Sci-Fi Lunch Break

Sci-Fi Lunch Break: Han Solo, P.I.

Mar 18th 2010 3:03PM By: Peter Hall

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[Welcome to the Sci-Fi Lunch Break, where we'll be occasionally supplying you with a cool bit of audio/visual goodness to break up the monotony of the work day. You bring the turkey on rye, we'll bring you something out of this world to watch while you eat it.]

Every time I come across a mash-up video, I always wonder the same thing. For example, was the creator of today's video, Han Solo, P.I., just watching Star Wars one day when it hit him like a bolt of lightning, "Hey, that looks vaguely like one of the clips from the opening credits for Magnum, P.I.! I should make a video of it!"? Or is he just a rabid Magnum, P.I. fan who, in a bizarre attempt to fuel his love for Tom Selleck, broke out a pad of paper and started writing down time codes while watching the original trilogy?

Well, wherever the inspiration came from, I'm liking it. Oh, and in case you don't have the opening Magnum, P.I. memorized (Who are you?), I've also included a side-by-side comparison below.

Filed under: Fan Made

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Sci-Fi Lunch Break: Battlestar Sabotage

Mar 9th 2010 12:25PM By: Peter Hall

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[Welcome to the Sci-Fi Lunch Break, where we'll be occasionally supplying you with a cool bit of audio/visual goodness to break up the monotony of the work day. You bring the turkey on rye, we'll bring you something out of this world to watch while you eat it.]

I'm sure it made everyone smile when a young James Tiberius Kirk was hauling down a dirt road at the beginning of J.J. Abrams' Star Trek hit the play button on the radio and the Beastie Boys' oh-so-familiar Sabotage came blasting on. But you know what? That cultural collision wasn't just quit geeky enough for someone on the Internet and thus the Battlestar Galactica / Sabotage match-up was born.

This is no ordinary mash-up though. Someone didn't cobble together a bunch of BSG clips and set them to the tune. No, they actually edited the footage to mirror the original Sabotage video as closely as possible. And if you don't remember the original video well enough to have your jaw slightly dropped, give this YouTube Doubler link a go and see if it doesn't do the trick. At the very least, it'll make you want to rewatch BSG something fierce.

Filed under: Fan Made, Fan Movies

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Sci-Fi Lunch Break: Ever Wonder What Bollywood Sci-Fi Looks Like?

Mar 5th 2010 1:05PM By: Peter Hall

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[Welcome to the Sci-Fi Lunch Break, where we'll be occasionally supplying you with a cool bit of audio/visual goodness to break up the monotony of the work day. You bring the turkey on rye, we'll bring you something out of this world to watch while you eat it.]

Bollywood is known primarily for two things. The first is making low-budget movies that rip-off high budget Hollywood movies, the second is a penchant for inserting a dance number whenever possible. But what happens when a Bollywood movie has a high budget and minimal dance numbers? Better yet, what happens when Bollywood tries to make a high-concept, big-budget sci-fi film with minimal dance numbers?

Love Story 2050 is what happens. And man, I can't wait to track down a copy of it, because judging from the trailer, narrated by someone who sounds like they couldn't be less interested, this thing has it all. Did you love the Time Machine, but wish it took place in India? Did you like the robot factories of I, Robot, but wish they were robot factories in Mumbai? Big fan of Teddy from A.I. Artificial Intelligence? The futuristic swordplay in Ultraviolet? Longing for the flying cabs of The Fifth Element with Indian drivers?

Well, friend with incredibly strange taste, today is your lucky day.

Filed under: Trailers/Clips

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Sci-Fi Lunch Break: Weta's CGI Deconstruction of 'Avatar'

Mar 1st 2010 1:15PM By: Peter Hall

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[Welcome to the Sci-Fi Lunch Break, where we'll be occasionally supplying you with a cool bit of audio/visual goodness to break up the monotony of the work day. You bring the turkey on rye, we'll bring you something out of this world to watch while you eat it.]

You'd have to be living in a coma under a rock trapped under an even bigger rock to not know that James Cameron's Avatar is brimming with CGI creations at this point. But even though the method behind the filmmaking is relatively common place at this point thanks to the film's ubiquitous coverage over the last few months, we still haven't seen too much on the behind the scenes front. Sure, there have been making-of segments all over network TV, but they're rather broad in their nature. And since the DVD and Blu-ray coming out this Earth day are admittedly going to be barebones, it's going to be a while before we get a detail-oriented, commentary laden look at creating Pandora.

However, if you're really jonesing to see part of the process, you can head over to Weta Digital's official website (sorry, no embeds are available), where they've posted a series of layer-by-layer deconstructions of a few brief sequences in Avatar. Unfortunately the seven clips are commentary-free, but they do provide a nice, geeky look at the addition/subtraction process Cameron and Weta went through when creating their all-CGI environments.

Filed under: Trailers/Clips

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Sci-Fi Lunch Break: Cyperpunk Post-Apoc in 'Frame 137'

Feb 25th 2010 1:32PM By: Peter Hall

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[Welcome to the Sci-Fi Lunch Break, where we'll be occasionally supplying you with a cool bit of audio/visual goodness to break up the monotony of the work day. You bring the turkey on rye, we'll bring you something out of this world to watch while you eat it.]

Oh, man, Judd Tilyard knows exactly what kind of movies I like, which is strange because I don't know Judd Tilyard and he doesn't know me. But if you were to run down a check list of my favorite staples of science fiction, it might look an awful lot like this teaser trailer for Tilyard's short film Frame 137.

Based off of a concept from The Crow creator James O'Barr (who gave Tilyard approval for the short), Frame 137 is a hybrid of cyberpunk's "fight 'em all" mentality set, I presume, within the confines of a bar in a perhaps not-too-far-off post-apocalyptic future. Check it out below.

Filed under: Fan Movies

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Sci-Fi Lunch Break: Living in 'Augmented (Hyper)Reality'

Feb 16th 2010 12:05PM By: Peter Hall

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[Welcome to the Sci-Fi Lunch Break, where we'll be occasionally supplying you with a cool bit of audio/visual goodness to break up the monotony of the work day. You bring the turkey on rye, we'll bring you something out of this world to watch while you eat it.]

We all spend nearly 24 hours a day within arms reach of the information superhighway, but imagine what life would be like if you had the Internet piped right into your brain and everything around you was designed to spring to virtual life at your command. Don't worry if you can't picture life on the precipice of the singularity, though, because someone has gone ahead and done it for you with this conceptual demo of an augmented reality future.

From Keiichi Matsuda's Vimeo page:" The latter half of the 20th century saw the built environment merged with media space, and architecture taking on new roles related to branding, image and consumerism. Augmented reality may recontextualise the functions of consumerism and architecture, and change in the way in which we operate within it. "

Enjoy. [Via @slashfilm]

Filed under: Fan Made, Fan Movies

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Sci-Fi Lunch Break: 'Xenogensis', James Cameron's First Film

Feb 10th 2010 1:49PM By: Peter Hall

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[Welcome to the Sci-Fi Lunch Break, where we'll be occasionally supplying you with a cool bit of audio/visual goodness to break up the monotony of the work day. You bring the turkey on rye, we'll bring you something out of this world to watch while you eat it.]

It's always fun to peek back into the developmental stages of a filmmakers career to see how they got their start. Take James Cameron, for example, and his first short film, Xenogenesis. Today he's known for large scale, sci-fi heavy action films involving robots and aliens and more special effects than you can shake a harddrive at. But what kind of films did he want to make when he barely knew how to turn a camera on?

Well, turns out he was still into sci-fi and robots and special effects and people controlling robots to fight. I guess some things never do change.

Filed under: Fan Movies

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Sc-Fi Lunch Break: 'Aliens' Rap

Feb 5th 2010 11:11AM By: Peter Hall

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[Welcome to the Sci-Fi Lunch Break, where we'll be occasionally supplying you with a cool bit of audio/visual goodness to break up the monotony of the work day. You bring the turkey on rye, we'll bring you something out of this world to watch while you eat it.]

Are you prepared for a 10-minute long rap based on James Cameron's Aliens? No, I'm not joking. Someone has written a rather lengthy rap that runs down every aspect of the '80s sci-fi staple with a beat and you know what...it's actually pretty damned good. From the YouTube page:

"This video is in no way trying to take credit for this almost flawless masterpiece, it is merely a tribute to how spectacular it is. The song was written & produced by DJ MAYHEM & features the polish & vocal skills of Mouthmaster Murf, both from the up & coming band THE ANOMALIES & DJ act THE FARCICAL 3. "

Check it out below and if you enjoy it, an MP3 can be found right here.

Filed under: Fan Made

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Sci-Fi Lunch Break: An 'Alien 3'-Pepsi Commercial for the Ages

Feb 3rd 2010 12:54PM By: Peter Hall

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[Welcome to the Sci-Fi Lunch Break, where we'll be occasionally supplying you with a cool bit of audio/visual goodness to break up the monotony of the work day. You bring the turkey on rye, we'll bring you something out of this world to watch while you eat it.]

There are a lot of life lessons to be learned from this commercial for Pepsi/Alien 3 that aired during the 1992 MTV Movie Awards:

- If you thought something was cool when you were 12, it won't be cool again for at least another 15 years. Unless we're talking about grunge fashion, in which case, it will never be cool again.
- Don't try to hide from a xenomorph in a barrel, you stupid idiot.
- Pepsi machines cannot be destroyed. They instantly heal from inexplicable explosions and tail swipes from lethal extra-terrestrials.
- If Ripley was a better hostess, she would have offered the Nostromo's guest an ice cold Pepsi and saved a lot of lives in the process.
- Jeremy Davies (Faraday from LOST) doesn't think he's from around here.

Filed under: Fan Movies

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Sci-Fi Lunch Break: Take the 'Leap'

Feb 2nd 2010 2:02PM By: Peter Hall

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[Welcome to the Sci-Fi Lunch Break, where we'll be occasionally supplying you with a cool bit of audio/visual goodness to break up the monotony of the work day. You bring the turkey on rye, we'll bring you something out of this world to watch while you eat it.]

When I first talked to Sci-Fi Squad Editor-in Chief Erik Davis about launching a column to highlight short films back in the day, the very first thing he linked me to was Leap. The only reason it never ended up as part of the Lunch Break is because it was just a teaser for a short film. Well, now, the whole shebang is online. And by whole shabang, I mean 6 or so minutes of a guy who discovers he can leap through parallel worlds.

Enjoy.

Filed under: Fan Movies

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