Here is a frightening thriller based not on special effects gimmicks but on a dread that seems quietly spreading in the land: that the good days are ending, and climate changes or other sinister forces will sweep away our safety. "Take Shelter" unfolds in a quiet Ohio countryside with big skies and flat horizons, and involves a happy family whose life seems contented.Continue Reading on RogerEbert.com
As computer scientists this year celebrate the 100thanniversary of the birth of the mathematical genius Alan Turing, who set out the basis for digital computing in the 1930s to anticipate the electronic age, they still quest after a machine as adaptable and intelligent as the human brain.Continue Reading on ScienceDaily.com
An AICN reader named Jake Walsh attended yesterday's Tokyo premier of Peter Berg's bigscreen adaptation/alienificaton of the famous Hasbro game BATTLESHIP.Continue Reading on AintItCool.com
What follows are Jake's thoughts on the film. I've tweaked his contributions slightly to extract a SPOILER or two which maybe wouldn't have been fair to release so far out, but substabntively this is very much his report in full. We deeply appreciate his time and effort when sending this along.
His verdict? It's huge, oversized, Bay-esque extravagenza but without the heart and charm of Bay. I'll let Jake speak for himself from this point forward.
We can judge for ourselves when BATTLESHIP opens next month.
Google today went public with its plans to offer augmented reality glasses, which it’s calling “Project Glass.”
Unveiling the project should make it easier for Google to test the weird-looking glasses in public. As currently designed, they have a horizontal frame that rests on a wearer’s nose, with a wider strip of computer and a little clear display on the right side. So they’re not really “glasses” in the traditional sense at all.Continue Reading on AllThingsD.com
New algorithms could enable heaps of ‘smart sand’ that can assume any shape, allowing spontaneous formation of new tools or duplication of broken mechanical parts.
Imagine that you have a big box of sand in which you bury a tiny model of a footstool. A few seconds later, you reach into the box and pull out a full-size footstool: The sand has assembled itself into a large-scale replica of the model.Continue Reading on Web.MIT.edu
The chemtrail conspiracy theory holds that some trails left by aircraft are actually chemical or biological agentsdeliberately sprayed at high altitudes for purposes undisclosed to the general public in clandestine programs directed by government officials.[1] This theory is not accepted by the scientific community, which states that they are just normal contrails, and that there is no scientific evidence supporting the chemtrail theory.Continue Reading on Wikipedia.org
Something happened during the initial theatrical screenings of the Chemical Brothers' concert documentary Don't Think that, while spontaneous, also felt like a foregone conclusion: audiences got up and danced. Sharing a darkened room with a flashy, quick-cutting, psychedelic sensory overload blasted out in Dolby Surround can do that to people. Especially when it's based around a set from arguably the most enduringly successful rave-gone-pop act of all time. Tom Rowlands and Ed Simons have built a 20-year canon that can effortlessly fill 90 minutes with wave after wave of euphoric, body-shaking classics. And at a time when their occasionally-bumpy transition from next-big-thing 1990s icons to Hanna-scoring cool older brothers has positioned them as elder statesmen of a resurgent moment for electronic dance music, the role of a generation-bridging legacy act has fit them well. So while Gondry and Jonze did them plenty of justice in the MTV era, an actual audiovisual document of their mind-bending live show feels a bit overdue.Continue Reading on Pitchfork.com
In 2010, when Michael Schumacher made his comeback, and again last year, the seven-times world champion was consistently beaten by his younger team-mate, both in qualifying and on race day. But this season Schumacher, in his 44th year, appears to have the upper hand. Rosberg was 12th in Australia and 13th on Sunday and seemed to be standing still as a succession of rivals went past him. He is a seriously competent driver but he will never win his maiden grand prix at this rate. But even with Schumacher looking hungrier than before, the Mercedes, so promising on Saturday afternoon, is a Sunday washout. If they are cheating with their new DRS-driven F-duct, as some teams rather churlishly suggest, they are not making a very good job of it.Continue Reading on Guardian.co.uk
The success of the heroine Lisbeth Salander suggests a hunger in audiences for an action picture hero who is not a white 35ish male with stubble on his chin. Such characters are often effective, but they sometimes seem on loan from other films. There are few characters anywhere like Salander, played here by Rooney Mara and by Noomi Rapace in the original 2009 Swedish picture. Thin, stark, haunted, with a look that crosses goth with S&M, she is fearsomely intelligent and emotionally stranded.Continue Reading on RogerEbert.com
The closing shots of Steven Spielberg's "War Horse" will stir emotions in every serious movie lover. The sky is painted with a deeply red-orange sunset. A lone rider is seen far away on the horizon. The rider approaches and dismounts. He embraces a woman and a man. They all embrace the horse's head. Music swells. This footage, with the rich colors and dramatic framing on what is either a soundstage or intended to look like one, could come directly from a John Ford Western.Continue Reading on RogerEbert.com
Paper is a beautiful new drawing and cataloging app for “free” that features a minimalist UI. With that said, the business model might not be to everyone’s liking. In app purchases: $2 for each new brush, which seems somewhat steep at first blush. However, this is such a well done app that it might just take off.Continue Reading on 9to5Mac.com