MetaFilter posts tagged with mlyt and scifi

H+

zarq — Wed, 19 Dec 2012 11:00:17 -0800

This past August, producer Bryan Singer (The Usual Suspects, X-Men) launched a new digital series: H+. The premise: in the near future, 33% of humanity has retired their smartphones, tablets and computers in favor of an implanted computer system, H+, which connects them directly to the internet 24/7. The story begins as a computer virus attacks the implants, killing billions. In intersecting storylines across four continents (told in part through flashbacks,) the series then unravels what happened, who caused it and why. In the storyline, the H+ System was developed by Nano Teoranta, which was originally a medical device company. H+ has financial backing from Warner Bros (reportedly $2 million USD,) was shot in Santiago, Chile and is almost done airing its first season. The first season of the series takes place over 48 episodes lasting between four and eight minutes, for a total running time of 255 minutes. Though Warner Digital Distribution plans to release the series on a weekly basis, like any regular series, the episodes are meant to be viewed differently than anything on TV. "We set out to write a nonlinear story," explains series co-writer and co-creator John Cabrera. "The big question for this disjointed story was whether there were ways to view it that felt good. At a certain point we started to realize that might be something we put into the hands of the audience." The fragmented nature of the short episodes means viewers are encouraged to mix and match to create episodic playlists that may better illuminate the show's intricate, ongoing mysteries. Instead of making watching a passive experience, being online encourages interaction.
New episodes premiere Wednesdays at 12pm PST. The series is broken up into ‘chapter’ playlists of 20-30 minutes each: Chapter 1: The Beginnings (Also see a new annotated playlist for Chapter 1) Chapter 2: Foreign Bodies Chapter 3: Connections Chapter 4: Malfunctions Chapter 5: New Visions Chapter 6: Convergences Chapter 7: Residual Effects Cast Interviews and Behind the Scenes Footage YouTube Channel / Official Site / Facebook (requires login) / Wikipedia (Includes cast list)

"To find out more, take a voyage down to your public library. It's all in books!"

zarq — Wed, 04 Apr 2012 21:51:20 -0800

Before Quantum Leap, there was a another scifi tv show where two time traveling Voyagers tried to put right what once went wrong….. 30 years ago, Voyagers! ran on NBC during the 1982-1983 season. Running in a time slot against 60 Minutes, it managed a respectable 17 share in the Neilsen ratings, but was cancelled after just 20 episodes had been produced. The show's two main characters were Phineas Bogg -- history-correcting time traveler who had lost his guidebook -- played by Jon-Erik Hexum (in his very first role,) and Jeffrey Jones (Meeno Peluce -- veteran child actor and half-brother of Soleil Moon "Punky Brewster" Frye,) a history-loving orphan along for the ride. They traveled through time by use of a hand-held device called an Omni. ...the awesome pocket-watch sized Omni [w]as one of the coolest time travel devices ever. It had a miniature scale model of the earth inside, and red and green lights that would tell you if time was "flowing normally" or if it had been disturbed. You would spin the dials and set it (and forget it) and travel back to any time you wanted, which usually just happened to involve temporal anomalies involving famous people.
Wikipedia: Voyager! Episode Guide. All 20 are on YouTube: 1) Voyagers: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 2) Created Equal: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 3) Bully and Billy: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 4) Agents of Satan: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 5) Worlds Apart: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 6) Cleo and the Babe: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 7) The Day the Rebs Took Lincoln: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 8) Old Hickory and the Pirate: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 9) The Travels of Marco Polo... and Friends: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 10) An Arrow Pointing East: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 11) Merry Christmas, Bogg: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 12) Buffalo Bill & Annie Play the Palace: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 13) The Trial of Phineas Bogg: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 14) Sneak Attack: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 15) Voyagers of the Titanic: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 16) Pursuit: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 17) Destiny's Choice: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 18) All Fall Down: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 19) Barriers of Sound: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 20) Jack's Back: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 Voyager's Guidebook is a wonderfully comprehensive fan site dedicated to the show. Check out the page on The Omni. An extensive interview with Meeno Peluce about his time on the show has been posted by author Jeff Pearlman. Sadly, Jon-Erik Hexum passed away in 1984. During a delay in filming on his new show Cover Up, Hexum was playing around with a handgun loaded with blanks that he had been using during filming. As a joke, he removed all but one of the blanks in his gun, spun the cylinder, and fired it at his own head -- imitating a game of Russian Roulette. The paper wadding in the blank shot out of the gun at tremendous speed, fracturing his skull and forcing fragments of bone into his brain, causing massive hemorrhaging. He died within days of the accident. Wikipedia notes that his heart, kidneys, skin and corneas were donated and given to patients in need. At the end of the episode of Cover Up where they announce that his character has been killed in action, a memoriam written by Glen Larson appeared onscreen: "They say when a star dies, its light continues to shine across the universe for milleniums. Jon-Erik Hexum died in October of this year, but his light will continue to brighten our lives forever...and ever." E! devoted a show to Hexum's career and death in 1998. Mysteries and Scandals: The Death Of Jon-Erik Hexum includes interview footage with a grown-up Peluce. Voyager from the Unknown was a Voyagers! movie that ran on NBC after Hexum's death. A mashup of the pilot and several other episodes, it can be seen in its entirety here: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 So whatever happened to little Meeno Peluce? He ended his career in front of the camera in 2001 and now works behind one as a professional photographer. But in the late 90's, the little boy who played a history expert on Voyagers! taught history at Hollywood High School.

“Digitize Her!”

zarq — Sun, 01 Apr 2012 08:37:05 -0800

Earth, 2147. The legacy of the Metal Wars, where man fought machines—and machines won. Bio-Dreads — monstrous creations that hunt down human survivors... and digitize them!
In 1987, before he created Babylon 5, J. Michael Straczynski was a writer for Captain Power and the Soldiers of the Future, a live-action sci-fi show for kids. 24 episodes were produced. Straczynski wrote or co-wrote 14 of them, including multi-episode plot arcs. A line of interactive toys brought the battle into kids’ living rooms, and Captain Power was also one of the very first shows on television to feature computer animation in every episode. But in an attempt to appeal to both children and the adults who watched with them, the campy show included some concepts and scenes critics deemed too violent for children and lasted only a single season in syndication. The full run of the show has now been uploaded to Youtube. Alternate Playlist. These videos are of a lower quality, but are not broken into parts. * Fan Site. * 20th Anniversary Site * More on the toy line at Parry Game Preserve

2061

zarq — Wed, 28 Dec 2011 19:58:52 -0800

On November 22, 2011, TEDxBrussels held an all day event whose theme was: "A Day in the Deep Future." Speakers were asked to try and contemplate what life will be like for mankind in 50 years. Overview. The Talks: (Playlist) * Paddy Ashdown (British politician and diplomat): Why the world will never be the same & what we should do about it * Eileen Bartholomew (Senior Director Life Sciences at X PRIZE Foundation): The XPrize Foundation of 2061 * John Bohannon (Dancer, biologist and journalist): Dance Your PhD * Lorenz Bogaert (Online media entrepreneur): The European Dream * David Brin (Astrophysicist and science fiction author): Target 2061: Reinventing Civilization Across Half a Century * Kushal Chakrabarti (Founder of Vittana, turning global education into opportunity): Literacy is not enough * Leila Janah (Founder of Samasource, giving digital opportunity to impoverished people): The microwork revolution * Peter Cochrane (Futurologist, researcher and engineer): Not HAL9000 * David Cuartielles (Microchip inventor, co-founder of Arduino): Open Source Hardware * David Ewing Duncan (Journalist, Author, Medical Technologist): When I'm 164 * Sebastien de Halleux (Belgian engineer, Co-Founder of Playfish): Games the Next Billion will play * Alain De Taeye (Co-founder of Tele Atlas): Five Minutes into the Future * David Deutsch (Quantum Physicist): The Unknowable & how to prepare for it * Hasan Elahi (Interdisciplinary media activist, privacy artist): Hiding in Plain Sight * Peter Fenwick (Neuropsychiatrist): The Art of Dying Well * Carl Flink and Edward Oroyan (Choreographers and Artists): Black Label Movement - Zero Gravity Dance * Ken Haase (Engineer-scientist-philosopher): The Singularity is Here * Kaliya Hamlin (Identity Researcher): Identity, the Contexts of the Future * Charles Hazlewood (Conductor and advocate for access to orchestral music): Music of the Future * Andrew Hessel (Biologist and Author): Making Worlds * Peter Hinssen (Thought leader, the impact of technology on society): The Tiger and the Rock * Mikko H. Hypponen (Chief research officer at F-Secure Corporation in Finland): Defending the Net * Julie Meyer (Founder and CEO of Ariadne Capital, Founder - Entrepreneur Country, Managing Partner - Ariadne Capital Entrepreneurs Fund [ACE]): Entrepreneurs 2061 * Marc Millis (NASA deep space expert): Space Flight Predictions: After AI & Transhumanism * Raul Rojas (Specialist in artificial neural networks) Cars that Think * Rudy Rucker (Founder of the cyberpunk literary movement): Beyond Machines: The Year 3000 * Henrik Scharfe (Director at the Center for Computer-mediated Epistemology): Geminoid-DK * John Shirley (American fantasist, author of BioShock Rapture): False Singularities... * Rob Spence (Eyeborg and enhanced human): Eyeborg, the Enhanced Self * Luc Steels (Director of the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory): The Robot Culture * Jack Tuszynski (Computational biophysician): From eDx to eRx The digital future of personalized diagnostics and pharmaceuticals * Jacques Vallee (Computer scientist and ufologist, Mars mapping for NASA): A Theory of Everything (else)...

We’re Tearing the Heart Out of Saturday Night!

zarq — Thu, 03 Feb 2011 21:59:01 -0800

"Let's do those drive-in totals. We have: Nineteen dead bodies (plus fragments). Ten breasts (shame on you, TNT censors). Two zombie breasts. One-hundred twenty-five zombies. Mummy dogs. One-half zombie dog. Ten gallons blood. Brain-eating. Gratuitous embalming. Zombie fu. Nekkid punk-rocker fondue. Gratuitous midget zombie. Torso S&M. One motor vehicle chase (totalled by zombies). Pool cue fu. No aardvarking. Heads roll. Brains roll. Arms roll. Hands roll. Joe Bob says, Check It Out." Only on MonsterVision. On Saturday nights from 1993 to 2000, the TNT network aired MonsterVision, a "drive-in movie" double feature of some of the best (and often the worst) cult and B-movies ever made. Originally guest-hosted by Penn and Teller, the network soon turned the reins over to actor and professional drive-in movie reviewer Joe Bob Briggs (whom some may remember from the Daily Show’s "God Stuff with John Bloom." Briggs was once President of the Trinity Foundation, a Dallas-based religious watchdog group that investigates fraud perpetrated by religious organisations against the public.) Briggs had spent the previous eight years hosting "Joe Bob Brigg's Drive-In Theater," a weekly movie show on The Movie Channel (TMC), which showed cult and B-movies rated using Briggs' unique euphemisms and special system of things to watch for in each film (Drive-In Totals) -- developed during his time as a movie reviewer for the Dallas Times Herald. The show was cancelled after a 490-episode run ("Aardvarking," mentioned above, is Briggs' euphemism for sex.) In grand late-night horror host tradition, Briggs incorporated those elements into his new TNT show: MonsterVision. However, TNT (unlike TMC -- a pay cable channel) censored all the movies they showed, as well as Briggs’ monologues, for television broadcast. And, like “Mystery Science Theatre 3000″ it wasn’t the movies that drew you in but Briggs’ segments, where he’d use his educated, yet at the same time peckerwood humor to ease down the visual crap you were swallowing en mass.
Joe Bob’s Website has hundreds of drive-in movie reviews, from Killer Shrews to Head Cheerleader, Dead Cheerleader, to Piranha 3D and Eight Legs to Love You. "In other words, absolutely no plot to get in the way of the story. My kinda movie." The Youtube playlists linked above include the following full-length Monstervision movies: * The Fog / Transcript * The Funhouse / Transcript * Ice Cream Man * It's Alive * It Lives Again * Jaws 2 * Maximum Overdrive / Transcript * The People Who Live Under the Stairs * Poltergeist / Transcript * Project Metalbeast / Transcript * Return of the Living Dead / Transcript * The Stepfather / Transcript * Swamp Thing / Transcript * They Live! (With guest “Rowdy” Roddy Piper) All available MonsterVision show transcripts (Only 95 are listed.) Also: Pet Shop, in 13 parts: ("This movie is so lame I’m not even gonna embarrass the writers by saying their names on tv: Brent V. Friedman and Mark Goldstein.") 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13. MonsterVision Intros * Original * A Christmas Nightmare * Godzilla New Year’s Eve Marathon * Interstitial Montage * MoonsterVision * Small Titles, Big Screams * and... the MonsterVision theme song. (So bad, it's good.) Extras * The Joe Bob Briggs FAQ (Q. What the heck is all this "Fu" stuff? A: The original "kung fu" resulted in the all-purpose suffix, "Fu," meaning "an act of senseless or random violence, usually inflicted on the viewer.") * Onion A/V Club Interview * A list of movies containing commentary tracks by Joe Bob. (Youtube has a clip from Samurai Cop with his commentary.) * Joe Bob on Twitter * Wikipedia * YouTube user hootyhaha has uploaded a number of Joe Bob’s commercial break segments. Also of possible interest: Reason Magazine article by Joe Bob: Kroger Babb’s Roadshow: "How a long-running movie walked the thin line between exploitation and education." It's a lengthy review of a movie from the 50’s: Mom and Dad. (Wikipedia: Kroger Babb)