News and Updates about Film & Theater

The final chapter of Christopher Nolan's Batman trilogy is here, The Dark Knight Rises, and if you're anything like me, it made you want to immediately don a cowl of your own and run around punching criminals.

There's still about eight months before the final chapter in the Mass Effect series comes out, but some trigger happy fans are already building replica costumes and prop weapons to celebrate the upcoming release. BioWare themselves recently commissioned some of these projects, which were shown at their booth at Comic-Con 2011 a couple weeks ago in San Diego. One of these projects was the armor that turian Garrus Vakarian sports in Mass Effect 3, by Kommissar Props. But even more impressive was...

It's like the H-bomb. In slo-mo, it's stunning. In real life, it's terrifying. The footage below was uploaded by YouTube user NielsBorg, unfortunately lacking in description, but offers the following information via headline: "T90 shot taken by Photron camera at 18000 fps".

WonderHowTo user lex lugo of Bootleg Entertainment posted this fun spoof on musical classic Westside Story to the Canon 7D World forum. The short starts off with some pretty (amazingly) goofy dance-offs; stay tuned 'til the end if you dig 2D violence.

They're not the fastest in the world, but Vision Research's line of Phantom high-speed cameras produce some of the best slow motion effects on the web. They can turn violent punches into a chaotic scene of distorted skin and repulsive sweat, or make a night's stay in a hotel room more exciting. Now breakfast gets the Phantom treatment in Breakfast Interrupted, where America's favorite meal gets captured in midair at 1,000 frames per second.

Construction paper animator Jen Stark teams up with electronic music composer/rabble-rousing party-demigod Dan Deacon in the video below, titled "Believer". The animation is fantastic—likely constructed in a process not entirely unlike animator Ryan Kothe's paper Waves and Weaves. The basic principle: stop motion animation; so if you're inspired, start schooling yourself here.

Superb costumes generally fall into two categories; artfully crafted, time intensive, pricey facsimiles or the low budget option—ingenious, cheap and scrappy. When undertaking the admirable task of creating "one cool (or not) idea every day, for 365 consecutive days, from January 1st until December 31st", option two is most viable. And the most fun.

Why is it so satisfying to squash, snap, squeeze and splatter? You know, squashing a juicy grape, snapping a twig, squeezing ketchup out of a packet—perhaps with your fist—or splattering mud across a sidewalk. But all of these actions are child's play next to animators Laura Junger and Xaver Xylophon'sJoy of Destruction. The real joy of destruction is illustrated below—we're talking sawing ladies in half, exploding corn into popcorn with dynamite, burning cities, and rolling over statues with a...

The footage you're about to watch may look CG, and while it is indeed animated, the 5,600 frames used to composite this fly by glimpse of Saturn aren't fabricated—they are real hi-res photographs taken by the Cassini orbiter.Outside In—an "IMAX in a basement"—is a DIY not-for-profit IMAX project-in-progress by filmmaker Stephen Van Vuuren.

"Freezing Moments" is a great piece of video of different liquids dramatically reaching freezing point, directed by Andrey Muratov. It's cryptically described as "Components of the space. Between existence and 'No!'. Alive - Absorbs." Hmm. Client is also cryptic: GTLK (Gosudarstvennaya Transportnaya Lizingovaya Kompaniya). Appears to be Russian, which would translate to the "State Transport Leasing Company".

Good morning. A little inspiration in the realm of stop-motion animation. By the talented Kirsten Lepore, something heartbreakingly sweet...

With the low budget of $300 bucks, Michael Ashton and pals created the below 12-minute short film entitled Lazy Teenage Superheroes, complete with some pretty great looking SFX. Just shows what you can do with a little ingenuity plus some self-taught filmmaking know-how (and the right After Effects tutorials). Not bad at all.

A glimpse into the storyboarding process behind Banksy's Simpsons intro. Visit Banksy's site to view larger.

HBO's hit period drama, Boardwalk Empire, is chock full of elaborate effects, created by VFX company Brainstorm Digital. Below, get a behind-the-scenes survey of the before and after breakdowns of scenes from the first season.

Okay, been a bit rampant with the twisted animations lately (exhibits A, B, C), but this is too amazing to pass up. By photographer and filmmaker Alva Bernadine, behold the magic of After Effects:

Beautiful animation with a sinister twist by Beijing Motion Graphics house, 39 Degrees North:

Meet Krampus, St. Nick's evil companion of traditional Alpine mythology. According to Wikipedia, the freaky tradition was particularly popular with the Austrian Nazi-allied fascists, circa mid-1930s:

Remember "Bullet Time" from The Matrix? Well, you ain't seen nothing till you've seen "Bullet-Train Time"!

If you're not familiar with the animations of Jan Švankmajer, you're in for quite a trip. The Czech artist and filmmaker is known for his metaphorical, captivatingly surreal stop-motion and claymation films, and is God to many (including talents such as Tim Burton, Terry Gilliam and the Brothers Quay).

Rickard Bengtsson's artfully paced, super slo-mo puddle and dirt video makes me wish for a rainy day. Shot with the Canon EOS 550D; music by Penguin Cafe Orchestra.

Every day of the week, WonderHowTo curators are hard at work, scouring the web for the greatest and most inspiring how-to videos. Every Friday, we'll highlight our favorite finds.

Check out this beautiful animation of a biomechanical bug by Autofuss. Entitled "The Experiment", little information is given about the project (except for what looks like an ad for Photoshop at the end).

Jim Henson was truly a rare magical talent.

Daniel Larsson and Tomas Redigh are the Swedish band Rymdreglage, otherwise known as two "retard ninjas". Their music video 8-Bit Trip pays ultimate nerd tribute to both LEGOs and old 8-bit video games (and ninjas).

You tell us.

WonderHowTo loves paper artillery. More sophisticated in construction than Box Wars, plus tense on-camera drama to boot, Cardboard Warfare is a tight homage to the paper gun. Not completely sold on the acting, but I'm really digging the mise-en-scène.

Kirsten Dunst is turning Japanese in short skirts and thigh highs. The art world crashes Hollywood in this video piece starring Dunst, directed by McG and produced by world renown Japanese artist Takashi Murakami.

Elvis died a painful death in 1977. But his spirit lives on in the oddest of places.

From the man that brought you the infamous Iron Baby...

Brusspup once again blows my mind (see previously below). His latest project is an extremely well executed animation, using a grid of tea candles to represent classic video games.

Via WonderHowTo World, Cinematography:

Loving Breakbot's newest single, Baby I'm Yours, featuring Irfane. But I'm even more impressed by the music video. Created by Irina Dakeva (of Wizz Design), the rotoscope animation was tediously made with over 2,000 watercolor paintings. Check out motionographer's interview with Irina on her process.

Ever heard of Nürburgring? If you're an auto racing enthusiast, you likely have. According to Wikipedia, the racetrack was nicknamed "The Green Hell" by Jackie Stewart (famed Scottish racing driver) and is known as "the toughest, most dangerous and most demanding purpose-built racing circuit in the world". Located in Germany, the older track was first built in the 1920s around the village and medieval castle of Nürburg in the Eifel mountains.

Man, I'm kinda jealous of this car's hair. It's blowing in the wind so nicely (mine just doesn't flow like that)!

Watch as world freediving champion Guillaume Nery takes an incredible dive into Dean's Blue Hole in the Bahamas (on ONE SINGLE BREATH!)