Birdman Upsets Boyhood, Winning Top Honors At PGA Awards

Last night, Birdman won the Producers Guild of America’s Darryl F. Zanuck Award for Outstanding Producer of Theatrical Motion Pictures, the biggest prize of the of the evening, scoring an upset over Boyhood, which had been favored to win. The last seven PGA winners have gone on to win the Oscar for Best Picture. https://gizmodo.com/why-superhero-movie-fans-need-to-see-birdman-1649456985…

The Biggest Surprise In Syfy’s 12 Monkeys Is The 12 Monkeys Themselves

How do you turn an existentially comfortless movie about a futile journey from a post-apocalyptic future into the present day into an ongoing TV series? One way is to make the time travel less futile. But another is to create a really scary villain — and with its second episode, 12 Monkeys stars doing just…

It’s Looking Like The Jetsons Movie May Actually Happen

It’s been in development purgatory for ages, but it looks like Warner Bros has finally bit the bullet on turning The Jetsons into an animated feature film. Deadline broke the news last night, reporting that Matt Lieberman – whose writing credits include Dr. Doolittle: Tail to the Chief, an animated Scooby-Doo movie that Warner Bros…

The Onion Lampoons Vaccination Exemption

“Regardless of what anyone else thinks, I fully stand behind my choices as a mom, including my choice not to vaccinate my son, because it is my fundamental right as a parent to decide which eradicated diseases come roaring back.” This would be even funnier, if the whole anti-vaxxer mess weren’t so genuinely awful. http://www.theonion.com/articles/i-dont-vaccinate-my-child-because-its-my-right-to,37839/…

Watch 60 of Cinema’s Greatest Duels in One Epic Sword-Fight Supercut

Everyone loves a good sword fight. This movie montage by film lover and video editor Clara Darko combines sixty of her favorite duels in cinema into one ridiculously fun, eminently watchable supercut. https://gizmodo.com/10-of-the-most-awesome-sword-fight-scenes-ever-5895092 https://gizmodo.com/something-weird-happens-when-three-master-fencers-battl-1570551641 I’ve watched this four times today, and it’s given me chills – and a big, goofy grin – every time. The…

What Ants Can Teach Us About Avoiding Traffic Jams

A physicist at the Indian Institute of Space Science and Technology has developed a model that could explain how ants handle traffic congestion better than humans. Above: Ants march across a fallen tree in Tanjung Puting National Park, West Kalimantan, Indonesia | Photo by Daniel Murdiyarso for Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) | CC…

How We Came To Recognize The Sun As The Center Of Our Solar System

The Sun-centered model of the solar system was first proposed more than a thousand years before Copernicus. What does our Solar System really look like? If we were to somehow fly ourselves above the plane where the Sun and the planets are, what would we see in the center of the Solar System? The answer…

Flexible Brain Implants Have Arrived

Stiff, steel microwires can damage tissue when implanted deep into patients’ brains. Engineers at MIT have found a way around this problem with a flexible brain-implant technology. Photo Credit: Bill Brooks | CC BY-SA 2.0 Brain implants have come a long way in the past few decades: surgeons routinely wire up the brains of patients…

The ‘Star Wars Tipping Point’ Is At Hand

Are you feeling old this morning? Here, allow xkcd to make you feel old. The passage of time. So predictable. Slow, sneaky, unrelenting, and indifferent, yes. But predictable. [xkcd]

Norm Breyfogle, The Indelible Batman Artist, Deserves Your Support

Norm Breyfogle was one of the artists who changed Batman forever. And now, he’s suffered a stroke that affected the left side of his body, including his drawing arm. His family is raising money to help pay his medical expenses, and Comic Book Resources explains why anyone who believes in heroes should help.

An Amazing Opportunity: Get The Very Best Of Charles de Lint For Free!

If you love urban fantasy, then you owe a stupendous debt to Charles de Lint, whether you’ve read him or not. His playful, majestic, clever stories helped shape the genre and were part of what made me fall in love with magical stories set in cities. And now you can get a collection of his…

Huffy Letter Written By Titanic Survivor Sells For $12,000

A Titanic survivor penned a furious letter to a friend weeks after the infamous sinking, but her outrage was not due to reasons you’d expect. It netted $11,875 in a recent auction, and its contents offer a singular window into the mind of the one percent, 1912 style. CNN reports: The remarks were written on…

Their Solemn Procession

Weary of fantasy stories set in medieval worlds, artist Noah Bradley started making concept art for his very own, more primal fantasy world. Now The Sin of Man is a world made up of more than a dozen striking paintings, with a bit of writing to go along with them. Bradley tells us that he’s…

Hero Teacher, Banned From Demoing Condom-Use, Demos ‘Sock-Use’ Instead

Mississippi boasts some of the highest rates of teen childbirth and young-adult HIV in the United States. It also prohibits “any demonstration of how condoms or other contraceptives are applied.” What’s a responsible sex educator to do? Why, demonstrate how to properly apply a sock, of course! As laudable as this teacher’s workaround is, we…

Disney Totally Changed Its Princesses 25 Years Ago — And No One Noticed

We’ve seen a whole host of changes to Disney’s pantheon of princesses over the years, but one of the biggest ones occurred with almost no fanfare more than 25 years ago — and it’s been hiding in plain sight ever since. In an interview, Disney songwriter Alan Menken explained the origin of what he calls…

Diederik Stapel Recounts How He Became One Of Science’s Biggest Frauds

In 2011, prominent social psychologist Diederik Stapel admitted to fabricating dozens of scientific studies. One year later, Stapel published Ontsporing (“Derailment”), a book about his rise and fall in the field of social psychology. Originally released in Dutch, Ontsporting has now been translated into English. https://gizmodo.com/psychologist-admits-to-faking-dozens-of-scientific-stud-5855733 Thanks to the efforts of Nick Brown, Stapel’s book…

There’s Something Horribly, Unspeakably Wrong With Picard’s Uniform

The old Star Trek: TNG joke is that even though its the 24th century, somehow Starfleet never discovered a cure for Picard’s baldness. But apparently, they also couldn’t even manage to give their highest-ranking officers uniforms that fit, as this amazing (and hilariously lengthy) supercut proves. [Via Fashionably Geek]

How Will Cities Change In The Dry, Dry Future?

Will cities in the future be re-designed to function “like sponges,” to cope with droughts that will only become more severe thanks to climate change? A recent NPR report takes Los Angeles as an example of how urban water infrastructure will have to change … moving away from aqueduct systems first used in ancient Rome…

We adored Lauren Beukes’ supernatural thriller Broken Monsters, and now it looks like it may become a TV show. Deadline is reporting that Additional Dialogue has acquired the book to adapt as a drama series.

The Most Disturbing Images Of ​Krampus, Santa’s Child-Eating Counterpart

You may be familiar with the legend of Krampus, the horned monstrosity who also visits children on Christmas Eve, but have you seen the holiday cards with Krampus binding kids in chains or beheld the satanic delights of the Krampus Run? If not, sit back and enjoy the demonic visual sleigh ride. The figure of…