Neill Blomkamp’s Elysium is real, and located in Malibu

Not all of Neill Blomkamp’s movie Elysium was green screen. Both the dystopian Earth and the beautiful space habitat Elysium were shot in physical locations. And this FX breakdown video shows where the richest of the planet live: California! Blomkamp filmed Earth in one of Mexico’s biggest landfills, while Elysium was shot in Malibu, California.…

Vintage NASA animations make us long for a fully funded space program

From NASA’s 1977 Aeronautics and Space Report comes this retro-tastic animation of the Agency’s logo in spiral. It’s one of a few old-school logo-animations from the Agency that have been making their way around the internet this week. WE WANT MORE.

Macrophotographs of insects to melt your face

Whether it’s the claws of a carnivorous caterpillar or the clashing mandibles of warring ants, the most fascinating insect-parts are often the smallest – and we love getting a good look. Macrophotography is one of the best ways to do just that, and the USGS Bee Inventory and Monitoring Lab‘s collection offers some of the…

A map of the world’s happiest (and least happiest) countries

The UN-sponsored World Happiness Report 2013 has just been released — a project that determined a country’s level of happiness by using a number of social and economic indicators taken from 2010 to 2012. This map provides a quick overview of the results. Above image: Max Fisher/The Washington Post. To get these results, the researchers…

Will toy companies keep us from ever getting a superheroine movie?

Welcome to Postal Apocalypse, the only mail column on the internet written by a fake mailman from the future (that I know of)! Today we’re discussing how toys affect movies — or prevent them, why DC seems determined to piss off everybody, and the best songs to sing around your apocalyptic campfire (besides “Every Rose…

The Monty Python and the Holy Grail trailer recut into a serious flim

What if the Monty Python gang made a super serious Holy Grail movie? It would probably look a lot like this. Stéphane Bouley recut the 1975 Monty Python movie into something a little more grim, and it actually works. But now all we want to do is watch Monty Python movies for the rest of…

Our universe may contain TARDIS-like regions of spacetime

Doctor Who’s TARDIS is unique in that it appears larger on the inside than it does from the outside. According to scientists from the University of Helsinki, our universe may exhibit similar properties, a phenomenon they’re dubbing Tardis spacetime. It’s a new theory that could solve a longstanding mystery in cosmology. Top image courtesy Rob…

This first look at Godzilla will set your kaiju-loving heart at ease

Kaijucast spotted a poster (not above, after the jump) of the star of Gareth Edwards’ Godzilla at the Licensing Expo in Brazil. Looks good to us. That’s because it actually looks like Godzilla, which, as we know from experience, isn’t a given in American-made Godzilla films. This poster isn’t official or anything, but folks on…

A translucent snail has been found in one of the world’s deepest caves

Scientists working in the Lukina Jama–Trojama cave in Croatia — one of the 20 deepest cave systems in the world — have unearthed a completely new species of snail that’s adorned with a beautifully shaped, dome-like translucent shell. Called Zospeum tholussum, the fragile snail was found nearly a kilometer (3,215 feet) below the surface in…

Just what the hell is going on with Terminator 5?

Schwarzenegger is on board, but he might not be the only original Terminator star — or the only major action star — to appear. The first set photos from Matt Smith’s final Doctor Who story reveal a bewigged Time Lord. Chris Hemsworth discusses his Avengers and Snow White sequel plans. Plus tons of promos! Spoilers…

Watch the Visual Effects Reel Behind Pacific Rim’s Awesome Prologue

If you watched Pacific Rim, you’d know how incredible the giant mechs looked and how unforgettably beautiful the prologue that provided the backstory for the movie was. And though ILM did most of the VFX in the film, Guillermo del Toro’s Mirada studio was the team responsible for the effects in the prologue. Here’s how…

Jurassic Park IV renamed Jurassic World, and it’s coming in June 2015

As if summer 2015 wasn’t already looking overloaded with huge movies, now there’s one more. The fourth Jurassic Park movie, now titled Jurassic World, is coming out June 12, 2015. Colin Trevorrow (Safety Not Guaranteed) is officially directing from a script he co-wrote with Safety co-writer Derek Connolly.

One hidden cave city held the last of our hope

The radiation storms wrecked the land, but a few of us had survived, protected by the thick, rocky walls of our cavern. At last the danger was over. We began our new lives by knocking out one wall of the city, and letting the world back in. Phil Wade is a concept artist in California.…

Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine almost showed up in Raimi’s first Spider-Man

When the current superhero movie boom was in its infancy, we could have been teased with the crossover to end all crossovers. Hugh Jackman says he almost did a brief cameo in the first Spider-Man movie as Wolverine — but it fell through because he didn’t have the right costume. Top image: Gemelli22 on Deviant…

Eye-Popping Video: The Making of Pacific Rim‘s Opening Sequence

This VFX reel might make you appreciate Pacific Rim all over again. Guillermo del Toro’s own VFX house, Mirada, created the opening sequence (as we showed you a while ago) and now here’s a video showing just how it was done. https://gizmodo.com/an-exclusive-look-behind-the-scenes-of-pacific-rim-s-pr-870432631

First glimpse of American Horror Story cast in their witchy new roles

We’ve seen spooky teaser after spooky teaser for American Horror Story Coven, but no actual footage of the new and returning cast in their new roles. Well, wait no more: Jessica Lange is back and looking fierce as all hell in flanked by Kathy Bates and Angela Bassett. Wow. The new season is set in…

The Stockdale Paradox reveals why hope is the grimmest emotion

Though hope is supposed to be this uplifting feeling, it’s often experienced as an irritant or a buzzkill. And nihilism is kind of, well, charming and sexy. Like young Magneto in X-Men First Class. The Stockdale Paradox explains why that might be. It turns out that there are really two kinds of hope. There’s the…

Dream Team. Robert Zemeckis directing a film version of Patrick Ness’ The Knife of Never Letting Go, with a screenplay by Charlie Kaufman? Yes please.

No, skipping breakfast will not cause you to gain weight

Breakfast is the most important meal of the day, we are often told, mostly because it helps us keep off the excess weight. But a new meta-analysis now shows that the science doesn’t actually back up this claim. Conventional wisdom suggests that skipping breakfast will make us hungrier throughout the day, thereby causing us to…

The wildest apocalypse of the year hits in This Week’s Comics

Are you reading East of West? Jonathan Hickman’s new scifi/Western Image series starring the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, where Death is the hero and he’s hunting down the U.S. president? No? Well, the first trade comes out on September 11th, so you better get on that. Then there’s more DC villains, more Marvel Infinity,…