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After reading Ernest Cline‘s Ready Player One, Steven Spielberg was amazed by the world on the page, but initially, he had no idea how to adapt it. He credited Cline as his handbook and guide for the OASIS, the digital landscape where much of the story is set.

“The virtual world was amazing,” Spielberg told the crowd at Comic-Con. “When I read Ernie’s book, it was the most amazing flash-forward and flashback at the same time, to a decade I was very involved in, the 1980s. There’s a flash forward to a future I think is awaiting all of us, whether we like it or not. The creation of a virtual world took almost two and a half years of preparation that will resolve at the end of March next year.”

Cline adapted his fun page-turner with Zack Penn, a co-writer of a movie that influenced the author, Last Action Hero. Based on the trailer, they’ve remained faithful to the story, but the world isn’t all about ’80s references. What Spielberg and his team look to have done with the OASIS appears to be nerd heaven for some fans. The trailer has plenty of easter eggs, but better yet, it teases some of Spielberg’s biggest and wildest set pieces.

According to the filmmaker, the teaser trailer gives audiences only a “slight taste of what’s to come.” Until then, let’s examine what we do see with a Ready Player One trailer breakdown.

A great new spin on the Amblin Entertainment logo helps set the tone for what’s to come.

The world has been ravaged by an ongoing energy crisis, famine, climate change, poverty, disease, and wars in Ready Player One. People spend more time in the OASIS than the real world. Many go to school and work in the virtual environment. It’s where Wade Watts (Tye Sheridan) escapes his life in the stacks, as seen above. In the book, Watts lives in one of the trailers with his aunt Alice and 15 others. When he was 11, his mom died of a drug overdose – which is a surprisingly heavy detail in Cline’s story. The only reason his aunt took him in was for food vouchers.

Watts spends a lot of time hiding out in this car. It’s where he enters the OASIS, where 60% of Spielberg’s movie takes place. Watts’ avatar name is Parzival. On February 11, 2045, that name shoots to the top of the scoreboard after he discovers the copper key, which is the first of three keys required for James Halliday’s (Mark Rylance) Hidden Egg challenge. There’s a copper, jade, and crystal key to collect to win the game (and Halliday’s fortune).

Parzival got the copper key by entering the Tomb of Horrors and defeating Acererak the Demi-Lich in a game of Joust. From the look of the movie, Parzival will play some different games, but Joust remains. He probably won’t have to know lines from War Games and Monty Python and the Holy Grail to advance in Halliday’s egg hunt, but we’ll see.

Halliday, by the way, is the one behind the OASIS. The video game designer couldn’t have done it without Ogden Morrow (Simon Pegg), though. They had a strained relationship, which Cline based on Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak. Morrow didn’t speak much with Halliday before his death.

The OASIS started as a game that later evolved into a new world. By 2045, it’s where most of humanity spends their time. When Halliday dies at the age of 67, he has no heir. He spent a lot of his life in isolation. Before his death, he recorded a video explaining his company, Gregarious Simulations Systems and his entire estate will go to the winner of the Hunt, an egg hunt for uber nerds in the OASIS.

The problem is that there are thousands of worlds in the OASIS, so within the first year, no clues, keys, or gates are discovered. Five years later, after some of the public has lost hope and interest in the challenge, Watts finds a key and The Hunt intensifies.

Many companies tried to take over Halliday’s Gregarious Simulations Systems, including Innovative Online Industries, a.k.a. IOI. The villainous corporation provides Internet to most of the world. Watts is wearing some of their gear in the photo above. The villain of the film, Nolan Sorrento (Ben Mendelsohn), is the head of a division at IOI completely dedicated to The Hunt.

Watts’ life is in the OASIS. It’s where he spends most of his time, interacts with others, and, as he says in the trailer, finds purpose. For Spielberg, the interaction between real life and virtual life made him want to direct Ready Player One:

“For me, what made me want to tell the story, more than anything else, was the kind of world 2045 gives to people – which is so dystopian. People are leaving the country, and all of the sudden virtual gives you a choice and gives you another world to exist in. You can do anything in that world. Anything you possibly could imagine, because there are haptic suits that haven’t come out on the market yet that give you a kind of feedback, that approximates touch, sensuality, and pain. That interaction between real life and virtual life, by the third act of this movie, is almost nonexistent. That from the book made me want to jump in the movie.”

IOI have players working for them trying to solve The Hunt. They’re called Sixers. They’re feared but not well-respected. They have the least imaginative avatars.

Here’s a closer look at some of them in avatar form.

At one point, Sorrento tries to recruit Watts to work for IOI for a nice price, but the young hero knows they want to corrupt the OASIS. He refuses and continues the search with Samantha Evelyn Cook/Art3mis (Olivia Cooke) and other allies in the game.

It’s not always about the competition in the OASIS. Parzival lets loose by going to a party in one chapter and rolls up in a DeLorean. In the shot above, Parzival walks by Harley Quinn and Deadshot. The party is packed with characters from Warner Bros. films, which could feel like self-promotion, but in this version of the OASIS, these characters would absolutely be there.

It’s Morrow’s birthday party, which is the party to be at in the OASIS. Art3miss and Parzival go together. The party is at The Distracted Globe, a zero gravity dance club on the planet Neonoir. Cline told Entertainment Weekly Gandalf can be spotted in the trailer dancing along with a lot of other hard-to-spot characters. Gandalf is easy to spot slightly to the right of the middle of this shot. In the book, Parzival dresses in a suit similar to the one Peter Weller wore in Buckaroo Banzai to the party.

Halliday grew up in the 1980s. His love for all things ’80s is evident in the OASIS and the Hunt. Spielberg is using some more modern references, though, like The Iron Giant, who towers above Parzival. At Comic-Con, the director said the giant robot plays a big role in the film. In the book, Ultraman and Mechagodzilla battle in a massive third act showdown, but The Iron Giant is replacing Ultraman.

Continue Reading Ready Player One Trailer Breakdown >>

The post ‘Ready Player One’ Trailer Breakdown: Let the Easter Egg Hunt Begin appeared first on /Film.

As young people struggle to gain a foothold in the housing market, houses are more than ever a good financial investment. Attempts to rein in the Canadian market are fighting some overwhelming economic forces.

A rover and landing platform developed as a backup for China’s Chang’e 3 moon mission will be repurposed to attempt the first touchdown on the lunar far side by the end of the decade, Chinese officials said.

The Chang’e 4 landing probe will carry more science payloads than the Chang’e 3 mission, which touched down in the moon’s Mare Imbrium region in December 2013, according to a Sept. 8 report by China’s state-run Xinhua news agency.

The mission to the moon’s far side, which is heavily cratered and rougher than the lunar near side, will require the launch of an additional spacecraft to relay signals between the lander and Earth.

The moon is tidally locked with Earth, meaning the same face is always visible from the ground.

A presentation on the Chang’e 4 mission at a June meeting of the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs indicated the relay satellite will be launched by the end of 2018 to a gravitationally-stable location called the Earth-moon L2 point beyond the moon’s far side.

The communications satellite will have a three-year mission, during which the Chang’e 4 lander will be launched, according to the June presentation made by a Chinese scientist.

Xinhua was less specific about the timing of the Chang’e 4 mission, only reporting it would launch before 2020.

Astronomers have long dreamed of a radio telescope on the far side of the moon, where it would be free from interference from artificial radio sources on Earth.

Xinhua quoted Zou Yongliao, an official from the moon exploration department of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, as saying: “If we can can place a frequency spectrograph on the far side, we can fill a void.”

If successful, Chang’e 4 will be the first spacecraft to land on the far side of the moon, which was never observed until the Soviet Union’s Luna 3 probe flew past the moon in 1959.

China is developing a more ambitious mission named Chang’e 5 for launch in 2017 to land on the moon and return surface samples. Engineers launched a demonstrator probe last year for a round-trip flight around the moon to prove out heat shield material for the Chang’e 5 mission.

China’s Chang’e 3 mission in 2013 accomplished the first soft landing on the moon since the Soviet Luna 24 sample return craft arrived in 1976. Chang’e 3’s six-wheeled Yutu rover traveled 114 meters (374 feet) before its mission ended.

Chinese scientists say a ground-penetrating radar on the rover detected nine distinct subsurface layers below the landing site, evidence the region has a complex geologic history distinct from areas explored by the Apollo astronauts, according to results published in March in the journal Science.

An ultraviolet telescope on the Yutu rover’s landing platform observed Earth’s plasmasphere from the moon.

Chang’e 3 landed just east of a 450-meter (1,500-foot) impact crater scientists say formed less than 100 million years ago.

The mission returned more than a terabyte of raw science data. China has released Chang’e 3 science data on a publicly accessible website, including a repository of spectacular images.

Chang’e 4’s basic platform is already assembled, with planning for the mission’s science payload underway, according to information released at June’s UN meeting.

Its prime engineering objective is to demonstrate landing and deep space data relay on the lunar far side. Science goals include studying lunar dust and geology, the radiation environment on the far side of the moon, and conducting radio astronomy observations.

Chinese officials have invited international partnerships on the Chang’e 4 mission, identifying secondary spacecraft, scientific instrumentation, deep space tracking, and data analysis as areas for potential cooperation.

U.S. law restricts NASA from bilateral cooperation with China on space missions.

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Lucasfilm and Disney have yet to make an official statement on the condition of Harrison Ford. Earlier this month, Ford broke his leg on the set of Star Wars Episode VII and the latest rumors state he might be unable to shoot for six months. That’s a huge chunk of downtime for the man who is rumored to be the lead of the film. In spite of that, we’ve heard Disney is trying to keep the December 18, 2015 release without any changes. That’s all well and good but some kind of change is inevitable as a result of the injury.

The latest rumor comes from New York City tabloid paper the New York Post. They report their “Hollywood sources” suggest the role of Oscar Isaac, whatever that role may be, could be expanded to fill some of Solo’s scenes.

According to the NY Post, there are three major contradicting points here about the Oscar Isaac Star Wars 7 role. First, from one source:

“They are now beefing up Oscar’s role to be bigger with Harrison injured,” said a source familiar with the project that’s currently shooting at London’s Pinewood Studios.

Then this from another source:

“Shutting down the movie is impossible,” and, “The basic story line will not change that much.” The source said no characters were being dramatically expanded, but “the order of filming scenes could be shifted” to work around Ford’s absence.

And then this statement from Disney, in regards to the Oscar Isaac Star Wars role being expanded:

This is categorically not true.

So three sources, three different stories, that sounds just about right in the world of Star Wars rumors. While I might buy that Isaac plays a descendant of Solo, I don’t buy his role being expanded to cover for Ford. All story rumors have pointed to Ford playing a mentor role this time around and that means age and experience. Isaac’s character, whomever it is, can’t fill that role.

The second source definitely sounds more plausible but, also sounds like the company line. Disney is surely managing this situation with kid gloves so as not to get fans and stockholders up in arms about the potential delays. I’d imagine we’ll get an update by Comic-Con time next month.

Do you think this rumor is true? How would you handle the situation?

The post Rumor: Oscar Isaac’s ‘Star Wars Episode VII’ Role Being Expanded; Disney Denies appeared first on /Film.

Computer geeks already knew it was possible to hack into a car's computerized systems and finally, two U.S. hackers - Charlie Miller and Chris Valasek, sponsored by the Pentagon's research facility DARPA recently demonstrated just how easy it is for malicious hackers to physically hijack a modern car using a laptop. Feeling exiting ... ? You should worry too..It's all very concerning.

Nicole finally gets a chance hack into a personal email, only to find herself in the bowels of Agent Topple's locked messages from the '90s. As imagined, this is unfortunate.

We've been watching as the SpaceX Grasshopper's leap has grown higher and higher with each successive launch (and landing!), and the rocket's flights never fail to impress. The reusable spacecraft's latest test is no exception: this time, the 'hopper sailed past its previous 840 feet record, stopping at 1,066 feet. According to the company, the launch had a "more precise" landing thanks to new sensors that measure distance between the ground and the vessel. It shows. The touch-down is both noticeably smoother than previous efforts and drama free compared to Russia's explosive incident in Kazakhstan. The private spaceflight company's latest video is after the break -- do yourself a favor and watch it in HD.

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Source: SpaceX (YouTube)