The trailer for the upcoming Wonder Woman movie debuted at San Diego Comic Con. We first saw Gal Gadot as Wonder Woman in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, and now it’s time for her to kick ass and take names in her own film.
Chris Pine is Steve Trevor. The movie will be out in June of 2017. -via Uproxx
When you are deeply involved in video games, and then Pokémon GO comes along, you gotta go out and catch ‘em all! But maybe you aren’t as familiar with the “real world” as you should be. Try to remember that there aren’t charging stations everywhere in the real world wilderness. This is the latest comic from Kevin Erdmann at The Meerkat Guy. -via Geeks Are Sexy
Watching musician Andy McKee play is a delight for both eyes and ears, since his harp guitar sounds as wonderful as it looks, as you can see/hear when he plays Jeremy Soule's “Streets Of Whiterun” from the Skyrim soundtrack.
Andy's magical instrument was made by Greenfield Guitars in Montreal, Canada, and proprietor Michael Greenfield shared a bit about the instrument's composition:
My harp guitar has its own, proprietary body shape and many unique features. While inspired by the early 20th century harp guitars, this is truly a contemporary instrument incorporating all of the modern physics and design features found on all of my guitars. …My harp guitar is made of a laminated rim set, with laminated linings and a system of aerospace composite carbon fibre trusses and buttresses. This makes for an extremely rigid and stable skeletal structure. The soundboard is lattice braced. The Laskin style extended arm rest is included, as is a mini-rib rest on the rear of the pointed section of the upper bout.
-Via Laughing Squid
(Photo: David Ngo)
For the San Diego Comic Con, the famous cosplayer Leeanne Vamp dressed as Dark Helmet, the Darth Vader analog from the Mel Brooks parody film Spaceballs. I doubt she'll find the suit as suffocating as Rick Moranis did.
In the Star Trek universe, the Prime Directive prohibits Starfleet personnel from interfering with the internal development of alien civilizations. They violate the directive over and over, but even worse, they interfere constantly with the space-time continuum. You can’t really blame the Enterprise crew, or even the writers, because time travel makes for wonderful stories. But it does mess up the continuity of several TV series and a dozen feature films. The Deep Space Nine episode “Trials And Tribble-Ations” even had the DS9 crew interacting with the characters in the 1960s series!
Plenty of Trek episodes dealt with time travel before DS9, but “Trials And Tribble-Ations” is the first to show characters traveling back to the events of a previous series; in a way, it serves as a prototype for the direction the new movie franchise would take, dipping in to the nostalgia of the original series while still maintaining its own voice. The plot here is largely an excuse to let the crew of DS9 interact with some of their “heroes,” as the episode uses footage from the classic original-series entry “The Trouble With Tribbles” intermixed with matching footage from the present. The effect is hugely entertaining, allowing the show to both mock and pay homage to the flaws and wonders of its predecessor. As a bonus, “Trials” also introduces the Department Of Temporal Investigations, a group dedicated to maintaining the internal logic of history. They mostly serve as a framing story, but the existence of the department is a helpful reminder that time travel and the shenanigans that result from it are an integral part of the franchise.
The A.V. Club counts 14 other instances that time travel threw the Star Trek universe off-kilter. They always manage to “set things right” by the end, but who knows what changes they made in their timeline that the characters will never realize?
(Image credit: Nick Wanserski)
Klingons are one of the most barbaric and less technologically advanced races in the Star Trek universe, and they typically prefer to solve problems with combat actions rather than words.
So how did a race who spends too much time yelling, fighting and feuding and not nearly enough time studying, experimenting or inventing manage to create a warp drive?
According to this comic from Sheldon Comics they got it from that one Klingon who was super into science, the one who has a pencil tucked behind his ear instead of a knife.
-Via Geeks Are Sexy
Players always assume they're the hero when playing a video game, unless the box says otherwise, but they can never really tell what the game designers actually had in mind.
I mean, what if Dr. Robotnik was trying to save the defenseless animals from that hyperactive hedgehog, and Bowser was trying to convert the Mushroom Kingdom into a Democratic union?
Dorkly did an amazing job of making gamers wonder- which other video game "heros" have we been wrong to believe in all these years? Personally, I've always thought there was something not quite right about that Paperboy...
-Via Dorkly
Spirited Away is Japan's highest grossing film of all time, and even though the Japanese mythology themes aren't fully understood by most non-Japanese viewers the film is still a delight to watch.
But there's one scene even Japanese audiences wondered about- the scene where Chihiro's parents suddenly become pigs.
It was fairly easy to tell the scene was commenting on gluttony and/or greed, but Twitter user @0910noncha wanted to know for sure so she messaged Studio Ghibli- and they answered.
The studio sent her a two-page long reply, explaining that the pig scene is meant to represent “the greed that took place during the Japanese recession of the 80s”:
The letter also explained that the transformation was irreversible in order to reflect the nature of greed in the real world. The letter continued by saying that Chihiro knew that none of the pigs in the pen were her parents because her mindset had changed following her experiences in the underworld.
-Via Bored Panda
Which adjectives come to mind when you think of a live action Futurama fan film?
If you said campy, cartoony and a little bit creepy then you've won first prize! So whaddya win?
A chance to watch the trailer for an amazing looking Futurama fan film by Cinema Relics called Fan-O-Rama!
Is it just me or does Dr. Farnsworth look like an ancient ninja turtle?
-Via io9
It has become abundantly clear the Chinese are obsessed with Iron Man, and not just because his armor is red and gold in color just like their flag.
They're also obsessed with panda bears, which they thankfully began to cherish and protect before they went extinct, and now they've brought both obsessions together in one amazing statue.
This giant Iron Panda statue was created by Chinese artist Bi Heng, measures nearly thirty feet tall and must weigh a ton considering normal sized pandas definitely aren't lightweights.
The statue hangs around Shenyang, where people cherish this massive testament to mammalian ingenuity, and if the world is ever in trouble Iron Panda will be there to preserve balance with a blast of his Yin-Yang palm laser.
-Via design you trust
The Hulk is one of the most predictable characters in the Marvel Universe, because his battles almost always involve smashing or sheer resilience, but he's also a bit of a head case too.
And whether he's locked in a fit of rage, struggling with his identity crisis or trying to figure out why his friends are fighting with him The Hulk definitely isn't all there mentally.
Over the years the Jade Giant has made some downright bizarre decisions, such as hooking up with his first cousin She-Hulk, playing baseball while wearing blackface, and beating up Santa Claus in front of a bunch of kids.
Beatin' on Thor is one thing, but you'd better leave Santa Claus alone you big green/gray brute!
Michael Miller got his flugelhorn and Bryce Hayashi got his trumpet and they journeyed to the home of John Williams, the composer of the music of Star Wars. Standing outside his home, they played the title theme for the franchise.
It was a risky move. Williams could have taken offense at having his private life invaded by fans. But he was instead delighted at their performance. He came out of his house to greet them.
-via Uproxx
Female body armor seems to be made with sex appeal in mind rather than protection, at least according to many pop culture franchises, and up until the recent assimilation of geek culture that was fine.
But now people are declaring this sexy armor scandalous and demanding an explanation, so DeviantARTist Nebezial took a stab at explaining how it works with this strip. Seems legit to me!
-Via Geeks Are Sexy
(I Will Become the Pirate King t-shirt on sale at the NeatoShop)
I watch more anime than is medically advisable and, every few months, make viewing recommendations and ask for yours. Let's do it again!
Of all the new series I've tried this season, the most striking is Orange, a romance with a tragic ambiance. Naho, a high school student, recieves a mysterious letter. It contains instructions from herself, written 10 years into the future. A crisis is coming--one that will impact herself and her friends forever. She can change the future.
Or can she? It seems simple enough, but Naho finds that altering the present isn't easy. She has less control over the wellbeing of her friends than she thinks.
In Planetarian, it has been 30 years since the collapse of civilization in some mysterious apocalyptic event. Kuzuya, a scavenger, explores the remains of an abandoned shopping mall. He's looking for food and other essential supplies. But what he finds instead is Yumeni, an android girl who works at the planetarium.
She doesn't understand why no one comes to her facility anymore or that the projector doesn't work. But her naive and carefree manner charms Kuzuya, who decides to repair the projector so that they can again see the stars circling over a ravaged Earth.
(Photo: Steve Jurvetson)
When Star Trek Beyond comes out on Friday, watch carefully and you'll see Jeff Bezos in the background. The founder of Amazon.com introduced us to the future of retail and is now participating in the future in a small role in the latest Star Trek movie. The Associated Press quotes director Justin Lin about the experience:
"He was awesome," said Lin. "It was like a president was visiting, you know? He had a big entourage! But it didn't matter because he was so into it. He had to wait around all day because it was one day we were shooting, like, three different scenes and, it was also credit to Jeff because ... he just nailed it every time."
Bezos has spoken in interviews of his passion for Star Trek and said his childhood dreams of space led him to found his private space travel company, named Blue Origin.
IMDb already lists Bezos in the film as a "Starfleet Official."
-via io9
