The confrontation with HAL 9000 in Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey is a tense, somewhat frightening scene. So why not have H. Jon Benjamin, voice of Sterling Archer on FX’s Archer, voice HAL instead? Late Night Basement did just that, and the results are hilarious. Watch as David freaks out while talking to the most laid-back computer system ever. This version of HAL also taunts David, which is amusing. Now I wish that I could hear Benjamin’s voice as the computer on Star Trek. Read more…
Posted by Michael Pinto on Mar 2, 2010 in Cinema, Science
I was very saddened to hear that Dr. Robert McCall passed away as he was very much a hero of mine. I’ll never forget the first time I visited the Air and Space Museum in Washington D.C. — along with being able to touch a piece of the moon and look at shopping mall full of aircraft and spaceships the first thing that hits you it the amazing larger than life mural by Robert McCall (an amazing gallery of his drawings that they house are here). Most of us have science fiction fanboys have grown up with McCall’s artwork without even knowing the artist. I think the first time McCall spoke to me was with his amazing work on the film 2001: A Space Odyssey. I was looking at this artwork as a child long after the film came out, but his paintings created a magical environment that you’d want to wander around and step inside: Read more…
If you’re a Lost in Space fanboy you’re going to like what Moebius Models: A fully finished and lit Jupiter II 1/35th scale metal prop replica. That’s right: If you’ve always wanted one of these amazing model kits but know that you’ll never ever have the time to build one Moebius Models will build it for you! Sadly you’ll have to wait until the 4th quarter of this year, but having seen the model up close I was drooling. Read more…
On paper 2010 has all of the ingredients of a great film: A story by Arthur C. Clarke, a cast that includes A+ actors like John Lithgow, Helen Mirren and Roy Scheider — and then add to that you’ve got a visual genius like Syd Mead working on the production design. Even more impressive is the fact that as a genre hard science fiction films represent a blank canvas of possibilities. Yet as a film fanboy (who loves science fiction) I hated every frame of it. Read more…
I’ve been following the soap opera of all of those tech blogs think they know what Steve Jobs will produce next for his tablet device. However my gut feeling is that science fiction is always the best inspiration for Jobs, and in his case my gut tells me that his inner hippy will bring him back to the 1968 film 2001: A Space Odyssey. Jobs stole the 3.5″ disk from Star Trek so Kubrick seems to be even better source material. So my prediction is that the tablet will function like the flat-screen tv sets that are seen in the Discovery. In addition to video and graphic displays for monitoring the vital signs of our world I also bet that we’ll see iPhone functionality with potential video conferencing: Read more…
This amazing clip of Kubrick from April 6, 1968 is now over 40 years old — yet there’s something so timeless about that film for me, which is amazing given how important special effects were to the production. It’s also incredible to realize that Kubrick started working on 2001 in 1965, proof that good things take time. The above clip is from a longer special seen here: Read more…
The first Amazon Kindle looked like something from the 90s, you’d half expected that it would be running HyperCard with some Voyager CD-ROMs providing the content. So with the debut of the Amazon Kindle 2 I was sort of surprised to see them still sticking with the same old ugly plastic buttons, a black and white screen and that awful off white casing surrounding the display. Frankly in a recession I’m not going to drop $360 on something that looks like it should cost under $100. Read more…
The ATMs at the Javits Center charge a whopping $3 fee — however this may not be a bad thing as the New York Comic Con could empty your wallet rather quickly. The showroom floor is so packed with goodies it’s as if the Mall of America were run by fanboys — every inch is crammed with everything from arty urban toys to rare collectables. I’m also always blown away with the wide variety of trinkets, there’s something for everyone from anime hats to punk rock stickers.
If you’re a classic film or TV fanboy you have to check out the LIFE photo archive hosted by Google — it’s like having a personal time machine to view film history. After spending a few hours I found a few gems that are worth sharing, but these are just the tip of the iceberg. Shown above is a 1950 photo of Walt Disney, and below is a 1968 photo of Stanley Kubrick on set of 2001: A Space Odyssey.
How many times to you get to see a rehearsal for a scene in Citizen Kane? This photo is from 1940 and shows Orson Welles at the high point of his career. Read more…
