If you didn’t already watch the teaser above. And then consider that this film is a zero-budget production. And the CGI is created with Blender, the free, open source 3D program.

Now, the Project London film is amazing on it’s own, thanks to the impressive sense of style they’ve got – from the inspired music to the look of the ships – it really looks amazing. However it’s also quite the milestone for Blender. The software has been around for years and has been getting better and better. Now it’s startign to prove itself as a true alternative for CGI work in a live-action film.

I’ll be keeping a close eye on Project London and suggest you do the same. I suspect it’ll be quite a while still before it is complete, but that’s the price you pay for doing amazing stuff without a budget. Meanwhile, here’s another short clip.

Yesterday Steve Jobs‘ favourite gadget blog Gizmodo posted the pic. We posted it on Facebook and users dugg the article.

Once it passed 200 or so diggs it became popular and went on to the front page. That is pretty much the holy grail of traffic, bringing some 50,000 visitors to the Gizmodo during the 2½ hours an article typicallys tays on Digg’s front page. And amazingly, it didn’t even quiet down after that, but the with over 1000 Diggs the article was promoted to the “Top in all Topics” section, displayed on every page on Digg!

This morning we noticed Gizmodo had posted a follow-up article, answering one big question presented in the comments:

What if Darth Vader was a robot operated by evil hamsters?

As of today the Gizmodo article has become one of the most popular on that site and has been read almost 170,000 times, with 40,000 of those continuing on to visit our site. We weren’t expecting a traffic spike anytime soon and that lead to our site becoming unresponsive for a little while yesterday, but our host Nebula handled it quickly and the server has been holding up well since then.

There are four big lessions in this:
1) The internet is unpredictable, we didn’t get on Digg when we spent months making the Iron Sky teaser, but one picture became hugely popular.
2) Never underestimate the traffic. Optimizing websites pays off.
3) If you like Iron Sky, let it show! It’s people who click “like” or “digg” or link to our websites that make it all the more popular. And then good things happen.
4) Usually if you Photoshop hamster-controlled Darth Vader robots you are strange, but if you work for Gizmodo, it’s your job. Apparently.

So thank you to all our fans, old and new alike! You’re awesome.

Finnish cover for Man in the High Castle

In October 1972 sci-fi author Philip K. Dick contacted the FBI. You’d be forgiven thinking that maybe he was worried about photocopiers that now (since 1968) could infringe on copyrights in full color! Or maybe a case of plagarism. After all, in ten years time his novel “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep” would go on to be adapted as Blade Runner, one of the greatest science fiction films of all time.

But, let’s not forget this is Philip K. Dick we’re talking about, so it turned out to be something far more bizarre.

“I am a well-known author of science fiction novels, one of which dealt with Nazi Germany (called MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE, it described an ‘alternate world’ in which the Germans and Japanese won World War Two and jointly occupied the United States).
…
I bring this to your attention because several months ago I was approached by an individual who I have reason to believe belonged to a covert organization involved in politics, illegal weapons, etc., who put great pressure on me to place coded information in future novels ‘to be read by the right people here and there’, as he phrased it. I refused to do this.”

His house had been burglarized a year earlier and Philip K. Dick had become convinced the crime was politically motivated. More specifically, be believed it was the work of Neo-Nazis, possibly due to the anti-nazi tone of Man in the High Castle. So, naturally, he concluded that Nazis were also behind this sinister worldwide organization that was blackmailing science fiction writers into including secret messages in their works.

Apparently, the plan was to “decode” this information in the future and release the startling findings to the public. It was to concinve people, that a virulent and deadly new form of Syphilis (that did not really exist) was being spread in the US by foreign agents. This was to be seen as the first strike of World War III and compel the US to respond, starting the full-scale nuclear war.

How the Nazis would have benefited from this was not clear, but hey, even the best writers love Nazis as villains because everyone knows they are so evil they don’t really need a motivation for perpetrating unspeakable acts of destruction..

In the end the FBI decided this strange case of “Solarcon-6″ did not warrant further study. Possibly wisely, considering that it’s now safe to say WWIII did not start over Syphilis and that two years later, in 1974, while recovering from dental surgery Philip K. Dick started to receive messages from God.

You can read the whole story of Solarcon-6 in the latest issue of the Fortean Times. Registration required, but it’s free.

And talking about the Moon, you’ve all heard that scientists are considering the recently found hole on the moon as an exellent place for a colony.

Filmmakers are not the most positive bunch when it comes to future. The visions of tomorrow are rarely too encouraging – usually, it’s just death and oppressin waiting for us.

But not always! Every now and then, a sci-fi film comes up with a world to come that’s almost beararble.

Almost.

Zombie Room takes a look at the top-7 most promising days after tomorrow. Enjoy.

7. VANILLA SKY

You know Second Life? Yeah, it’s the hyped application where you are able to create your “second life” – you know, own a home, look cool, have actual friends and have no bad hair days. The only thing is that uh… Second Life sucks the shit out of your ass through your mouth – it’s ugly, it’s slow and it’s the birth place of the saddest Internet phenomenon out there: Second Life sex.

Can’t beat the SL Sex

In Vanilla Sky future – it’s all happening. And the girls… they are not just any random pixel lumps, but look amazingly like Penelope Cruz or Cameron Diaz.

But in real life, we still have few miles to go…

6. BACK TO THE FUTURE

Hoverboards. Do I need to say more?

I do? Well, one-size-shrinks-to-fit-all -jackets!

5. MINORITY REPORT

In the future, there’s no crime – and even those who are planning to do them, get their asses kicked by Tom Cruise and his special pre-crime unit. But what’s even cooler is that in the future we go back to the times when working on computers actually felt like something. Instead of your boring old mactop, you need a huge room with a screen the size of a small movie theater, special gloves to operate it – and a physique of a sports hero to use things like the Internet. In Minority Report’s future, there’s no more fat nerds rotting away in their mom’s basements – these guys and girls are out on the squash range to be in enough good shape for some serious Googling.

Nerds of the Minority Report future stay fit.

4. THE TRUMAN SHOW

Imagine this: no more Big Brother. No more The Bold and the Beautiful. No more crappy talent shows and no more Survivor – everything is made obsolete by the biggest reality TV show ever – The Truman Show. And what’s even better: instead of you hoping every day you pass a newspaper stand that these clowns on Big Brother, Talent and Idols would get in the same car and drive off the cliff, dying a quick but an extremely painful death – you’d actually care about the main guy! The world would be again a bit nicer place to live, and everybody wins.

Ok, it might not be the most ethical thing – but all we’re asking for is a bit of sacrifice to keep the rest of the world is happily sedated.

3. MOON

In Duncan Jones‘ Moon, everything is just fine. The world’s energy crisis has been solved: we’ve finally established a Helium-3 mining station on the Moon, so no oil or nuclear energy problems anymore!

Helium-3 is an extremely powerful source of energy which we don’t have too much on Earth, but Moon (supposedly) has quite a lot of it. And what’s even better, it only takes one guy to take care of the whole operation. It’s not like he’s going to start rebelling against Earth or anything, he’s pretty much stuck there – and even finding a replacement for him once things go wrong isn’t a problem, thanks to our friend, technology!

Again – it only takes a little bit of unselfish scarification. Come on, you can give that much to your community, right?

2. WALL-E

One thing we all hate is cleaning up the mess we make. Now, in the perfect future, there would be robots to do that for you, right? In the Wall-E future, we would get on a huge spaceship travelling away from Earth – and we’d had to do absolutely nothing in order to survive. Just sit down, chat with our mates and let the ship take care of every need we come up with.

And yeah, we’d be coming back to Earth one day, once the mess we made was cleaned up. And next time, we didn’t have to worry so much about things like environment etc. – the ship would stay there, so if everything would go to hell again, we could just jump onboard and come a back a few hundred years later!

1. IDIOCRACY

If ignorance is bliss – then Idiocracy is the ultimate utopia. In this future scenario, created by Mike Judge (of Beavis and Butt-Head fame) claiming aloud that your highest principles in life are sex and money is OK – actually, it’s considered as a damn philosophical statement! Ok, the world might be going to hell, and yeah, maybe watering your plantations with Gatorade is not the best idea out there – but hell, travelling in time there with your current brain capacity – which we both know is not much – you’d still be the combination between Einstein, Sun Tzu and Aristoteles.

(Via Zombie Room)

Tiesittekö, että 95% hammasbakteereista esiintyy suussa? Entäs sen, että uudet Huba-sketsit ovat pyörineet TV2:n sunnuntai-illassa jo useamman viikon?

Energia on Huban kavereiden kanssa tuottanut joukon sketsejä TV2:n Radio Millennium -ohjelmaan. Jaksot tulevat ulos sunnuntaisin 23.20 ja uusitaan myöhään tiistaina. Huba-sketsejä nähdään yleensä yksi tai kaksi ohjelman “mainoskatkolla”, jossa tulee myös muiden tuottamia sketsejä. Sekoittamisen vaaraa ei pitäisi olla, Huban sketsit kun tuppaavat erottumaan.

Ja koska elämme tulevaisuudessa, niin sketsit löytyvät myös YleX:n sivuilta:
Korvaako koulutus kaiken?
Piilokameran parhaat
Länsimarket
Oral Attack

Käykääpä katsomassa.

In case you’re wondering, The Truth Today is satirical newspaper from the year 2018, created by us and the Wreckamovie community to promote Iron Sky.

Check out the High quality version of the motion poster on the Iron Sky website!

In addition we released new artwork, including a new teaser poster and pictures of the main cast in character! I’ll tell you more about the casting in a second when we get the press release out. Meanwhile enjoy the pictures.

Julia Dietze as Renate Richter

Götz Otto as Klaus Adler

Iron Sky teaser poster

You can find more concept art on the propaganda page.

Thanks to Twitter I came across this upcoming web serial called The Mercury Men. It’s not the first pulp scifi series on the internets, but judging by the trailer it’s the most promising. Scary glowing men shooting lightning from their hands, ray guns and scientists, what could go wrong? However what I found most promising was the actor playing the scientist, he has the perfect face for the role.

There have been rumors of Peter Jackson and Nazi zombies and Stephen Fry as a guest on Simon Mayo’s radio program last weekend claimed the following:

Fran [Walsh], who is PJ’s wife and writes with him, they’ve come up with this idea called The Christ Must Die in which Nazi zombies go back in time to stop Jesus from being born.

Slashfilm has some more info, including official denial from Jackson’s manager. However no-one seems to be certain if it’s a joke or a real project. Let’s keep thumbs up for the latter. Also, to increase the coolness the hosts commented that the film reminds them of this film called Iron Sky.

Peter Jackson is also producing the above South-African feature District 9 that is based on a short film made famous on YouTube. To oversimplify, the idea is “Apartheid with aliens”. The short film was inspiring on it’s own and the feature is pretty much unmissable.

Unfortunately universe has balanced all this awesomeness out with bad news from two other Nazi zombie projects. Both Finnish led WWII zombie film Stone’s War and Dutch nazi zombie flick Worst Case Scenario are in a limbo.

Worst Case Scenario is/was the Dutch flick with the teaser showing ballooning nazi zombies. According to Twitch the film is pretty much dead in the water right now.

due to “productional stalemate” the film is again very much locked in development hell. Apparently there is a Catch-22 in there somewhere, with several parties waiting for each other to proceed and there is no obvious way out in the foreseeable future.

The situation with Stone’s War is even more confusing. Stone’s War is the zombies in WWII movie from the Finnish director Marko Mäkilaakso. The film has been in a literal developement hell for years with the first attempt at filming it being shut down because ofmoney trouble – causing them to loose not only all the filmed material but also the rights to the original title War of the Dead.

We talked to the director last year at Assembly and at that time it seemed the film was almost complete and should come out during 2008. However something went wrong and the film vanished.

According to what little info there has leaked from a blog at Suomen Kuvalehti and Yle news, the film is supposed to be ready. However it seems the film’s Lithuanian producer Ramunas Skikas is sitting on the release. Press hasn’t been able to get a comment from him and the distributors are being told that they’ll get their copies soon. While Hollywood studios sometimes sit on finished films there are very few producers in Europe who could afford to do that for long – if the film has been made and paid for they need the get the investment back.

Nobody seems to know what’s going on, but a safe bet would have it having something to do with money being owed by someone to someone else. Let’s hope the film sees the light of day soon. Meanwhile director Mäkilaakso is apparently working on his next film with Stan Lee.

Not to end with a downer one more bit of good news for Finnish horror:

Skeleton Crew, the horror project by our collegues from the neighboring city of Ylöjärvi will come out on DVD in the US on 21st of June. We saw a short reel last year, but have yet to see the whole film. However there are already some reviews online; one, two, three.

Would love to get a look at the finished film soon. We shot the music video for Hour of Emptiness at the same abandoned mental hospital last year, and actually with a lot of the same crew as the film.

Edit: The great guys from @empiremagazine were awesome enough to ask Peter Jackson about the Nazis vs. Jesus film in a recent interview. Unfortunately it looks like it’s not happening.

I just came back from a pre-screening for JJ Abrams’s Star Trek. The following review will try and be as spoiler free as possible.

You should know – and you probably should guess it from the site you’re on, I’m a Star Trek fan. I used to be a huge fan and could pretty much list all TNG episodes by name in high school. These days I’ve grown older, spent seven years working on this Star Trek parody, and to the horror of my 12-year-old self, became more or less bored of the later shows starting from Voyager. I’d think eventually even my younger self would understand this, if not because the mediocrity of Enterprise, but with the last film in the series, Star Trek: Nemesis being a piece of radioactive fecal matter that should be hurled into the sun. So now you know from what point I judge this film.

So, how about the film? Simply put, it’s good. If you don’t really care for Star Trek it’s going to be as good as any scifi actioner and definitely worth a try.

Abrams does a great job with the characters, actually he does a far better job at re-creating the original characters of Kirk, Spock and McCoy than I expected. Most of all Zachary Quinto’s Spock. He’s been described as having been born to play Spock and yes, he really is that good. Karl Urban as McCoy tries hard to steal every scene he is in, but ends up being kind of underused. The weakest link here is Kirk. The three main characters work together, but left on his own Kirk is a bit bland.

The rest of the crew are pretty underused, Chekov is kind of annoying, Sulu is just like in the original and Uhura has been re-invented as a woman I think everyone always imagined her being – given that all she really did was answer the telephone. The exception here is Simon Pegg as Scotty who goes on and does steal every scene he is in. Then again I couldn’t bring myself to say a bad word about the man unless he punched me in the face and pissed in both of my shoes.

If Finland had any more Trekkers I’d be burned at the stake for saying this, but in many points this re-invented crew of the Enterprise were far more interesting characters than the 60’s originals. In reality though it’s not that big of a suprise if you compare the writing in 60’s tv series to the writing we see these days – it’s not that writers have gotten better, but the industry has changed.

The next thing to notice are the visuals. Let’s get this one out of the way first: The lens flares are ridiculous. They actually kind of work at times, but then they can also be annoying at times. The effects are great, there’s no way around it. And they really manage to avoid the sterile cgi look most of the time. However the designs are where it all gets a bit mixed, really.

There are many things in this movie that look just like what I’d do. There is the drydock scene seen in the trailer. People who only see Star Wreck after seeing this film will think we just did a cheap ripoff of it. It’s actually rather strange experience that scene, since it’s almost perfect in the way that it’s just what I’d do. Then there are the engineering decks of the ships that once again seem to channel what I was kind of thinking Star Wreck should have had – however we never had the resources to show any engineering decks. But then there is the bridge that is… strange. It’s unique allright, but it’s a bit hard to take seriously with it’s decorative walls and bling bling levers. The dissonance continues with the clothes that go from okay to looking like disposable raincoats.

At this point I’m starting to realise that this is not a very traditional film review. Instead I feel more like going trough a raw cut of Star Wreck. Please excuse me, since seven years and all that… However I’m not the only one who will review the film like this. Us Star Trek fans tend to feel a bit possessive of the franchise.

But back to the film. So the characters are great, visuals are good and the film is very entertaining. However one thing that’s lacking is the story. I wouldn’t call it bad, but it’s both a bit complicated and rather empty. It won’t bore you and if you get confused you most likely won’t care. There is a lot of humor, even so much that sometimes the film feels like a comedy, but there is not much in the way of other feelings. It’s a lighthearted romp trough space. It’s all fine if you consider this is a beginning of a series. As a singular film I would like to have some more meat to sink my teeth into. Another thing I was a bit disappointed of (and I know this is something that will divide opinions like a lightsaber) is that in the end this film wasn’t as much of a clean reboot as I hoped. And certainly not as clean of a reboot I would have done.

Overall I liked the film. Not only did I like to watch it, but I liked it even on the level of agreeing with most of the choices Abrams and co. did. And while it wasn’t a cinematic masterpiece that just leaves me wanting to see the series go on. Origin stories are the hardest and if Star Trek can deliver The Dark Knight to this film’s Batman Begins I will be not only a happy trekkie, but a happy film geek.