Friday

Perverting Veronica Mars

In a short 48 hours Warner Brothers has successfully exploited, surpassed their $2 million dollar goal, and bastardized one of the few ways indie filmmakers have been able to get financing for their projects. Records were smashed in 4 hours when $1 million dollars was raised by fan crowd-funding to make a Veronica Mars film. And contributions are on track to grow exponentially. Websites such as kickstarter and indiegogo were designed with the intention of artists making a grass-roots campaign to attain funding for projects, causes, and art that is original, inspiring, and many times affecting social change.

This move by the studio illustrates yet again how America has gone from capitalism to corporatalism. Seemingly gone are the days of supporting new ideas, encouraging entrepreneurship, and people building their own business. An established corporation such as Warner Brothers with ties to marketing/pr/distribution, investors, and finances need not reach into the pocket of starving artists with a dream. In an already crowded market where a good publicist and investment in a VoteBot company can skyrocket a project to the top of a search, it makes it virtually impossible for an earnestly good idea that needs a 'kick-start' be seen. This has already been seen with studios thrusting fully-funded films into prestigious indie festivals, and record labels hiring companies with auto-bots to get their artist to the top of I-Tunes, TRL, and other charts.

With no risk and no investors to pay out, it seems Warner Brothers could use it as a tax/regulation/risk dodge essentially. Warner Brothers has requested fans of the show pay for making the film, and pay again to see it. This leaves the studio, cast, and producers to rake in all the profit. This precedent not only sets a trend that corporate America is injecting itself into an arena designed for the indie filmmaker, but it also runs the risk of changing how distributors consider taking a film. As Dorothy Pomerantz of Forbes points out "...distributors might start to expect filmmakers to be able to raise money on their own" and that is extremely challenging.

Studios killed the indie star?!. Unless you want to be bombarded to fund every superhero sequel, comic book remake, and failed tv show, you must think about what flames your fan dollars are fueling. Within hours of the success of the Mars experiment tweets came from producers of other network shows, “I said to my agent immediately, ‘Can we do this with Pushing Daisies?’ says creator Byran Fuller, and similar sentiments from creator Shawn Ryan of FX show Terriers I was in. I'm all for reviving projects, but not at the expense of silencing unique voices and new ideas. Help artists create new content and force studios to actually work for your attention and your money. That is the way to demand quality and innovation instead of cheesy duplication.

Unlimited PS4 Games

The Play Station 4 is on the way. And if you are a gamer and are wondering what the best and most anticipated games are for the upcoming system are so you can spend your hard earned ducats on those titles you are not alone.

There are usually only a few titles for a new console system that really shine and those titles can make or break the early sales of a new system. But what if you were allowed to have them all? With the new way of thinking for the PS4 Sony may just allow a streaming style all you can eat service similar to that of netflix streaming. This buffet of video game direct downloads may help them to cut down on the cannibalization of the marketplace by reselling of used physical titles as well. So if this is the case, how much would you pay? $7.99 a month for unlimited titles? Maybe that's not such a bad model.

But If you came here to see who is on board so far, check this out. You might want to skip to 4:25 to see the game.

Other titles include Watch Dogs, Diablo III, Drive Club, and the new Kill Zone.

For a more complete list click here.

Best Robot Videos

Please add any of your favorites in the comment section below.

Enjoy the bad robots.

From an older Nova Science video, here's a partial AI robot that seems like a mash up of Kenny Rodgers, Siri and Steven Hawking.

Below is the Quadracopter using some amazing AI machine learning. PONG aint got nothing on these guys.

Here's another fun one using some good old fashioned robot teamwork.

This following video creeps me out a bit. It reminds me of some old movie with Tom Selleck and Gene Simmons from Kiss as the bad guy.

I think it's either designed to fly bombs out of parks, or steal hats from older hat ladies in the church parking lots, either way Im sure we will see more videos of this lovely creature.

Please add your favorite robot video links below.

Life of Pi Explained

What is the meaning of the Life of Pi? - WARNING SPOILERS

Are all the critics crazy? I feel like I am one of the few people that walked away from this film feeling empty and disturbed.

I have been learning some computer graphics- 3D modeling as of late, and was very excited to see "Life of Pi". I gladly plunked down almost 40 bucks to get a couple of tickets for the opening night 3D screening. So lets get this out of the way, we all know the film is visually stunning, in fact I think it should win an Oscar for visual effects and cinematography, but the story was bold enough to tell me that by the end, "I would believe in God". Even though it was off to a slow start, that line hooked me. I'm in. Lets do this, bring on the tiger tale.

Several minutes later, uggh, are we still cutting back to the house with the writer? Do I really need to know about kids teasing him for his name and a few elementary piss jokes. I was ready to forgive the meandering story, which in essence is, "A guy gets stuck on a boat with a tiger, or wait, no surprise he's a murdering psychopath that has created an elaborate story to protect him from the truth." Roll credits.

Now here's where most of you will be getting upset, and I have not read the book, maybe it did a better job of telling the story, but the filmmaker has given me a choice of what story I might prefer to choose. Well it's a lot easier to prefer the one with a muti million dollar visual effects budget, though it still doesn't give me any theological revelations.

You see when Pi tells the story of himself killing a man that killed his mother on a boat out of anger/revenge, the filmmaker allows us to see his face and not flash back to the story. In real life, this is one of the ways we discern if someone is lying or not. And the actor does a damn good job of looking like he is telling the truth as he tells us of his murderous tale. Then the film goes on to hit us over the head with the obvious parallels to the animals which I'm sure most movie goers have already figured out several minutes before.

The Christian Science Monitor to says this,

"The real question is – which story do you, the viewer/reader prefer? Interpretation is subjective but the question is intended to serve as a moment of theological reflection. Are you a person that prefers to believe in things that always make sense/things that you can see? Or are you a person that prefers to believe in miracles/take things on faith?" Okay, which story makes more sense? The tiger story remains to be based in reality, except for the whole magic island bit that any rational person might chalk up to hallucinations, yet I think the more difficult story to believe might be the one where someone implicates themselves for murder unnecessarily. But the frustrating thing is neither of these stories give me any revelations.

I love when films find the truth, but this film seemed to avoid the truth, posing a hollow question, when you dont know the correct answer do you choose to believe in what appears to be true or what seems to be fantasy? And the answer... if you are a writer or filmmaker you gravitate to the fantasy, if you are investigating the truth for insurance, you go after the truth.

My girlfriend who can cry at a cartoon was even left unaffected by Pi, and with all of the dead end backstory it felt like there was a huge missed opportunity for the story to empathetically connect Pi with the audience in this visually stunning adventure. Now all of the above is my opinion and therefore it is MY truth, I encourage you to argue with it in the comments. Please, I would love to be persuaded that I "missed the boat" on this one. I was hoping for a new layer to the Science vs Faith argument. The one where most scientists define faith as "believing in something that hasn't been proven to be the truth", not that that is always a bad thing. Maybe we can have a happier life by choosing to believe in a more optimistic point of view. But neither of his tales were heartwarming or optimistic. For me it was a huge let down, as it promised a spiritual experience and delivered the story of a creepy murderer who has created false fantastical memories. Nuff said.

Pie chart from www.film.com Please tell us what the Life of Pi meant to you in the comment section.

iPhone Phab - The iPhone Phablet?

I love me some Apple iPhone design, but love bigger screen sizes, that's why I wanted to be one of the first to have the iPhone Phablet. Though not available for you to purchase yet outright as Apple has yet to release the product. You can always get a workaround for now with a superfast quadcore processor and feature rich phone. Just download an iOS emulator, add a vinyl sticker and tada, your Note 2 is now a iPhone Phab. It works so well, it almost makes you not feel bad that Samsung got sued for looking like an iPhone. I'll put up some tutorials soon on how to make the mod (feel free to subscribe to get an alert), it even works with the stylus.

I know all you Android fans, like my angry girlfriend, are saying why would you do this? I guess for fun and the lulz. Plus it is okay to love Apple AND Android, I'm sure I'll change it back soon, but in the meantime it's just awesome to see Apple fanboys flip out when they see it.

You will need...

Vinyl Sticker to cover up the Samsung logo

Apple decal sticker like this or this.

This launcher app with iPhone look

This lock screen with iPhone theme

and optional iPhone texting theme.

You may also need gullible friends, have fun.

The Best and Most Unique Galaxy Note 2 Cases and Covers

After looking at way too many cases for my new Samsung Galaxy Note II, I thought I would make a little image parade for any other Note 2 user that might want to get an idea of what is out there. Most all of these may be found on ebay or amazon for a reasonable price. Enjoy, and feel free to add more in the comment section.