete will be airing in U.S. cinemas on September 3rd. No word if it’ll make its way down to South Africa.