The Best Undercover Spy Is: The Manchurian Candidate‘s Mrs. Iselin

If you’ve seen a brainwashed secret agent in fiction recently, it probably owes a lot to The Manchurian Candidate, the Academy Award-winning 1962 film based on the novel by Richard Condon. As great as the film is, the greatest character in it is Angela Lansbury as Eleanor Iselin. For those of us who grew up…

Watch the First Behind-the-Scenes Footage of the New James Bond Movie 

Later this year, the 24th James Bond move, called Spectre, will hit the screens. In the meantime, though, you’ll have to make do with watching this first behind-the-scenes footage from the new movie. https://gizmodo.com/the-next-james-bond-movie-is-called-spectre-and-is-out-1666618570 While co-stars Léa Seydoux and Dave Bautista are interviewed, a moody Daniel Craig scuttles around the Austrian mountains, firing guns and…

Spider-Man Still Doesn’t Need To Be Another White Guy

With the announcement that Spider-Man will be in Civil War and other Marvel movies, we’re once again in the middle of recasting Spider-man — and once again we don’t think it should be another white guy. We couldn’t possibly say it better than Marc Bernardin said it back in 2010. Let’s give Donald Glover, or…

First Official Footage From Spectre Has James Bond Fighting In the Alps

The 24th James Bond film’s first official behind-the-scenes footage has just been tweeted by the official account. And it looks like we’ll be getting the giant snow chase scene that is required of any Bond film that visits the Alps. There are cars on fire, gondolas, a modern building that looks like some sort of…

Gorgeous BAFTA Posters Hide Plot Twists In the Shadows

For its awards held over the weekend, the BAFTAs commissioned posters for each of the best film nominees. In each one, designed by artist Malika Favre, character and plot development is hidden in the shadows. Above is part of the Birdman poster from the “Big Reveal” campaign. The full one is below. Here are Birdman,…

Watch The Wonderfully Odd Trailer For Post-Apocalyptic Romance Crumbs

Here’s hoping Crumbs, a scifi romance shot in an Ethiopian ghost town by Spanish writer-director Miguel Llanso, gets wider exposure after its Rotterdam Film Festival debut last week. Check out the trailer; there’s a UFO, a haunted bowling alley, a crazy Santa Claus, and space junk. For starters. The Hollywood Reporter review gave Crumbs some…

First Trailer For Guy Ritchie’s Man From UNCLE Is Stylish As Hell

As you might have expected, when Guy Ritchie takes on the iconic 1960s spy-fi series, The Man from U.N.C.L.E., the result is cool-looking, self-mocking, and full of funny action. At least, this first trailer makes the U.N.C.L.E. movie look like a total blast. In this new version of U.N.C.L.E., Henry Cavill (aka Superman) is Napoleon…

This Vintage Science Fiction Magazine Art Is Worth Geeking Out Over

We’ve drooled over vintage pulp science fiction art from the likes of Virgil Finlay, Frank R. Paul, and Ed Emshwiller before. But this mostly black and white interior artwork, scanned and posted to Flickr by user Frederick Barr, is just astonishing. https://gizmodo.com/this-gallery-proves-frank-r-paul-still-rules-science-f-5980171 https://gizmodo.com/the-cover-artist-who-combined-sense-of-humor-and-sen-1633721159 https://gizmodo.com/the-most-vibrant-pulp-science-fiction-art-youll-see-th-1510132620 https://gizmodo.com/how-pulp-science-fiction-cover-art-got-its-sense-of-won-5832671 Frederick Barr, who posts on Flickr as Modern Fred, has…

Someone Is Writing The Ultimate Generic Dystopian YA Novel On Twitter

We love young adult science fiction, but even we have to admit that sometimes, it can feel like dystopian novels are following a bit script. The new Twitter account @DystopianYA is poking a bit of fun at some of the more common conventions of the genre. Writer and comedian Dana Schwartz is behind the @DystopianYA…

Physics Valentines (And Anti-Valentines), For Those You Love (And Hate)

The staff of symmetry has created a fun set of physics-themed Valentines to share with the people you love. And because ours is a universe that contains both matter and antimatter, they’ve created a complementary set of anti-Valentines, for the people you love to hate. My favorite Valentine/anti-Valentine pair appears above. The cards are designed…

That Time A Bankrupt Businessman Declared Himself Emperor Of America

For many years, Joshua Norton was a successful 19th-century businessman. Then he lost his entire fortune trying to take over San Francisco’s rice market. Here’s the story of how his fortunes flipped around one final time and made him Emperor of America. In response to this call for your take on history’s most fascinating figures,…

How many licks does it take to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop? According to Jinzi Huang, co-author of a recently published study that examines how “hard candy bodies dissolve in laminar high-speed water flows,” approximately 2,500.

NASA Spots A Huge Gash Across The Surface Of The Sun

Scientists working at the Solar Dynamics Observatory have spotted a massive solar filament that stretches across a good portion of the sun’s visible surface. It’s about 533,000 miles long (857,780 km) – equivalent to 67 Earths lined up in a row. NASA says this solar filament — one of the longest ever recorded — is…

Finch Learns A Very Different Way To Hack Reality On Person Of Interest

Here’s the funniest scene from last night’s Person of Interest, in which Harold Finch gets a crash course in swaying a jury from the inside. It’s a very different kind of hacking than Finch is used to, and it requires him to be sort of a blowhard. But it’s all part of an episode that…

Peter Dinklage May Or May Not Being Playing A Leprechaun In New Comedy

Peter Dinklage is one of those actors whose roles of ranged from the sublime (Game of Thrones, The Station Agent) to the bizarre (Underdog), and one of his upcoming projects sounds pretty crazy. In the comedy film O’Lucky Day, Dinklage is set to play a con man who may be a Leprechaun. Deadline is reporting…

Attend A Rave At Bangkok’s Outrageous Ghost-Themed Shopping Mall

Mansion 7 is a ghost-themed mall in Bangkok. It contains a haunted house called the Dark Mansion, which is supposedly haunted by the owner’s daughter and all the black-magic beasties he unleashed trying to raise her from the dead. And it hosts insane-looking parties. We wanna go! Also contained therein: a “neglected garden;” “a large…

The Photographic History Of Robots As Restaurant Employees

We may think of robotic waitstaff as something that belongs to the future, but the truth is that robots have been serving people at restaurants since the 1980s. How well have these robot servers worked out? Here is a brief history of robot waiters over the last 30 years. Tanbo R-1 and Tambo R-2, two…

How To: Win Impressively At Gameshows Using Simple Maths

Here’s a fun clip from BBC Two’s collegiate quiz show University Challenge. Host Jeremy Paxman asks the contestants what day of the week it will be 100 days after Monday. A player named Binnie responds quickly: “Wednesday.” Paxman’s face contorts. “How did you know that?” he asks, astonished. “Modular arithmetic,” Binnie replies, matter-of-factly. What’s wonderful…

How The BBC Fooled Viewers Into Thinking Spaghetti Grows On Trees

Who knew the BBC had this much of a sense of humor? Here is a fantastic clip broadcast on April Fool’s Day in 1957, which shows the “traditional spaghetti harvest” and educates its viewers on dangers like the spaghetti weevil. I am a relatively credulous person. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve believed…

The Creator Of The IT Crowd Is Co-Writing A Science Fiction Sitcom

This could be amazing. Graham Linehan, creator of The IT Crowd, is co-creating a sitcom called The Cloud, with Adam Buxton, who was one half of The Adam and Joe Show with Joe Cornish. It takes place on a space station that’s archiving all of the junk on your phone and other devices. Buxton will…