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These freaky talking heads will be in your nightmares tonight

These freakish heads, little more than disembodied mouths, were created for a poster for a festival—but then designers Dvein decided to breath life into their creations, animating and adding sounds from the event. Is this really how artists envisage their audiences and critics? Here are the original posters and some images from the event. Dvein…

The New Senate USA FREEDOM Act: A Step Towards Surveillance Reform?

Yesterday, Senator Patrick Leahy introduced a revised version of his USA FREEDOM legislation, the USA FREEDOM Act of 2014, which focuses on telephone record collection and FISA Court reform. While this bill is not a comprehensive solution to overbroad and unconstitutional surveillance, it is a strong first step. EFF urges Congress to support passage of…

Amazon Pleads With Hachette to Cut E-Book Prices

In the ongoing spat between Amazon and Hachette over pricing, Amazon has now called for Hachette to simply cut its e-book prices—a move which, it claims, will lower consumer prices on digital titles and provide writers with a larger paycheck at the same time. https://gizmodo.com/when-amazon-plays-dirty-you-lose-1580596374 In a blog post published yesterday, the Amazon Books Team…

A New Version of Windows Phone 8.1 Is Coming and It’s Bringing Folders

It wasn’t long ago that we got Windows Phone 8.1, which introduced Cortana and all kinds of other features that helped finally make Windows Phone good enough. Now another WP update is on the way, and it comes bearing folders. With the snappily-named Windows Phone 8.1 Update 1, users will get the ability to stack…

Episode VIII won’t be out until 2017, so when asked about it, writer director Rian Johnson made the following joke: “With these films, I am trying to harken back to the original Star Wars… Christmas special. We do have Jefferson Starship.” Funny. But painful. [Filmspotting via Sci Fi Now]

First Outlander Clip Showcases Its Very Capable Female Lead

You may have noticed that we’re very excited about Outlander, Starz’s adaptation of Diana Gabaldon’s time-travel series. It’s shaping up to be the stand-out summer premiere, and this clip does nothing but reinforce that feeling. https://gizmodo.com/we-are-so-ready-for-the-kilt-to-drop-on-ron-d-moores-o-1611481234 The previous trailers have been way more focused on the time-travel, epic battles, and love story elements of this…

This skier must be a wizard or use anti-gravity skis

This guy’s name is Adam Delorme, although I will just go ahead and call him Darth Delorme. Or His Wizardness Lord Delorme of Snow. He can go by either name. Like the rest of the skiers in the documentary Less, his skiing seems more like an act of magic than actual skiing. At one point…

Marvel at Our Favorite TV Shows and Movies As Children’s Books

If you’re in the Los Angeles after this Friday, definitely stop by Gallery 1988 (East) for Storytime, a show of Joey Spiotto’s work. We would read all of these to any children we know. We’ve covered Spiotto’s work before, in the form of his pop culture albums, but we’re really excited for his latest work:…

Giant goliath fish punks a fisherman and then steals his fish and gun

This goliath grouper sure isn’t happy about sharing the waters with us humans. It grumpily swims over to the man spearfishing, intimidates him with a little head butt and then steals the fish he caught. Even worse, he took the guy’s gun for a little joy ride. It’s like stealing someone’s date right in front…

Original Brazil Trailer Promises A Charming Film About “Taking a Stand”

After Terry Gilliam’s Brazil was butchered for American audiences, the studio promoted it with this trailer — which actually presents the film pretty accurately. Except for the trailer voiceover, which somehow makes the whole thing sound terribly charming. The voiceover says, in part, “Do you wake from your finest fantasy, only to return to your…

Those Siberian holes might as well be the eye sockets of giant monsters

When I saw its thumbnail I thought this was an aerial photo of someone descending into one of those bloody Siberian holes at sunset. Then I zoomed in and saw it was a monster appearing throught the ice, created by concept designer Pierre-Etienne Travers. Which is cool because the rest of his artwork is phenomenal.…

Behold The Official Deadpool Movie Test Footage In Hi-Res Here!

Authentic! Approved! Non-bootlegged! If you didn’t get to see the test footage of a Ryan Reynolds-voiced, potentially all-CG version of the Merc with a Mouth earlier this week — or even if you did, and want to see it the way it ought to be seen — watch it here, now. I say again: It’s…

A Charming Alphabet Series Explores the ABCs of Rocket Science

NASA is producing an alphabet book of rocket science to unravel the acronym soup surrounding the Orion multipurpose crew vehicle project. The result is a fantastic bit of retro-futuristic art and a perfect reading companion for budding geeks. NASA is developing a new multi-purpose crew vehicle, the Orion. The testing is ticking along at a…

Martha Stewart Uses Her Drone to Shoot Her 153-Acre Farm, Just Like Us

A few weeks ago, Martha Stewart breezily tweeted about “#the possibilities and opportunities” that quadcopters provide, inferring that she indeed possessed one of these new-fangled flying machines. But what is she doing with it? Thanks to an op-ed she penned for Time, now we know. Stewart has at least two and possibly three drones at…

A Dragonriders Of Pern Movie May Finally Happen!

Warner Bros. has optioned Dragonriders Of Pern. With The Dark Knight series done, Harry Potter over, and The Hobbit winding down, it’s only natural for Warner Bros. to be searching for the next big franchise. Cross every single finger you have for this one, people. Warner Bros. has a proven track record with book-to-film adaptations,…

Fred Gambino’s Cosmic Artworks Will Restore Your Sense Of Wonder

You’ve probably seen Fred Gambino’s artwork on the covers of Isaac Asimov books, in movies like Jimmy Neutron, Boy Genius and Ant Bully. But now, a new book showcases tons of his artwork — including his personal multimedia project Dark Shepherd — and we’ve got an exclusive gallery. Here’s the official description of Dark Shepherd:…

OKCupid’s Experiments Are Like a 2014 Version of This Old Romcom

OKCupid announced yesterday it had been messing with us —far more intrusively than Facebook had been . Among other things, the online dating site deliberately told some users they were great matches when they were in fact awful matches and vice versa. The whole scenario recalled for me, of all things, a 1998 romcom about…

Could This New Competition Replace The Turing Test?

Nuance Communications has announced a new annual competition to develop artificially intelligent agents capable of solving the “Winograd Schema Challenge”, a possible alternative to the Turing Test — and one that’s intended to provide a more accurate measure of genuine machine intelligence. Indeed, the recent proclamation that the “Eugene Goostman” chatbot had passed the Turing…

Dire Straits Sold Tons of CDs Because They Were Pimping the New Format

“Money For Nothing” by Dire Straits is a song remembered for many things: a dirty hook to kick things off; background vocals by Sting; a cool, early-VR-style video; and the inevitable Weird Al parody. It was a successful single on Brothers in Arms, a successful album that was one of the first major hits on…

Someone Needs To Make All These Fake Movies For Real

Whether tapping into the Hulk’s sensitive side or taking the epic battle of Superman and Batman to the venue that it was always meant to end in (small claims court), the fact that these movies don’t really exist will never stop making us sad. Fortunately, we’ve at least got the posters. Top image: The Incredible…