Let me in!!

Alien versus Predator

The trailers for the new movie. Perhaps. Maybe. Lol ;)

Crowded skies

What are these Earthlings going? Millions of people move about planet Earth by airplane every day. Hundreds of thousands of airplane flights take place over the US every day. A dramatic graphical depiction of these flights was created by Aaron Koblin and is shown above. Clicking on the above image will bring up a movie in many web browsers, a movie that might better be visible here. The movie depicts flight patterns that occurred over a few days in 2005 March. The count on the lower left shows the number of USA-related flights at the time listed on the lower right. The trails shown are not contrails but rather generated artificially by a computer algorithm. Major cities in North America and the USA are discernable. Inspection of the movie shows that some times of the day are busier than others, indicating that flights leave some destinations at times that are convenient for travelers. In terms of distance, flying to a distant location is much safer than driving to that location. Flying in an airplane, however, remains slightly more dangerous than driving to a nearby airport.

To the Editor:

"Concern Over Airline Safety" (editorial, Nov. 16) perpetuates a myth that has surfaced periodically for years. That is that "flying is still safer than driving to the airport."

Not true. The only acceptable method to compare risk between air travel and automobile travel is based on the number of deaths per hour of exposure.

Data from a respected safety analyst, Trevor Kletz, show that air travel has a fatal-accident frequency rate four times higher than that for driving a car. For airplane travel there are approximately 2.4 deaths per million hours of exposure; for travel by car the figure is 0.6 deaths per million hours of exposure.

Simply put, for the same number of hours riding in a car or riding in an airplane, you are four times more likely to be killed in an airplane than in a car. JOHN M. HOFFMANN President Safety Engineering Labs Inc. Detroit, Nov. 22, 1994

An Antartic eclipse

Look at this amazing photo!

The Sun, the Moon, Antarctica, and two photographers all lined up in 2003 Antarctica during an unusual total eclipse of the Sun. Even given the extreme location, a group of enthusiastic eclipse chasers ventured near the bottom of the world to experience the surreal momentary disappearance of the Sun behind the Moon. One of the treasures collected was the above picture -- a composite of four separate images digitally combined to realistically simulate how the adaptive human eye saw the eclipse. As the image was taken, both the Moon and the Sun peaked together over an Antarctic ridge. In the sudden darkness, the magnificent corona of the Sun became visible around the Moon. Quite by accident, another photographer was caught in one of the images checking his video camera. Visible to his left are an equipment bag and a collapsible chair.

Hancock & The Happening

There are a couple of movies coming out that I am very interested in.

First, there is Will Smiths new one Hancock - about a dysfunctional superhero. I've known about this one for a while. It has the best premise ever! It is based on a graphic novel (arnt they all) called Tonight, He Comes. And the basic premsise is of a superhero who is sexually frustrated because he can never have sex because his ejaculation is too powerful! Serious, thats the basic premise!! I'm not sure how much of that carries over into Hancock. See, Hancock & Tonight, He Comes? lol They've chosen the names well! Either way, it looks really funny, and I cant wait to see it.


The next one is M Night Shayamalans new one (The Sixth Sense, Signs, Unbreakable). It was first called The Green Effect, before taking the new name The Happening. And the basic premise as I understand it, is Mother Nature releasing some toxin that makes humans kill themselves! M Night is a genius at creating tensions, and I personally really rate him as a filmmaker and writer. The trailers look amazing, and I officially now can't wait for this one either!

Enhance your music listening experience, Jim

"What started as an exception may soon become the norm if recent trends are anything to go by. Pointed ears, made famous by Star Trek's Mr Spock, seem to be the choice of many music loving youngsters in New York. They are resorting to plastic surgery to get the perfect pair of pointed ears. Today, ear sculpting is being offered by many body art and modification shops. Developed by Hungarian plastic surgeon, Dr. Lajos Nagy, pointed ears apparently enhances music listening experience.

Highlights of ear sculpting include

a. This is a comparatively recent trend.
b. The procedure is safe and can be easily tolerated by patients.
c. It is a one-day-surgery and involves the use of local anesthesia.
d. It involves the careful dissection of the structures at the upper pole of the earlobe.
e. The reshaping is done by modellation of a chondro-cutaneous flap, which contains the cartilage and skin of the patient.
f. The new shape is fixed with absorbable sutures and the skin is closed with unabsorbable uninterrupted sutures.
g. The new ears are bandaged for a week.
h. Sutures are removed after 2 weeks.
i. Results are visible after the removal of the bandage, but the swelling of soft tissues and the final shape of the ear is seen after 3 to 4 weeks."

Happy 15th birthday WWW

LONDON (AFP) - The World Wide Web is still only in its infancy, its British inventor said Wednesday, on the 15th anniversary of the web's effective launch.

Tim Berners-Lee told the BBC that the web, which started life in the CERN physics laboratory on the Franco-Swiss border in the early 1990s, could develop in unimaginable directions but above all should be a force for good.

"What's exciting is that people are building new social systems, new systems of review, new systems of governance," he said.

"My hope is that those will produce... new ways of working together effectively and fairly which we can use globally to manage ourselves as a planet."

The comments came on the anniversary of the announcement by CERN on April 30, 1993 that the World Wide Web could be used by everyone, after Berners-Lee and a colleague persuaded their bosses to provide the programme code for free.

The web -- of which the abbreviation www forms the start of all online addresses -- is now the ubiquitous network via which information is shared on the Internet. An estimated 165 million websites now exist, the BBC reported.

"The web has been a tremendous tool for people to do a lot of good even though you can find bad stuff out there," said Berners-Lee, adding that one day the web will put "all the data in the world" at the fingertips of every user.

But "we have only started to explore the possibilities of (the web)," he said, adding that it was "still in its infancy".

Robert Cailliau, who worked with Berners-Lee to open up the web, stressed that not all the bosses at CERN were in favour of making the web universally accessible.

"We had to convince them that this was going to take off and it was a really big thing. And therefore CERN couldn't hold on to it and the best thing to do was to give it away," he said.

Competing technologies -- such as Gopher developed at the University of Minnesota in the United States -- were also offering a way of connecting documents on the Internet, he said.

"If we had put a price on it like the University of Minnesota had done with Gopher then it would not have expanded into what it is now.

"We would have had some sort of market share alongside services like AOL and Compuserve, but we would not have flattened the world."

I Love WALL*E

I really do!




Wall-E Vacuum Vignette (Trailer) - video powered by Metacafe
I'm sure I mentioned it before.

WALL•E Meets A Magnet Vignette
Uploaded by WallEMovie

Coz its going to be the movie to beat this year, I reckon!

WALL-E v/s Hula Hoop
Uploaded by DrMalo

I heart WALL*E & Pixar!

Harewood House planetarium

Harewood House stately home near Harrogate has a planetarium in it now. I went with my dad and my brother last week.

It is a temporary structure, but is still a very impressive one. I have only ever been to one other planetarium before, and that was in Montreal.

This one has one seriously impressive projector in it. Some monster that spins in 360 degress and has over 100,000 fibre optic lights in it. Each one perfectly correlates to a visible star. So each star that they project is the perfect brightness and colour as we would see if we looked in the night sky.

But this mad beastie can do crazy things like show you what the sky would look like 14,000 years from now; so all the stars start shooting around the sky showing the passage of time. Other crazy tricks like zooming in on Jupiter and watching its moons orbit around it perfectly. It was dead impressive! It can do both hemispheres, so the Southern Cross and other astronomical sights only visible down under can be seen. Me Wants One Now!

Plus outside they have a 60 foot climbing frame and slide. So me and my brother, aged 34 and 39 climbed up to the top and slid down lol. Still the biggest kids there!

A great evening out!

The Dark Knight

There have been some fantastic poster coming out for the new Batman movie - The Dark Knight. The new one is no exception!

It was very sad news about the death of Heath Ledger, as he looks fantastic in his role as the Joker.

If this movie is half as good as its post campaign, then we should all be in for a treat!

Presenting - Bitten

I am very pleased and proud to finally get to show you Bitten. The first of the short films I worked on in February. In this bloggers opinion, it rocks!! lol And looks fab in High Def too.

As I said bcak in February, Bitten is a PROPER horror film. So viewers discretion is advised! lol I do hope you all enjoy it!

Presenting - Bitten!


Bitten from Duncan Laing on Vimeo.

April LOLCATS

The Cats Eye Nebula

"Staring across interstellar space, the alluring Cat's Eye Nebula lies three thousand light-years from Earth. One of the most famous planetary nebulae in the sky, the Cat's Eye (NGC 6543) is over half a light-year across and represents a final, brief yet glorious phase in the life of a sun-like star. This nebula's dying central star may have produced the simple, outer pattern of dusty concentric shells by shrugging off outer layers in a series of regular convulsions. But the formation of the beautiful, more complex inner structures is not well understood. Here, Hubble Space Telescope archival image data has been reprocessed to create another look the cosmic cat's eye. Compared to well-known Hubble pictures, the alternative processing strives to sharpen and improve the visiblility of details in light and dark areas of the nebula and also applies a more complex color palette. Of course, gazing into the Cat's Eye, astronomers may well be seeing the fate of our Sun, destined to enter its own planetary nebula phase of evolution ... in about 5 billion years."

Monthly moon round-up - Phobos

"This moon is doomed. Mars, the red planet named for the Roman god of war, has two tiny moons, Phobos and Deimos, whose names are derived from the Greek for Fear and Panic. These martian moons may well be captured asteroids originating in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter or perhaps from even more distant reaches of the Solar System. The larger moon, Phobos, is indeed seen to be a cratered, asteroid-like object in this stunning color image from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, recorded at a resolution of about seven meters per pixel. But Phobos orbits so close to Mars - about 5,800 kilometers above the surface compared to 400,000 kilometers for our Moon - that gravitational tidal forces are dragging it down. In 100 million years or so Phobos will likely be shattered by stress caused by the relentless tidal forces, the debris forming a decaying ring around Mars."

"Stickney Crater, the largest crater on the martian moon Phobos, is named for Chloe Angeline Stickney Hall, mathematician and wife of astronomer Asaph Hall. Asaph Hall discovered both the Red Planet's moons in 1877. Over 9 kilometers across, Stickney is nearly half the diameter of Phobos itself, so large that the impact that blasted out the crater likely came close to shattering the tiny moon. This stunning, enhanced-color image of Stickney and surroundings was recorded by the HiRISE camera onboard the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter as it passed within some six thousand kilometers of Phobos last month. Even though the surface gravity of asteroid-like Phobos is less than 1/1000th Earth's gravity, streaks suggest loose material has slid down inside the crater walls over time. Light bluish regions near the crater's rim could indicate a relatively freshly exposed surface. The origin of the curious grooves along the surface is mysterious but may be related to the crater-forming impact."

Pixars WALL*E and Up

I could not be more excited about Pixars next one WALL*E! With Ratatouille being one of the best films I saw last year, Pixar are batting with one hell of an average. I have read about Pixars next one for 2009 called Up, and it almost made me cry with what they want to do with it.

But WALL*E looks amazing, touching, and just looks cool as fuck! God bless ya, Pixar.

UP comes out May 29th, 2009 and will be Pixar’s first 3-D movie. Lasseter said that all Pixar and Disney Animated movies from BOLT onwards will be made to release in Disney digital 3-D. Lasseter loves 3-D. He says even all of his wedding pictures were taken in 3-D he loves it so much.

UP is directed by Pete Doctor (MONSTERS, INC) and Bob Peterson and follows the most likely adventurer… Carl… a 78 year old man. He’ll be voiced by Ed Asner and is a grumpy ol’ bastard who walks on a cane that ends in four little legs, each one has a tennis ball on the end, like you’ll see at nursing homes.

Pete Doctor called it a “coming of old age story.”

The movie opens with Carl as a young kid in the ‘30s. They showed us this opening with storyboard reels. Carl is a chubby kid, arm in a cast and he makes friends with an adorable ball of energy named Ellie.

She wants to follow her hero explorer out in the wilds on adventures. She wants to show Carl something, but makes him cross his heart and swear he won’t tell anyone. He does and she shows him her adventure book. A scrapbook with clippings from her explorer hero, a guy named Muntz.

She says when she gets big she’s going to go where he went. She’s going to South America (“It’s like America, but south,” she says matter of factly). She has drawings of waterfalls and says she’s going to live there some day. It’s a place called Paradise Falls.

The rest of the pages are blank and she says she’s saving them for all the adventures she’s going to have… the only problem is she doesn’t know how she’s going to get there. Carl has a balloon in the room and she says, “That’s it! You can take us in a blimp! Swear you’ll take us!” She makes him cross his heart. “Good, you promised. No backing out!”

Carl is wide-eyed, clearly in love with this girl, in love with her spirit and enthusiasm. He barely speaks.

We get a montage now. No dialogue, just music. Ellie and Carl get married. They’re happy together. Carl sells balloons as they build their house. The years go by. They’re still young and playful. In love. They have picnics, look at clouds and see different shapes. Eventually Carl points out one in the shape of a baby. From here on out she sees nothing but babies in the clouds and smiles.

Carl awkwardly smiles as well.

Then we see them sitting in the doctor’s office. It’s dark and grey. Ellie has her face in her hands, crying as the doctor shakes his head no.

She sits in their front yard. She’s sad. Carl comes to cheer her up. He brings her the old Adventure book and she smiles again.

They make a Paradise Falls jar and put money and coins into it. The pile starts to grow but a series of events happen over time. Car tires blow out, the coin pile decreases. They put more money in it and Carl has his leg in a cast and the money decreases. The roof blows off in a storm, etc.

Now they’re elderly and the Paradise Falls jar is empty, forgotten. Carl loving looks at his elderly wife doing the daily chores. She’s happy, but you get the feeling that he’s sad for not giving her what he promised her. He looks at the crayon drawing of Paradise Falls she had in her adventure book and makes a trip to the travel place.

He has two tickets to South America. He hides them in the picnic basket and takes her out on a picnic. He makes it to the top of the hill. She doesn’t, collapsing halfway up. He runs to her.

Next we’re in a hospital. He’s very sad. She pushes her adventure book to him and makes him cross his heart. He does.

Next we see him slouched, wearing a black suit. He’s surrounded by hundreds of balloons… if I remember right they all had her name on them.

This sequence was already heartbreaking in this early form.

Carl lives on a few more years before his house is threatened by impending construction. So, he ties thousands and thousands of balloons to his roof with the intention of sailing to South America and bringing Ellie, in spirit, to Paradise Falls.

He apparently can steer his house with his weathervane.

But he has a stowaway when he makes this journey. A chubby asian kid named Russell, a boy scout trying to get his last merit badge, one for assisting the elderly.

They make it to S. America, but just before they get to where they need to go they crash and thrown from the house. The house starts to float away and just before it’s out of reach, they grab on to a garden hose and keep it from leaving them.

Neither of them can climb back up to it, but they don’t want to leave it, so they each tie a line to themselves and traverse the South American jungles pulling the house behind him like a Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade balloon for the last 15 miles.

They showed us a test piece, with temp sets and character models and it looked really funny. Carl was short and squat, with his tennis-balled cane. Russell is whining. He’s tired. Carl is short with him and Russell falls over dramatically, but the balloon keeps him from doing much more than floating up and down. He ends up dragging forward on the ground, where he sees a bug and gets excited. He unclips himself and runs after it.

Carl looks back and sees he’s the only one tethered. He calls after the boy, getting no response as he’s slowly lifted up further and further and further until he’s out of frame. A bird squaks and he grumbles. There’s a tussle we don’t see and his cane drops to the forest floor.

They announced that the villain will be voiced by Christopher Plummer and that was it for their UP presentation.

Disorder in the courts

These are from a book called 'Disorder in the Court'. These are things
people
actually said in court, word for word, taken down and now published by
court
reporters - who had the torment of staying calm while these exchanges were
actually taking place. Some of these are excellent - don't miss the last one.

Q: Are you sexually active?
A: No, I just lie there.

Q: What is your date of birth?
A: July fifteenth.
Q: What year?
A: Every year.

Q: What gear were you in at the moment of the impact?
A: Gucci sweats and Reeboks.


Q: This myasthenia gravis, does it affect your memory at all?
A: Yes.
Q: And in what ways does it affect your memory?
A: I forget.
Q: You forget. Can you give us an example of something that you've
forgotten?

Q: How old is your son, the one living with you?
A: Thirty-eight or thirty-five, I can't remember which.
Q: How long has he lived with you?
A: Forty-five years.

Q: What was the first thing your husband said to you when he woke up that morning?
A: He said, "Where am I, Cathy?"
Q: And why did that upset you?
A: My name is Susan.

Q: Do you know if your daughter has ever been involved in voodoo or the occult?
A: We both do.
Q: Voodoo?
A: We do.
Q: You do?
A: Yes, voodoo.

Q: Now doctor, isn't it true that when a person dies in his sleep, he
doesn't
know about it until the next morning?

Q: The youngest son, the twenty-year old, how old is he?

Q: Were you present when your picture was taken?

Q: So the date of conception (of the baby) was August 8th?
A: Yes.
Q: And what were you doing at that time?

Q: She had three children, right?
A: Yes.
Q: How many were boys?
A: None.
Q:Were there any girls?

Q: How was your first marriage terminated?
A: By death.
Q: And by whose death was it terminated?

Q: Can you describe the individual?
A: He was about medium height and had a beard.
Q: Was this a male, or a female?

Q: Is your appearance here this morning pursuant to a deposition notice
which I
sent to your attorney?
A: No, this is how I dress when I go to work.

Q: Doctor, how many autopsies have you performed on dead people?
A: All my autopsies are performed on dead people.

Q: All your responses must be oral, OK? What school did you go to?
A: Oral.

Q: Do you recall the time that you examined the body?
A: The autopsy started around 8:30 p.m.
Q: And Mr.. Dennington was dead at the time?
A: No, he was sitting on the table wondering why I was doing an
autopsy.

Q: Are you qualified to give a urine sample?

Q: Doctor, before you performed the autopsy, did you check for a pulse?
A: No.
Q: Did you check for blood pressure?
A: No.
Q: Did you check for breathing?
A: No.
Q: So, then it is possible that the patient was alive when you began
the
autopsy?
A: No.
Q: How can you be so sure, Doctor?
A: Because his brain was sitting on my desk in a jar.
Q: But could the patient have still been alive, nevertheless?
A: Yes, it is possible that he could have been alive and practicing law
somewhere.

CJ7 by Stephen Chow

This ones for Nick in Oz.

For those who don't know, Stephen Chow is the genius behind the supremely silly Shaolin Soccer....



And the brilliantly clever, yet also suitably silly Kung Fu Hustle.....


His 3rd effort, CJ7 seems to be of the same fantastic and silly vein, and this time with an alien in it lol. Can't wait to catch this one! :)

Metropolis promo

The first promos are now coming out for the Metropolis series of docs. Our doc Sweet Fifteen is going out on Dutch TV on 11th April. We have been given a brief for some more different docs, and have started researching subjects. More on this as it lands!

"www.Metropolisweb.tv is a global collective of video journalists that produces personal video reports on a variety of issues and themes. The network consists of over 50 film makers and video bloggers all over the world. Each week we make a trip around the globe on one single issue. From obesity and the lives of fifteen year old girls, to traffic jams, outcasts and Elvis impersonators, we will present to you one new 'global view' every week."

Location Management

I find myself moving towards working in Location Management. I got the heads-up about a course being run at the National Film & Television School on the subject, so applied to go and attended.

The course was run by an industry professional, in this case a 29 year old woman called Sarah. Who at her tender years, runs her own production company making music videos and was the location manager of amongst others - Atonement, Pride & Prejudice, and Guy Richie and Shane Meadows next films - Rocknrolla and Sams Town.

I learnt some excellent things, and met (hopefully) some more useful contacts based in London. Gonna have to be prepared to travel, I reckon.

But I feel enthused again. There's some stuff out there! I've just got to go find it!

Soon...............................

The Horsehead Nebula

It occurs to me, that on this photoblog of spacey things, I havent posted many of the most famous sights in astronomy before. Perhaps because they are so "famous" that I assume that everyone will have seen them many times, like me. But, of course, everyone's not a giant nerd like me and may not have seen these things before. So I shall be posting some of the most famous astronomical sights there are. All for you, dear reader; so you can become as nerdy as me! :)

"One of the most identifiable nebulae in the sky, the Horsehead Nebula in Orion, is part of a large, dark, molecular cloud. Also known as Barnard 33, the unusual shape was first discovered on a photographic plate in the late 1800s. The red glow originates from hydrogen gas predominantly behind the nebula, ionized by the nearby bright star Sigma Orionis. The darkness of the Horsehead is caused mostly by thick dust, although the lower part of the Horsehead's neck casts a shadow to the left. Streams of gas leaving the nebula are funneled by a strong magnetic field. Bright spots in the Horsehead Nebula's base are young stars just in the process of forming. Light takes about 1500 years to reach us from the Horsehead Nebula."


"The famous Horsehead Nebula in Orion is not alone. A deep exposure shows that the dark familiar shaped indentation, visible just below center, is part of a vast complex of absorbing dust and glowing gas. To bring out details of the Horsehead's pasture, amateur astronomers at the Star Shadow Remote Observatory in New Mexico, USA fixed a small telescope on the region for over seven hours filtering out all but a very specific color of red light emitted by hydrogen. They then added the image to a full color frame taken over three hours. The resulting spectacular picture details an intricate tapestry of gaseous wisps and dust-laden filaments that were created and sculpted over eons by stellar winds and ancient supernovas. The Horsehead Nebula lies 1,500 light years distant towards the constellation of Orion. Two stars from the Orion's Belt can be found in the above image."