Digic Pictures DemoReel 2014

Leave it to the pros to dazzle us... Digic Pictures shows us the best of their work, adding a bit of Assassin's Creed Unity and Watch Dogs to the mix of amazing cinematic trailers they've produced.

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R.I.P. Ray Harryhausen

I'm in a process of watching the most iconic films in different genres and I was really curious to see Jason and the Argonauts for the amazing skeleton sequence. That is absolutely brilliant... The genius behind the special effects in those days is inspiring... So, it was with great sadness that yesterday's news that Ray Harryhausen has passed away. He was one of those pioneers in VFX, an inspiration for George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, James Cameron, Tim Burton or Peter Jackson.

Jason and the Argonauts

Eye candy!

Please, take some time to see this! Two minutes and forty-five seconds that make you want more of this eye candy! DIGIC, thank you for some of the amazing trailers I've seen lately! :D

Faith in Humanity

These days I have been more touched by news showing that humanity is not lost. There is so much so wrong that happens every day, that to know that there are positive things happening makes me happy. This news I found it some time ago, but now I share it because I think it's worth it. Have you ever seen the movie Fanboys?

Well, this real-life story has a similar parallelism. Daniel Craft, a 41 year-old  man with a diagnosis of terminal cancer with only weeks to live, had to be hospitalized and missed the 9-minute preview of the film Star Trek: Into Darkness accompanying selected screenings of The Hobbit. Knowing how he was an unconditional fan of Star Trek, his wife made ​​an appeal on the internet for someone to arrange a copy of the preview. The application has become viral and reached the ears of Paramount and J. J. Abrams. As such, they invited them to see the full movie. Days later, Daniel died. A friend of his reports the experience of Daniel on Reddit:

A day or so after the thread began, Paige, Dan’s wife, got a voicemail from J. J. Abrams and Damon Lindelof that was very nice and very straightforward: a producer for the movie would get in touch with them. The next day, one of the film’s producers showed up at the door of their apartment with a DVD containing a very rough cut of Star Trek: Into Darkness in his hands. Paige had made popcorn, Dan had spent the previous day resting so he could sit through the movie, and after signing about 200 non-disclosure agreements they watched the film and had a blast. 

Afterwards, Dan got back into bed, exhausted, and didn't get out again. Yesterday he was pretty non-responsive and Paige took him to the hospital for hospice care. Last night, at 10:15pm, with Paige and his brother in his room, Dan died. The last thing he got to do that gave him pleasure was watch the new Star Trek movie. And it’s because of you. 

At a time when he didn't have a whole lot to look forward to, Star Trek, J. J. Abrams, Damon Lindelof, and Bad Robot performed a simple act of kindness for a total stranger and gave Dan something to be excited about for a couple of days. The movie did exactly what movies are supposed to do, it helped him forget about his problems for a couple of hours. It doesn't sound like much, but in this case it was. 

This is a difficult story to write about without getting sappy, sacharine or insensitive, but to those of us who didn't know him, Dan now stands as a symbol of the power of film. Here’s a man who spent his days helping to cultivate one of the best film festivals in the country and when the end was near, he took solace in cinema. “Dying Man Gets to See New ‘Star Trek’ Movie” is flashy headline, but this story is a powerful reminder of why we love cinema. Movies are capable of transporting us to new worlds, of helping us forget our pain for two hours — it’s comforting to know that a real movie fan was able to embrace what he loved until the very end. 

Rest in peace, Mr. Craft.

Kinect to connect

Some gadgets have the potential to change our lives, but for Lindy, it was more than that. She suffered a stroke 12 years ago that led to aphasia, a disorder that affects language processing without affecting intelligence. Because of that, she was unable to recognize text and thus unable to use a keyboard.

Lucky for her, her son had a brilliant idea... he hacked a Kinect to help her. Chad Ruble designed a visual dashboard of emoticons, each of which can be quantified (expressed as signal strength up to 4 bars), some gesture recognition code and the simple OpenNI library to track the position of his mother's hand. The green button sends the email and the X resets the screen.

He plans to use other boards and pages maintaining the simple interface for his mom to communicate more.

Although simple, we can see that the interface makes his mother a lot happier. That smile is priceless! A big "well done" to you, sir!

(via cnet)

Brick by Brick

I stumbled upon this video some time ago and liked it very much. This is the story of LEGO, from how it started to where it stands now. It's a great inspiring story, in an awesome 3d animation video. Take a look: