Here are the details on the flick, which is currently making the festival rounds:

ANALOG is Ebbëto's 2nd short film. His first, Lagartija Nika, can be seen online at Tokyo's CON-CAN Film Festival site.
ANALOG is a 27 min, black and white, Science Fiction film made in 2009. This short extract features the music of OIL 10 "Passagen", by the French electronic music composer, Gilles Rossire.

The film tells the tale of a machine travelling in deep-space which has as a primary function the preservation of a living organism: a man.
Strange events with biblical analogies begin, disturbing the machine and making it rethink it's priorities.

ANALOG is probably the first authentic Brazilian Science Fiction film and it's currently competing in world wide short film festivals.
The film was made under an extreme low-budget condition and was only made possible do to the dedication of a hand full of people that believed in the project and gave their hearts and souls to make it come to life.

Analog evokes the black and white psychological strangeness of Pi and Tetsuo: The Iron Man. Good stuff.

[via Quiet Earth]

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[Waffyjon's Flickr via
Coming Attractions Of The Past]

And here's the intro to The Amazing Spider-Man. This theme song makes it sound like Peter Parker takes a bath in Jovan Musk every morning.

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I can feel your stares of disdain from here, but they won't change my mind. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy the Uber-Questions about the show ("What is the Island?" "Who are Jacob and FakeLocke whose real name I've forgotten if I ever actually knew it in the first place?" "Why is Michael Emerson just scary all the time?") but they're not what makes the show for me, and I can't quite get behind the idea that Lost will somehow be a failure if it doesn't manage to solve every single mystery it's raised throughout its run so far.

(If nothing else, I'm not sure every single mystery has an answer anymore, if they ever did, and for every question the show has raised to be answered, I feel as if the show would have to become exposition central for the remaining episodes, and even then, many would be left unsatisfied.)

I keep thinking back to the finale of Battlestar Galactica, and what worked for me and didn't in that episode. I remember watching for the first time, and feeling completely caught up in the moment, and (for the most part) satisfied with what I was seeing - It was a purely emotional response, a feeling of closure and farewell to characters I'd spent many hours watching and thinking about, and it worked for me, until I started to pick apart everything after the initial rush had gone. Upon distant reflection, a year later, what didn't work for me was the dotting of is and crossing of ts in terms of plot and mythology - the opera house, Starbuck being revealed as an angel of sorts, the epilogue that hammered home that all of this had happened before and would happen again - and I felt as if my initial reaction and subsequent disappointment mirrored the way the story had been put together: Built around larger emotional finales, and the details awkwardly inserted at a later point to provide closure for those who needed those answers. Would the finale have been better if it hadn't tried to explain those things, but just focused on the characters themselves?

(Another example of that might be the end of Grant Morrison's The Invisibles. As someone who followed the original run as it was released as single issues, I found myself so emotionally invested in the characters that it doesn't bother me that, plotwise, a lot falls apart at the end. The emotional throughline, and payoff to a narrative of intent that somehow goes beyond plot detail, felt - and feels - satisfying enough to let Morrison slide on all that was left unsaid and unfinished.)

This isn't, necessarily, an argument for the "But consider midichlorians" school of thought that some things are better left unsaid - That said, how many people are steeling themselves for the reality that Lost's answers won't live up to the ones they've been working on while watching the show for the last five years? I'm already kind of disappointed at the reveal about the numbers, if there's not going to be any more said on the subject - but more one that, like Charlie said the other day, suggests that even a show that relies on mystery and raising questions as much as Lost is really about character. Without our becoming invested in the characters, you're left with something like FlashForward, which tries its hardest but is nonetheless glossily hollow and weightless (Sorry, Joseph Fiennes), and Lost is, at its best, something more than that.

I agree that some payoff for the larger questions is necessary for Lost's finale to feel complete, but I worry that anything more than that will come at the cost of what the show is really about, which is the people onboard Oceanic Flight 815 and those they've met as a result of the crash. Easter Eggs and Fan Service is all well and good, but if Jack, Hurley, Ben, Jacob and the others - even Locke, as dead as he is - don't end up with the ultimate fates they deserve and something that feels right, then the whole thing will be for naught. Lost may have been one of the more thought-provoking shows on television, but personally, I'm pulling for an ending that goes for the heart instead of the head.

Even though the Chinese search engine Baidu's 58.6% share of Chinese searches eclipses Google's 35.6% stake in China's search engine wars, Google's withdrawal is still a setback for the company. The company had announced in January 2010 that it would stop censoring searches on google.cn, much to the chagrin of the Chinese goverment. Relations between Google and China frayed this January when the Gmail accounts of human-rights advocates in China had been hacked. No one's explicitly pointing fingers at the Chinese government, but Google appears to be initiating the pull-out regardless.

[via Variety and Business Week]

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The planet, given the catchy name of Corot-9b, is only one of more than 400 found that orbit other stars, but the first whose temperature can be studied as it makes its eight-hour transit across its sun in the Serpens constellation. According to Claire Montou, one of the scientists at the European Southern Observatory that made the discovery, that's big news:

This is a normal, temperate exoplanet just like dozens we already know, but this is the first whose properties we can study in depth... It is bound to become a Rosetta stone in exoplanet research.

Fellow researcher Hans Deeg explains:

Corot-9b is the first exoplanet that really does resemble planets in our solar system... It has the size of Jupiter and an orbit similar to that of Mercury.

Scientists plan to study Corot-9b during the all-important eight hour window when it appears every 95 days. We're hoping they discover a race of evolved aliens not too unlike our own as they do.

New planet Corot-9b has Earth-like temperatures [Independent.co.uk]

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Massive confusion and weird Easter eggs are the name of the game for Lost - these alternatingly entice fans and throw us into conniptions. But what's the show all about for the Lost viewer who has zero concept of anything, let alone character's names? The author of Never Seen Lost has no idea what the hell is going on, and we're richer for it.

Here's a sample of the recap of Jack and Hurley's jaunt to the lighthouse...

They find an inhaler and it belongs to Shannon. No clue who Shannon is but since the music changed, she must be important. They're outside the caves that they used to live in. Ya know, before the real estate boom left all those condos that Sawyer was getting drunk in. In the cave are some rotting corpses. They say they forgot they were there. I don't know how. Those seem like the kind of thing you would always see when you close your eyes. Hurley proposes that maybe the carcasses are them. That they traveled through time years ago and died and now this is their remains… C'mon Hurley, that's ridiculous. Now get back to following the instructions that a ghost gave you at a temple with a life-restoring hot tub on a deserted island that has a murderous rain cloud where 50 people all ended up after surviving several plane crashes over the pacific ocean.

...and the beginning of flash sideways from "Dr. Linus."

After class Ben is minding his own bidniss when Dr. Jerry Hathaway from Real Genius (!) approaches him. He goes by Principal Reynolds, but I'm not fooled. I'm gonna keep calling him Jerry ("Don't call me Jerry." "Sorry, Jerry." "Kent, you're doing it again.") Huh? What? Sorry, blacked out there, back to Real Genius. Wait, no, Lost. So Jerry is in full on jerk mode and assigns Ben to be head of detention this week. As he walks away, Jerry calls him Mr. Linus. Ben corrects him by saying "It's Dr. Linus". No one cares.

Ben starts complaining to the sloppy science teacher. He points out that Jerry is more an administrator than a teacher and can't run this school. Eavesdrop Magee (John Locke) butts in and says "you be principal then". His argument is based on watching him flip out on a coffee machine and rant about hating the current principal. That's all he needs to entrust the school to someone with no experience. Ben complains that no one would listen to him. John says he would. I say I would not.

You can find full recaps of Season 6 at the site. It's also worth noting that the endearingly crude hand-drawn illustrations really reinforce the author's child-like sense of discovery.

[via Never Seen Lost]

Speaking at ShoWest this week, Warners movie head Alan Horn told theater owners that they shouldn't worry about the fact that there are only two Harry Potter movies left:

As we ease out of Harry Potter, we hope to bring you the excitement of the DC [Comics] Library!

Collider's Steven Weintraub unpacks that announcement:

The thing you need to realize is under Alan Horn, Warner Bros. instituted a tent pole release strategy which calls for a few event films to be made every year. For the last decade, Harry Potter has been used to fill the release calendar and now that the franchise is ending after Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2, the studio needs [new] blood to take its place and a new way of earning the huge money that only tent pole releases can generate... While nothing is officially on the calendar yet, I've heard in 2012 we're getting not only a new Batman movie… but The Flash! I've heard the studio is currently talking to directors and they'll announce who it is when they've found the right choice.

Rumors of a Flash movie have been around for years, but newly-installed DC Entertainment CCO Geoff Johns (and current Flash comic writer) has recently confirmed that he has worked on the script, suggesting that an announcement is imminent. With Batman, next year's Green Lantern and The Flash as a backbone - along with the in-progress-but-we'll-wait-and-see-what-happens-with-that-court-case Superman reboot from Christopher Nolan - Warners will have created a strong backbone for an ongoing DC Comics franchise, even if we're wondering where Wonder Woman is in the middle of all of this. But that's not all Warners have to compete with Marvel/Disney; also at ShoWest, Horn made an announcement many had been expecting, in light of Avatar and Alice in Wonderland's successes:

After the presentation Alan Horn talked about how much 3D is a game changer and how they'll be releasing a ton of movies in 2011 in 3D. He also told us that all future Warner Bros. tent pole releases will be released in 3D.

Firstly, does anyone really want the Dark Knight follow-up in 3D? And secondly, with Warners now apparently promising annual DC superhero movies in 3D, how soon before Disney/Marvel announces the leap to 3D for Thor, Captain America and Avengers?

With the press push for the new Doctor Who season well underway in the UK, Moffat has been teasing what fans should expect from the new season. As seen in the trailer, "Blink"'s Weeping Angels are back and, apparently, more scary than their first appearance:

Those scary statues, I should warn you - and your children - are on their way back and they're way way worse this time.

That might be the new benchmark for Who scares that Moffat is referring to here:

There is an episode in this series that I showed to my 10-year-old son and he said there is one scene that is the scariest thing that has ever happened in Doctor Who. There is another episode that will make you gasp, then want to press rewind so you can see it all again.

That said, we're more curious about what Moffat's talking about in terms of the Doctor/Amy relationship:

You take two attractive people and they will probably be a bit romantic about each other... It is a complex story between Amy and the Doctor - it is not simple. It is not a story you have ever seen between the companion and the Doctor before.

We're calling it: the Doctor will fall in unrequited love for Amy. Surely that's the only Doctor/companion relationship we've not seen by now...?

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