Archive Category: Movies & SciFi
Stitch Humidifier
I love this little humidifier shaped like Stitch, the little blue alien in Disney’s Lilo & Stitch cartoon!
The water vapor looks like Stitch is belching off something foul, but the only bad thing about it seems to be the price tag. At $120, this Stitch humidifier may just be leaving your wallet in tatters.
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Muggle Quidditch (Yes, It’s a Real Sport!)
Remember the game Quidditch in J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter books? Well it turns out that a non-wizard version of the game is taking college campuses by storm. And yes, they do it with broomsticks up their butts:
The earthbound variation is called Muggle Quidditch. The sport originated in 2005 when a student at Middlebury College adapted the game for the nonmagical world. Its popularity quickly spread, and today more than 150 colleges throughout the United States have Quidditch teams. [...]
While the wizards in the Potter series play Quidditch on flying broomsticks, Muggles (author J. K. Rowling’s word for nonmagical people) run holding a broom between their legs. It’s a lot harder than it looks, and just as awkward, says Stack, who is team captain while Culleton is studying abroad.
“We’re a small, kind of ragtag group,” she says. “Not everyone has brooms yet, so some people play with Wiffle bats or lacrosse sticks. And we only have two hoops. You’re supposed to have three on each end of the field.”
As in the fictional game, each Muggle Quidditch team has seven players: three chasers, two beaters, a keeper, and a seeker. Chasers score points by throwing a quaffle, or volleyball, through one of three hoops (worth 10 points) while trying to avoid bludgers, or dodgeballs, that are thrown by beaters. (If chasers are hit by a bludger, they must drop the quaffle.) The keeper’s job is to protect the three goalposts, while the seeker must capture the snitch — a sock stuffed with tennis balls carried by a person (typically a cross-country runner) dressed in gold. Capturing the snitch nets an additional 30 points and ends the game.
Aah, to be young and going to nerdvana, er … college: Link (with video clip goodness, of course) - via Geekologie
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Movies That Never Were
“For every movie that gets made there are a hundred that never happen. And for every version of a movie you see in theaters, there are a dozen other versions that never made it past the script stage.” Thus begins an article that Devin Faraci has written at movie site CHUD, chronicling the rise and fall of versions of movies you probably didn’t even know existed. Among the theoretical films discussed? A Star Trek IV starring Eddie Murphy, a Planet of the Apes film directed by controversial helmer Oliver Stone, and the tantalizing possibility of an ultra-realistic Batman directed by the visionary Darren Aronofsky:
Aronofsky wasn’t interested in making anything that resembled a Batman film that had come before. He also wasn’t interested in hewing close to Miller’s original comics. This film saw Bruce Wayne wandering the streets after the murder of his parents; he’s taken in by an auto mechanic named Big Al (Aronofsky’s version of Alfred). Bruce grows up a borderline psychotic who begins taking violent vengeance on street thugs. He turns an abandoned subway station below Big Al’s auto shop into his version of the Batcave. He puts a bus engine in a black Lincoln Continental as his version of the Batmobile. Over the course of the story he assembles the elements of the costume and persona of Batman (or The Bat-Man, as he’s called).
This Batman is the reality of what a guy in a costume beating up criminals would be like - insane, overdramatic, barely likable.
Who among us hasn’t seen a movie and wondered what might have been? Have any similar thoughts? Think that some of these movies would have been better as the alternate versions described here? Feel free to discuss in the comments below.
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Enterprise (D) Takes on a Super Star Destroyer
Yes, we’ve all been subjected to Star Wars vs. Star Trek videos before, but this one is really, really good. Run time: 5 minutes, 36 seconds.
Via Topless Robot
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Papercraft of Hellboy’s Revolver
This fantastic papercraft model of Hellboy’s revolver The Good Samaritan features a working hinge and loadable bullets. It probably takes dozens of hours of tedious cutting and gluing, so why don’t we just gawk appreciatively at the pictures?
Link (in Japanese) - via Geekologie
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The Best Iron Man Halloween Costume EVAR!
Whoa! This is awesome: when his son wanted an Iron Man suit for Halloween, Enrique of LinuxNerd blog decided that he’s going to build the ultimate Iron Man costume.
So he spent two months modding a store-bought costume to include:
* Repulsor Air - Blows air with CO2 air pump on hip and hose back to his hand.
* Repulsor Missile - Using CO2 air pump can also launch a paper missile.
* Repulsor Sensor/Light - A magnetic switch sensor lights his repulsor hand light and fades out and in his glowing eyes. Arduino handles this effect.
* Arc Reactor - A LED night light from Costco embedded in his chest. [...]
It rocks to have a geeky dad! Check out the video clip here: Link - via Gizmodo
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The 1973 Opel Batmobile
We’ve had a few posts about fan-made batmobile, but this one is pretty neat. Behold, the 1973 Opel Batmobile! Link | eBay page
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Indiana Jones Golden Idol Cake
Lori of Clever Cake Studio made this fantastic Indiana Jones and the Raider of the Lost Ark Golden Idol birthday cake. The Golden Idol is made from marzipan, and Lori was thoughtful enough to make a marzipan bag, so you can perform the famous switch! Link - via Super Punch
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Giant Sculpture of Darth Vader and Yoda Carved out of Butter
An old, but good story:
Each year at the Tulsa State Fair, an artist is commissioned to make a sculpture out of butter. In past years, cows, farmers, and baseball players were created out of hundreds of pounds of butter. This year, in celebration of Star Wars’s final episode, TSF is featuring Darth Vader and Yoda, all dairy-like.
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Fanboys
(video link)
Fanboys is set in 1999, when we waited with high expectations for The Phantom Menace. Three fans decide they can’t wait and try to break into George Lucas’ home to steal the print. This movie is now scheduled to be in theaters on February 6th, but that’s just the latest of many release dates for a movie that has been years in the making. Wikipedia has the story. Link -Thanks, Christophe!
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James Bond’s Weird World of Inventions (c. 1966)
James Bond’s gadgets had captivated moviegoers for a looong time! Here’s a 1966 article from Popular Science detailing some of the gadgets featured in 007’s Thunderball:
Because their success has spawned so many imitators, the Bond producers now have to reach for some pretty spectacular devices to keep Bondophiles on the edge of their seats. So they’ve invested about $500,- 000 for the zany gadgets in the newest 007 thriller, Thunderball, starring Sean Connery.
Most of the infernal devices never existed in the original Ian Fleming stories. “Our only excuse for using them” says screenwriter Richard Maibaum, “is that such devices are available and cry out to be buckled onto James Bond’s back.”
Some of the gadgets actually are buckled onto Connery’s famous back. One is the Bell jet-pack flying belt Bond uses in the beginning of the film to escape from a French chateau. Connery has to wear a special Dacron suit whose color won’t bleach out when touched by the belt’s highly concentrated peroxide fuel. The belt provides about 20 seconds of flight, but only 10 seconds is used for the upward flight. It would be disastrous to run out of power a couple of hundred feet up in the air.
Thunderbolts prize piece of gatgetry is a $300,000. 64-foot hydrofoil yacht. It belongs to 007’s enemies—SPECTRE—a sinister gang of international criminals that has hijacked two H-bombs from NATO. They’re holding the bombs for $300 million in ransom. If the Allies don’t pay off, SPECTRE threatens to wipe out two Western cities.
SPECTRE (Special Executive for Counterintelligence, Terrorism, Revenge, and Extortion) is led by Emilio Largo from the hydrofoil floating fortress called the Disco Volante.
Ah, the Disco Volante! I had forgotten about that … Link
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Was This House in the Twilight Movie?
Now that Twilight is out and every teenage girls in the whole United States have seen the movie, would someone tell me if this house is indeed in the movie? The chances of me seeing this movie is pretty slim 
It’s my neighbor’s house who rented it out for a movie shoot (rumored to be Twilight): Link
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Rebel Attack in Lego
Flickr user roguebantha_1138 built a huge Lego diorama that tells a story, set in the Star Wars universe!
Welcome to Mustaneer! (it’s not as distant as Mustafar) Basically it’s a Rebel attack on an Imperial base and mining installation. About a year in the making, on and off, it is 75 by 125cm and all built in 1:200 scale. I’ve taken LOADS of pictures (OK, I’ve taken too many) but I’ve tried to write something interesting with each, so if you have a bit of spare time join me on a journey to a galaxy far far away….
See lots more pictures in the Flickr set. Link -Thanks, xadrian!
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Star Trek Light Switch Cover Plate
Gasp - these are wonderful … in a geeky way: behold the Star Trek: The Next Generation light-switch or power-outlet cover plates, perfect
for the Trekker in all of us (these are made by Eugene Roddenberry, son of the Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry)
Link - via GeekAlerts
This would be perfect in the Star Trek House
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Movies About People Whose Lives Are Way Worse Than Yours
When times are bad, lots of people go to the movies to escape their troubles. But you’re having a horrible, terrible, no good, very bad day, there are a few movies that will make you think that your life isn’t really all that bad.
Always Watching blog got a list of 8 of such movies. For example:
THE DIVING BELL AND THE BUTTERFLY
His problem: Suffered an unpredicted stroke, resulting in complete paralysis except for his left eye, and died two years later.
Your problem: Alone on Valentine’s Day.
By all accounts, French journalist Jean-Dominique Bauby led a pretty great life. He had found success and fame as the editor of Elle magazine, was a father to two kids, and certainly wasn’t lacking in female companionship. Wealth, family and romance – the rest of us could only be so lucky. But on December 8th, 1995, Jean-Do had a debilitating stroke, leaving him with someone called “locked in syndrome.” Paralyzed everywhere except for his left eye, he could still see and hear but was totally unable to reply to his surroundings in any way.
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly is a very subdued film about hope and inspiration, in that it doesn’t go for the typical “do your best!” platitudes, but instead subjects you to very difficult circumstances and allows the main character to accomplish incredible things in them. The movie is shot primarily in first person, which does a superb job at making you feel really fucking frustrated for Jean-Do as he lolls around without an ounce of control of his own body. The aforementioned inspiration comes from that, even in this state, he managed to write a book by blinking it out one letter at a time. And now he’s got a pretty damn good film about him, too. Kind of makes you feel unaccomplished, huh?
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The Incredible Quantum of Solace
In celebration of the release of the latest James Bond film, Quantum of Solace, Youtube user cutHD has put together this trailer mashup of The Incredibles and Quantum. This uses audio directly from the Quantum trailer intercut with scenes from The Incredibles movie.
I love me a good trailer mashup. I would love to get in the mind of someone who watched a 007 trailer and thought to themselves, “This would look amazing cut to a Disney movie!” What do you guys think of this one?
Link
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Spatula City
In our recent post about the Plier Store, Neatorama reader Pudifoot mentioned Spatula City, a famous skit from “Weird Al” Yankovic’s UHF. Since I actually have a friend who sells spatulas (lots of it - he’s a spatula salesman), I had to find the the clip:
This one’s for you, Joe! Hit play or go to Link [YouTube] - Thanks Pudifoot!
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Alien LEGO by Arvo
Arvo, the LEGO brothers/artists extraordinaire who made the awesome LEGO Iron Man we featured before on Neatorama also made this: the most realistic Alien ever built with LEGOs! Link
Previously on Neatorama:
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5 Things You Didn’t Know About James Bond
Think you know a lot about James Bond? Well, AskMen dug up some pretty esoteric fun facts about everybody’s favorite spy. Here’s the 5 Things You Didn’t Know About James Bond - for example:
1- James Bond was inspired by an American zoologist
To come up with his Bond character, Fleming pooled traits from several people he knew and had read about. In naming his soon-to-be famous spy, Fleming picked James Bond after the famed bird expert with the same name. Bond wrote the acclaimed Birds of the West Indies, considered by many experts to be the definitive book on Caribbean birds. To come up with Bond’s cool demeanor, Fleming took attributes from real-life spies Sidney Reilly and Sir William Stephenson, as well as popular jazz composer Hoagy Carmichael. In fact, Fleming, who worked in British naval intelligence, also channeled his former peers in the creation of his iconic character. [...]
4- There are only seven 00s
You’re forgiven if you were under the impression that Bond’s MI6 organization was fully stocked with agents. Throughout the movies, we learn that Bond is one of just seven 00 agents spying for the British, but he has the best knack for staying alive. In different movies, we’ve see the deaths of 002, 003, 004, and 009. Agent 006, believed killed, returns as the villain in GoldenEye before he’s disposed of. Besides Bond, only the unnamed 008 proves to be a skilled agent. He’s mentioned several times as Bond’s replacement should he die or be pulled off a mission for insubordination. It’s unclear why no 001 or 005 have ever been mentioned.
Read the whole list here: Link
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Batman, The Dark Knight vs. Batman, Turkey
The Dark Knight has a new enemy to battle: the mayor of Batman, Turkey!
Huseyin Kalkan, the pro-Kurdish Democratic Society Party mayor of Batman, has accused "The Dark Knight" producers of using the city’s name without permission.
"There is only one Batman in the world," Kalkan said. "The American producers used the name of our city without informing us." [...]
The mayor is prepping a series of charges against Nolan and Warner Bros., which owns the right to the Batman character, including placing the blame for a number of unsolved murders and a high female suicide rate on the psychological impact that the film’s success has had on the city’s inhabitants.
Photo: Bryce Edwards [Flickr]
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Batman Costume Hoodie
You better have the skills of the Caped Crusader when you wear this Batman costume hoodie, because you’re surely asking for someone to beat you up (either because they want it, or they just like to beat up nerds!)
This Batman Costume Hooded Sweatshirt is based on the original gray Caped Crusader Bat-suit. The outside of the hood features Batman’s ears. The inside of the hood features a “drop down” mask that can be worn or kept folded under the hood. The cape can be easily taken off with metal snaps.
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Weird Head of Hulk Squeeze Toy Vomits Own Brain!
Super Punch blog found a really bizarre squeeze toy (office de-stresser?) in shape of the Hulk’s head. When you squeeze it, Hulk shows his rage by … um, vomiting his brain out!
Link (embedded YouTube link)
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Darth Vader Toaster
A geek and his money are soon parted. For $55, you can own a toaster that burns the image of Darth Vader into your toast. Remember: once you turn to the crispy side of the force, forever will it dominate your destiny.
Link via Topless Robot
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Early Star Wars Storyboards
The “Early Star Wars Storyboards” photo set over at Flickr contains storyboards from the first movie, which was named The Star Wars when these sketches were made.
Link - via kottke.org
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Knitted Ash From Evil Dead
Photo: cakeyvoice [Flickr]
That’s a knitted Ash Williams from Bruce Campbell’s Evil Dead series, fresh from killin’ (and re-killin’) Deadites. The cute figurine is made by Hannah J. Simpson of cakeyvoice, who also makes other fantastic knitted minions.
For all you horror movie fans, don’t miss Stacy’s excellent four-part write-ups for Neatorama:
- The Stories Behind Three Classic Halloween Movies
- The Stories Behind Three More Horror Classics
- Horror Movie Trivia: The Trifecta
- Horror Movie Trivia Part Four: Stacy’s Revenge (Evil Dead trivia are here)
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Build the Starship Enterprise from Office Supplies
Boredom at work can be a dangerous thing. Instructables shows you how to turn that mind-numbing time to good use by making a Starship Enterprise out of supplies that are laying around. Link -Thanks, b chafy!
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