Illusionary

Some Gotham City social worker wasn't thinking through this placement. Andrew Bridgman and Julia Lapetit tell a Batman story more disturbing than what you may be used to.

Link -via Wolf Gnards

One is an Icelandic band who sings in a made up language. The other is an Icelandic-filming TV series that also sometimes sings in a made-up language. Never were two creations more right for each other. The band Sigur Rós will be making an appearance on Game of Thrones. Excellent.

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"At long last, it's here: The official video for 'Reflektor' by Arcade Fire. In the tradition of 'The Wilderness Downtown' and 'Neon Bible', it's an interactive experience. Go to justareflektor.com to experience it. Using your mouse, tablet, or mobile device, you can control the effects used in the video. Essentially, it turns you, the viewer, into the 'reflektor.'"
Did the Internet shut down for this, or is it not the early oughts any more?

The post Arcade Fire, "Reflektor" appeared first on The Awl.

This robot understands what it means to be human--perhaps better than most of us do.

John McNamee's comic offers a helpful (if unintended) reminder: reading this blog makes you more human.

Link

It’s amazing what mere time can do. For example, it turns a clip from Space Precinct (actual name), a 1994 BBC sci-fi police procedural (actual, non-satirical series concept), into a clip with an inexplicable cameo with inexplicable voice dubbing. Did they think that Idris Elba‘s voice alone would sound like it had better production value than the rest of the series?

I say odds are high.

(via Death and Taxes.)

Previously in Idris Elba

• Season 3 Will the Luther‘s Final
• New Thor 2 Pics
• Idris Elba as John Stewart

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I’m sure a lot of people don’t think of video games as pieces of art, but I’d say they’re wrong, and this proves it. Reddit user RudeBootie has put together a collection of 125 different backgrounds from various fighting backgrounds in animated GIF form, and they’re pretty mind-blowing.

As you can see above and below the artists that created these backgrounds did some fantastic things with pixels, and yes, it’s all pixel art. These images are packed with a ton of details and I’d have to imagine that backgrounds like these would take weeks to complete. My personal favorites are the blowing sand in the Egyptian scene above and the totally random manatees in the GIF below.

Don’t forget to check out the full collection by clicking here.

A band dressed as Transformers singing the music from Transformers: The Movie? YES PLEASE.

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I’m going to offend you. I hated The Mysterious Cities Of Gold cartoon. And the Belle & Sebastian cartoon. And Around The World With Willy Fog. And Dogtanian And The Three Muskehounds. Oh my goodness, they looked like cartoons, but they weren’t. They were the dullest, driest series, meandering to nowhere, and at no point did anyone hit anyone else with a frying pan. WHEN IS IT TIME FOR BANANAMAN?!

Which is the perfect introduction to tell you that there’s a Mysterious Cities Of Gold PC game Kickstarter, and it’s almost funded.

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(Photo: Associated Press)

Dave Barry writes that, "sometimes we think the Japanese do these things just to mess with western journalists." Well, it's possible. But the Associated Press reports that some people in Japan gather together to clean public restrooms for fun:

A group of adults and children assemble at a public toilet near a station in Tokyo on a Sunday morning at 6am.

They're here to scrub it clean - from top to bottom.

Urinals and toilets are the first targets, then it's the turn of the walls, the sinks and the floor.

By 7:30am, they are gone, leaving behind them a gleaming public toilet, looking as good as the day it was installed.

This group of bleach-sloshing good Samaritans are the Benjyo Soujer, a 35-member group created on Facebook, who task themselves with scrubbing clean Tokyo's thousands of public toilets one by one.

Link -via Dave Barry

(YouTube link)

Oh, there's a lot of good ones here …and they get funnier as they go along. The sequence that starts at 7:30 had me rolling on the floor (figuratively). -via Laughing Squid

We share a lot of life advice here at Lifehacker, but this comic pretty much sums up everything you need to know, courtesy of Zen Pencils and Bill Watterson's famous 1990 Kenyon graduation speech. It's the best thing you'll read all day.

It isn't exactly a life hack in the most traditional sense, but after reading this on Gawker, I couldn't help but feel it deserved a spot on our front page. Read the full comic below, weep, and then go home and post it on your wall.

"I was bored so I decided to make a compilation of the crashes on Thomas and Friends," writes YouTube's monsterjamfan100. [via hellojed at Metafilter]

Previously: The ultraviolence of Thomas the Tank Engine was blogged about by Mark more than a decade ago. Don't miss Biggie Smalls the Tank Engine.

First, the bad news: Season three of Luther is the show’s last.

And now the good: Showrunner Neil Cross wants to do a movie.

The most recent—and, now, final—season of Luther aired on BBC One last month and is set to debut on BBC America in September. So Americans fans (Those who didn’t pirate it, at least. Anyone?) will have four more episodes to watch before they say goodbye to DCI John Luther (Idris Elba) on their TV screens for good.

Via Digital Spy:

Speaking at the Edinburgh TV Festival, Cross confirmed that the show is “finished” on television.

When asked about its future, Cross replied: “There is none.

“The show’s finished. Idris, as he should be, he’s gone on to be a big movie star.”

Well if you put it like that, I suppose I can’t complain. British showrunners tend to have more leeway than American ones to bring their shows to a natural end. The Office, The IT Crowd, and now Luther all ended after three seasons when their showrunners decided they’d run their creative course. On the other side of the pond, you have Supernatural (nine seasons and counting). And as amazing as Elba is in Luther, I wouldn’t want him to not have the time to do more movies, indoctrinating a larger and large group of people into the Cult of Elba.

As for the Luther film, Cross confirmed that he’s been planning one and said he “think[s] there will” be a movie eventually. I wouldn’t hold my breath for something theatrical, but a one-off, made-for-TV deal probably isn’t too far-fetched.

As long as Alice (Ruth Wilson) is there, I don’t care what it is.

(via: Bleeding Cool)

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(Video Link)

Not only does this song manage to incorporate 26 different musical genres, but they even do so alphabetically with one genre per letter. Even if you're pretty into music, there are probably still a few you haven't heard of. For me, that includes math metal and zouk.

Even if you hate the sound though, the talent of these two guys is pretty indisputable. 

Via Incredible Things

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I’ve been wanting to get a jeans jacket for a while now just so I had a place to put the jumbo-size Jurassic Park patch I own. And then I found these. And now I think I might need two jackets. FivePointsEmbroidery on Etsy has some really great embroidered patches from all sorts of nerdy interests and some that are just plain beautiful to look at. See if there’s something for you…

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It's been said that the path to overcoming fear is paved with understanding. Normally I'd agree – but when it comes to Hawaii's carnivorous caterpillars, I find myself second-guessing the maxim. Because THESE CATERPILLARS EAT LIVING FLESH. Here's how evolution played this cruel joke on us all.

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Luther creator Neil Cross is returning to Doctor Who where he’ll get the chance to write for the newly cast Peter Capaldi.

Have you watched Luther? It’s an amazing show. Sometimes I find myself not being able to carry on with my day when I think about how good it is. And Idris Elba’s performance? Forget about it. But there I go getting distracted again.

The creator of that amazing show has worked on Doctor Who before – he wrote “The Rings of Akhaten” and “Hide” – and is officially set to return for Season 8. ”I am going back,” Cross told Stuff.co.nz. “I have got story ideas tucked away, but if I told you about them I would have to kill you. There’s a whole bunch of stuff I want to do. Steven [Moffat] is clearly very busy with the 50th anniversary special and Christmas special, but I have to find out from Steven what his intentions for the Doctor are and what sort of stories he wants me to write.”

Cross mentioned that while he’s excited to write for Capaldi, he’s sad he won’t be able to write for Matt Smith again, calling him, “the most outstanding Doctor to date.”

“I am familiar with Peter Capaldi’s work and I am looking forward to it. Peter has presence on the screen. I think he’s an outstanding choice,” said Cross. ”There’s something about his physicality, his image, his wit, that evokes the Doctor. There’s something about him that evokes classic Doctor Who.”

And does the New Zealand resident have any insight on whether or not we’ll actually get to watch an episode of Doctor Who filmed there by Peter Jackson (the possibility of which we’ve been documenting for some time)? ”Never say never,” he said.

(via Digital Spy)

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Guillermo Del Toro has impressed many an audience with his incredible imagination, but seldom can you watch thoughts from a master take form! These scans from Del Toro’s notebook give us a peek into his creative process in building the worlds of Pan’s Labyrinth, Hellboy, and Pacific Rim. We’d like to live inside its pages.

Want to see even more images? Check out the Imgur gallery these came from. [UPDATE] If you’re interested, del Toro is actually putting out a book of his works titled Guillermo del Toro Cabinet of Curiosities: My Notebooks, Collections, and Other Obsessions. It will be out in October but you can pre-order it from Amazon. (Thanks, Tipster Missy!)

(via Tor)

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Rob Reiner spoke to a crowd of fans at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences about the experience of filming The Princess Bride. He told of casting and special effects and how a little bit of Spinal Tap ended up on the set. And the time he was approached by one of John Gotti's men.

Reiner: Yeah, I walked outside the restaurant, and John Gotti was there with six wiseguys. There was a guy beside the limo who looked like Luca Brasi. He looked at me, and said: “You killed my father…Prepare to die!” I almost went right then! He said, “I love dat movie, da Princess Bride!”

Read the rest, illustrated with appropriate images and gifs from the movie, at Uproxx. Link