Chris Hardwick's Blog, page 2291

Home Geekonomics: SUPERGIRL Everything

Home Geekonomics is a series that features the best in geeky home decor, food and DIY. Each week will focus on a specific fandom and highlight the best of geek for your home and everyday life.

Supergirl returned this week with a new network with a new pal! Kara Danvers is back and on the CW with her good ol’ cuz in tow. With this new super team there’s no hope for crime in National City.

To welcome back our favorite femme-Kryptonian, we’ve rounded up a bunch of great ways to show off your super-fandom!

Supergirl Pattern by Simplicity

For years Simplicity has been the go-to for crafters looking for patterns because of their incredible detailing. This outfit looks screen-accurate because it’s an officially licensed Warner Bros. costume and the pattern covers all your Supergirl needs including the “top, skirt, panties, cape, belt and boot covers.” Definitely an impressive way to stretch your sewing muscles and get ready for Halloween and upcoming cons.

Supergirl Phone Case

I have a weird love for oversized phone cases, I think because they act as an extension of ourselves. Choosing a phone case is serious business and this adorable Kara will let everyone know of your Supergirl fandom everytime you take a selfie.

Cat Co. Sticker by 8BitThis

Cat Grant built an empire from the ground up and now you can let everyone know you work for CatCo Worldwide Media by slapping this sticker onto your laptop while you pound out your superhero identity theories.

Supergirl Hand-Painted Shoes by Christina P Creations

If you’re too shy to go full cosplay there are lots of other ways to show off your fandom. These lovingly hand-painted Supergirl shoes are made with waterproof permanent fabric paint ensuring that they’ll be resistant to both weather and criminal. These custom shoes are the most stylish way to display your Supergirl love!

Superman Supergirl Card by Hallmark

A Superman Supergirl team up just makes sense, especially around the holidays so that they can x-ray vision the heck out of their Christmas presents. This cute greeting card features Hallmark’s own popular mini plush Itty Bittys and is a fun way to spread super-joy during the holiday season.

Images: Simplicity, 8BitThis, ChristinaPCreations, Hallmark

The ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT Narrator Takes on the Presidential Debates

America: any year when we hold a presidential election things get contentious, and yes, this year is just a little eensy weensy bit worse than probably any election since 1826 (look it up!). With so many claims being thrown back and forth, it can be hard to know which ones have merit and which ones are huge lies. If only there was some omnipotent voice to help clarify the whole thing for us, in the moment, like a real-time, fact-checking narrator—kind of like on Arrested Development.

Which is just what we got with this new political/entertainment crossover video (that we first came across at Entertainment Weekly). It was made by the YouTube channel NeverCaesar, and uses Ron Howard‘s voice over work from Arrested Development to dispute some of the things said by the Republican nominee for president, Donald Trump, since they may not be totally accurate or fully supported by facts.

We make it a point to avoid most political stories here (unless it pertains to the Empire vs. Rebel Alliance), but we’re suckers for any good Arrested Development crossover. And we’re not the only ones, since this was shared by the show’s creator Mitch Hurwitz, who joked that this was actually just a sneak peek of the next season (which will come to Netflix in 2017).

A sneak preview of Arrested Development Season 5: Thank you #NeverCaesar !https://t.co/GgzkEjj58Y

— Mitchell Hurwitz (@MitchHurwitz) October 12, 2016

We know your level of enjoyment of this might depend on how you feel about the two candidates for president, but hopefully as fans of Arrested Development, we can appreciate it for using one of our favorite shows in a fun way, one that can let us get a laugh out of a race that hasn’t exactly offered many.

And besides, no matter who wins in November, there’s some great advice for both candidates that they should remember when it comes to the deficit: there’s always money in the banana stand.

Which characters from the show would enjoy this video? Which ones wouldn’t find it as funny? Let’s have some fun with this in the comments below.

Image: Netflix

An Inhuman Emerges in Marvel’s MOSAIC #1 (Review)

If you could become anyone, who would you be? That’s one of the underlying questions of Mosaic, Marvel’s newest ongoing series. Given the massive push that Marvel has given this book, it seems like the publisher already expects big things from its latest Inhuman hero. But does Mosaic live up to the hype?

The first thing to know going in is that Mosaic isn’t a hero…at least not yet. He’s actually a pretty huge jerk in his pre-transformation state. As envisioned by writer Geoffrey Thorne and artist Khary Randolph, Mosaic’s human self, Morris Sackett is one of the biggest basketball superstars in the Marvel Universe. Morris also has an ego to match his accomplishments on the court. It’s nothing new for Marvel heroes to be flawed out of the gate, but Morris’ arrogance was turned up to 11; which made it difficult to get behind him.

Without too many massive spoilers, the short version of Mosaic’s origin is that he literally loses everything that he had, including his body. There are even a few cameo appearances by other Marvel characters, but the spotlight is on Morris himself.

Randolph deserves a special shout out for making his pages so visually arresting. This is a very good looking comic, which is enhanced by Emilio Lopez’s colors. Even the basketball scenes at the beginning of the book have a surprisingly energetic vibe. If Marvel was ever inclined to do sports comics, that’s definitely the right approach. The second half of the issue let Randolph cut loose with even wilder visuals as Morris discovered some of his new abilities.

One of the more intriguing aspects of Morris’ powers is that he seems to take on some of the personality traits of the people whose bodies he inhabits. He loves who they love, and he knows what they know…so much so that he seems to be losing himself to the process. That’s a good dilemma to start with, but it left Morris without much of a personality of his own. Because Morris was so one-dimensional as a human, it’s difficult to really get a sense of who he really is. The people surrounding Morris were also lacking in meaningful character development. If they’re only one-shot characters, that’s fine. But if we’re expected to care about the people that Morris inadvertently left behind, then they need to be more human as well.

One major plus in Mosaic‘s favor is that it has extra pages of story, which went a long way towards making it a more satisfying read. Thorne and Randolph also displayed a few touches of visual humor which played well on the page. Whether Mosaic has what it takes become Marvel’s next big thing remains to be seen, but this is a solid start. This issue only scratched at the surface of what Morris can do, and we’re excited to see if he can live up to his potential.

RATING: 3.5 OUT OF 5 BURRITOS

 

What did you think about Mosaic #1? Unleash your thoughts in the comment section below!

Images: Marvel Comics

Audio Rewind: The 3 Most Important Music Moments of the 2000s

For all intents and purposes, history is a collection of particular events that we commemorate because they altered the course of culture. We cite wars and assassinations and disasters as formative moments, events that pivoted the trajectory of the future and got us to where we are today. After this happened, everything changed, and for that we remember it. Music is much the same (albeit less violent). We remember epic performances, stylistic anomalies and the births of genres, and characters so striking that they transcended the noise and demanded that we pay attention.

In 2003, MOJO magazine conducted a readers poll that ranked music’s most pivotal moments. Elvis‘ 1954 Sun Records session and the resultant album That’s All Right—largely credited as the first instance of rock ‘n’ roll—was number one. Dylan going electric in 1965 and The Clash’s first single, “White Riot,” in 1977 filled out the top three. Now that it’s been over a decade and what feels like a lifetime of technological innovation since the poll, we decided to take a look at some of the pivotal moments of the past 13 years. Trends, rather than single instances, emerged as we examined our history since 2003, and they all have one thing in common: our ever increasing subjection to the internet.

The early aughts ushered in an era of internet ubiquity. The seemingly limitless possibility of a life online began to manifest, and one major consequence was the way we listen to and interact with music. From the ashes of Napster and illegal downloading rose music streaming, an ostensible compromise between the criminality of torrenting and the significant cost of physical albums. One of the first was Pandora Radio and its Music Genome Project. In 2004, after four years of floundering through investor money, the media company steadied and popularized the customized radio station, allowing people to curate music in a way terrestrial radio couldn’t allow.

At the same time, satellite radio was also pushing niche listening, giving radio listeners the opportunity for a more personal listening experience (e.g. entire channels devoted to The Grateful Dead and Bruce Springsteen). Then Spotify, SoundCloud, Bandcamp and a slew of other streaming services arrived. Streaming, when coupled with the increasing accessibility of DAWs (digital audio workstations) and other DIY recording technologies, led to a proliferation of musicians—people who had never before attempted to make music because the industry’s entry point was simply too high. Today, everyone can share a song with an audience, and, dilution of quality music aside (a giant can of worms I’m not going to get in to), that’s a beautiful thing.

Also changing at this time was the way we interact with music. It became personalized in an entirely new way. Alongside online radio were devices that helped us port thousands of songs in our pockets. The iPod quickly usurped the antiquated Walkman as the listening device, allowing us to carry our entire musical identity on our bodies instead of a disc or two. Soon after, companies like the MIT-born Echo Nest (mentioned in last week’s Audio Rewind) responded to a growing industry priority to personalize taste profiles. Niche marketing became everything when it came to targeting listeners. But what if the people, those music laymen without musical proficiency, wanted to do more than listen? What if they actually wanted to participate in the music?

Guitar Hero arrived in 2005. The interactive video game needs no introduction; it put a guitar in the hands of even the non-musical and turned us all into virtual rockstars. The phenomenon spawned competitions, the more comprehensive Rock Band, and, most importantly, a renewed interest in music education. It reminded people that learning need not be dusty and dull; fun need not be the antithesis to education. We even discovered that people learn better when they’re having fun, and today there are numerous apps and pedagogical Guitar Hero spinoffs (like Rocksmith, which is the same concept except with an actual guitar) that continue to help people learn, grow, and participate through music.

As technology became more and more sophisticated through the first decade of the new millennium, we grew ever closer to that music. It was always just a click away, and it could be experienced in myriad ways, from the guitar joystick to the headphones jack on your 160GB iPod to the niche music blog started by your high school friend’s third cousin. As the distance between performer and listener decreased, and as the threshold to create and disseminate music decreased, so too did the aesthetics that defined them.

Indie, for instance, was an idea before it was a sound. Grown in the ’90s out of college radio and small independent labels, the indie ideology became a semi-viable path for musicians to attract an audience even when there was little to no hope for mainstream success (and if you were a true indie artist, you had no hope for mainstream success anyway). It was about the music. A modern, more subdued take on the punk mentality. But as accessibility grew, so did our awareness of these bands, as well as the awareness of major labels. Indie could be lucrative, it turned out, and the new millennium gradually carried indie music from modest side dish to main fare.

In 2011, Arcade Fire, the vaunted Canadian band and one-time indie hero, won the Grammy for Album of the Year. The win symbolically legitimized indie music as a mainstream force, but it was also the dagger that killed the indie aesthetic as a form of art separate from the mainstream. Like ‘Alternative’ before it, the term ‘Indie’ was stripped of meaning, because it no longer reflected the ideology that necessitated its birth in the first place.

I don’t hold anything against Arcade Fire for their success. The indie death stroke is but one example of a much greater shift in our zeitgeist. In this Internet era, the idea of history is veering from a series of pivotal moments to a swathe of assimilation. Everything borrows from everything. Everything is changing and adapting, always. There is too much music and too much information to pay attention to mere moments. Sure, we’ll get our occasional Kanye VMA outburst, but those will quickly disappear in the flow of our online stream of consciousness. Gone are the days when rock ‘n’ roll can be invented, or when an electric guitar can offend an entire generation. Even the “pivotal” moments I’ve mentioned above are much less distinct than those found on MOJO’s list; they are examples of an era’s shift rather than the shifts themselves. To examine history pre-2003 as a series of pivots could be facile, too, but it’s inarguable that the internet has changed things. The entire world has joined this stream and we’re all along for the ride, floating down serpentine networks of fiber optic cables on our way to… somewhere. To a collective consciousness? The singularity? Whatever may lie ahead, rest easy knowing that more people are making music than ever before, and that’s a good thing.

Image: Wikimedia Commons

Anna Kendrick Thinks She’d Be the Best Robin for Ben Affleck’s BATMAN

It seems everyone’s a superhero these days. Well, everyone in Hollywood that is. So why won’t anyone let Anna Kendrick play one, huh? In a fairly hilarious bit from MTV’s After Hours, host Josh Horowitz is interviewing Ben Affleck and Anna Kendrick on their new movie, The Accountant. Pretty quickly the whole “interview” turns into a comedy bit about how Anna really wants to play a part in an upcoming superhero movie, none other than Ben Affleck’s upcoming solo Batman film.

And who would Anna play in said Batman movie? Well, duh….Robin the Boy Girl Wonder of course. She even busts out a makeshift Robin costume, which ultimately looks more like the Hamburglar from the old McDonald’s commercials. Too bad they’re not making a McDonaldland movie, because if they were, our girl she just nailed that particular audition. You can watch the whole bit in the video above.

On a serious note though, who doesn’t want Anna Kendrick in a superhero movie? Ok, maybe not Batman (although she really could rock as the Carrie Kelley version of Robin, or even Barbara Gordon/Batgirl come to think of it). But there are still plenty of characters out there who would be perfect for Kendrick’s particular brand of cute quirkiness. She’s already gone on record as saying she’d be perfect to play Marvel’s Squirrel Girl, and I can’t help but agree. And if Ellen Page ever decides to retire from playing Kitty Pryde in the X-Men series, Kendrick would be a perfect replacement.

So which superhero do you think Anna Kendrick should get a crack at? Let us know in the comments down below.

Speaking of Justice League, watch Jessica Chobot talk about it!

Images: MTV News / McDonald’s 

Will ROGUE ONE Answer a Major STAR WARS Question?

Nothing gets us more excited than a new Star Wars trailer, and the latest Rogue One footage has us counting the minutes until December 16! There’s a lot to unpack in those clips, including a nearly 40-year old plot hole from the original Star Wars. Has Rogue One: A Star Wars Story given us the answer to a long-standing question? Today’s Nerdist News is leading the Imperial investigation!

There are potential spoilers ahead, if this theory turns out to be accurate. But we’re pretty confident in this one, so consider yourselves warned! Nerdist News host, and known Rebel sympathizer, Jessica Chobot has the details!

Everyone remembers the first Death Star as the ultimate weapon with a strangely unprotected weakness: a single exhaust port that could be used to start a destructive chain reaction. Sure, it took a “one-in-a-million” shot from future Jedi Luke Skywalker to destroy the Death Star, but it was almost too simple. Why would anyone leave such an important spot so undefended? If the new Rogue One trailer is any indication, it wasn’t a mistake at all. In fact, it might have been a deliberate act of sabotage.

Who could be responsible for this? Why none other than Galen Erso, as played by Hannibal‘s Mads Mikkelsen. While we’re fairly certain that Galen wasn’t around for the initial construction of the Death Star, the new footage suggests that he played a role in creating the planet-killing super laser. That may have provided Galen with the critical intel to pass on to his daughter, Jyn Erso; which eventually led to the Death Star’s destruction. But the fate of Galen, Jyn, and the Rebels responsible for stealing the Death Star plans won’t be revealed until Rogue One finally arrives in theaters.

What do you think about our latest Rogue One theory? Let’s discuss in the comment section below!

 

AMERICAN HORROR STORY: ROANOKE Recap: Chapter 5

Editor’s Note: This post contains spoilers for American Horror Story Roanoke. Proceed with caution if you haven’t watched yet. 

Finally, American Horror Story fans around the globe can stop wondering who AHS regular Evan Peters is playing this season. Remember last week when I posed the Peters-is-Piggy-Man theory? Well, that was complete bogus (as far as we know). While we still don’t know who is behind the mask—my final guess is Finn Wittrock, who is still missing—we got our first taste of Peters’ character: Edward Philippe Mott. Yes, as many predicted, the actor is playing the ancestor of Dandy Mott, who appeared in Freak Show. Aside from the return of Evan Peters, there is a ton to dissect, so let’s get to it before the blood moon cycle ends.

Right off the bat, we met Peters’ character and learned more about the mysterious Mott family. As Elias explained last week, Edward Philippe Mott built and once lived in Matt and Shelby’s house. The antisocial Aristocrat craved a place away from the city where he, his lover Guinness, and his precious art could live in peace. Not long after moving in, strange things started to happen. The chaos crescendoed when Mott punished his staff by locking them in the cellar because he thought they were the ones responsible for ruining his paintings.

But alas, it was actually The Butcher and her son Ambrose who’d broken in to mess with Mr. Mott. About 10 minutes into our introduction to Edward Mott’s story, he was brutally murdered by the Butcher and her colony. Before he was led outside to his doom, which involved impaling him on a wooden spike, there was a brief homage to the bed monster from American Horror Story: Hotel. Seeing as this is the fifth episode, the reference was appropriate.

Knowing how American Horror Story is typically structured, it didn’t come as a surprise when a ghostly Edward Mott showed up to help Matt and Shelby. While they’re trying to figure out where to hide from the Butcher and her mob of ghosts, Mott showed up and led them out of the house. The only problem was he led them to the woods, which is where the hillbilly Polk family found Matt, Shelby and little Flora.

Much like Kathy Bates‘ character in the movie adaptation of Misery, the matron of the Polk family (played by another familiar AHS vet, Frances Conroy), enjoys smashing legs with blunt objects! The family also happens to enjoy eating human flesh. On the menu this week? Elias (Denis O’Hare), who isn’t dead! His body is mangled from the Polks picking at his flesh. The torture didn’t last long however, as the demented family decided to murder Elias because he didn’t taste good anymore.

Once that gory business was over, the Polks took Matt, Shelby, and Flora to The Butcher. According to Mama Polk (Conroy), they made a deal with the Butcher: as long as they were left alone, the Polks would bring offerings to consecrate the land. During the truck ride back to their home (a.k.a. ghost hot spot), Matt Shelby and Flora almost escaped.

While all of that was going on, Lee was fuming about being pulled in for questioning at the police station. Once her 48 hours were up, Lee was released. When she learned that Matt and Shelby found her daughter Flora via text message, Lee headed back to the house. Despite having a police officer drive her, he hilariously drove away as soon as he saw the mob waiting outside the house. At this time, that officer is the only smart character in the show!

Anyways, Lee got there just in time. After Ambrose stopped his mother from murdering Flora (by pushing the Butcher into the fire), the Pig Man went after the little girl. But before he was able to finish the job started by The Butcher, Lee hit him with her car and told Matt, Shelby, and Flora to get in. At the end of the episode, the group found themselves in a cheap hotel, safe and sound (as far as we know).

The transition to the hotel makes a nice transition for whatever the showrunners have planned for the sixth episode. Will the fourth wall break? Are Matt, Shelby and Flora really safe? Will we see more Evan Peters? Let us know your thoughts and theories in the comments below, join the conversation on Facebook, or start one with me on Twitter @Samantha_Sofka.

Images: FX

ARROW Recap: “The Recruits” Begin Their Brutal Initiations in the Past and Present

Warning: This recap contains spoilers from Wednesday’s episode of Arrow, “The Recruits,” since this is, by definition, a recap! Don’t say we didn’t warn you …

After four years, it’s officially the beginning of a new era on Arrow. Oliver finally stopped denying the fact that Diggle and Thea weren’t coming back to fight alongside him and he needed to fill out the ranks of Team Arrow. And on the flip side, Thea realized she needed to fill out a team of her own in the Mayor’s office so she could get help taking on all of Oliver’s responsibilities when he was busy out in the field. Seeing as how they were going to open a free clinic and were being targeted by what they thought was a potential meta-human, they needed all the help they could get both in the public eye and in private. So the Green Arrow’s training camp began with Rene Ramirez a.k.a. Wild Dog, Evelyn Sharp a.k.a. the future Artemis, and Curtis Holt a.k.a. the future Mister Terrific. And it was brutal. But it was necessary, since they were all a little too “green”… a joke Felicity had been waiting to make for five years, apparently.

At the opening of the clinic, the mysterious “meta-human” covered in dark rags attacked, and proved to be more of a threat than the new Team Arrow thought. Oliver had told Wild Dog and the other recruits to not engage the target, but Wild Dog didn’t listen and snagged a piece of the target’s rags as evidence. Felicity brought it to her new boyfriend, Detective Billy Malone, at the SCPD to help her identify what it was, and she told him a super flimsy story about where it came from à la season one Oliver. He still offered to help her, though, and came through with results.

Back at the old Hive headquarters/new Team Arrow training camp, Oliver returned to find that after tearing all the recruits a new one, they had all quit. Curtis stayed behind to yell at Oliver for not trusting them and tearing them down instead of building them up… and then he quit too. Maybe it’s time for Oliver to revamp his teaching styles?

Back at the Arrow Lair, Felicity talked some sense into Oliver about how he wasn’t acting like a leader toward the recruits. Feeling guilty about how he had acted, he actually opened up to her about his time in the Bratva (something she remarked he never, ever did), and how no one used their real names or told anyone anything about their lives pre-Bratva and it was effective. That’s why he was acting so cold and closed off towards the recruits, because after opening up to the original Team Arrow, they all left or died, and he needed to protect himself this time around. That’s why he wasn’t revealing his true identity as Oliver Queen to the new recruits. But Felicity told him that the old team had worked because they trusted and respected Oliver Queen, not feared the Green Arrow, and it was time for him to lose the mask during training.

Meanwhile, to help out at the office, Thea had offered Quentin Lance a position without realizing he had fallen off the wagon with drinking. Oliver clued her in later, telling her that hiring Lance right now wasn’t a good idea since they were currently dealing with a huge PR problem after getting in bed with weapons manufacturer AmerTek and then realizing the company was working with gangster Tobias Church in secret. AmerTek was going bankrupt after working with Damien Dahrk on the Genesis Day nukes, so they were scrambling to get any funds they could by any means necessary, even if it meant working with criminals. But Team Arrow/Team Mayor was able to track the “rag man” who attacked the free clinic (and Team Arrow now realized he was trying to take down the corrupt AmerTek), and Oliver decided he would handle things without his new recruits this time around.

The Green Arrow arrived at AmerTek’s meet with Tobias where they were exchanging guns for money, and in the resulting fight, the Rag Man showed up and revealed himself to be the very last survivor from Havenrock, the city nuked on Genesis Day. He tried to kill the CEO of AmerTek in revenge but Oliver stopped him, and Rag Man actually saved Oliver’s life instead of fulfilling his revenge plot. After the fight, Oliver ended up convincing him to join the new Team Arrow after hearing his backstory of how his father saved him from the nuclear blast by wrapping him in ancient rags that helped give him his abilities. Oliver opened up about his own history with his father, and a new partnership was solidified.

After his success with bonding with Rag Man, Oliver decided to take Felicity’s and Curtis’ advice, and he revealed his true identity to his new recruits. After their initial shock faded that the Green Arrow was also the Mayor, all three of them rejoined the new Team Arrow. Success!

Also, after Lance apologized to Thea for screwing up while serving as security for the clinic grand opening and saying he wasn’t good enough to work for her right now, she told him she wouldn’t accept his resignation. She knew a job would be better for him than having nothing to do, and that he needed a reason to stay sober, so she decided to hire him as deputy mayor and he tearfully accepted. Laurel would have been so proud.

And we finally got a clue into what the mysterious archer Prometheus wants. After Tobias almost killed Oliver during the fight earlier that night, Prometheus tracked him down and threatened him with certain death if Tobias ever killed the Green Arrow. Does Prometheus want that honor for himself? Or does he want something else with Oliver instead? So many questions!

Meanwhile, we finally got to check in with Diggle now that he’s overseas and reenlisted in the army. He’s a really good mentor to the younger soldiers, but while out on a mission to retrieve a trigger from one of Damien Dahrk’s missiles, they were ambushed. Turns out Diggle’s fellow soldiers were not trying to retrieve the trigger, but steal it. More corruption in the army? Yikes, Dig has the worst luck. The corrupt soldiers then tried to pin the robbery on Diggle by using his gun to kill a young, good-hearted soldier who had sided with Dig. How is he going to get out of this sticky situation?!

And finally, in this week’s flashbacks, Oliver’s initiation into the Bratva, or the Russian mob, showed exactly where he got his inspiration for his Green Arrow training camp in the present. Same tactics, same outcome. By ruthlessly beating the recruits, the Bratva produced ruthless fighters. Oliver, along with a few other recruits, were given a mission: to get past the attacking Bratva members and ring a bell behind them. Oliver realized they all needed to work together to distract the Bratva members so one of them could slip past and ring the bell, so Oliver convinced his fellow recruits to work together and he was able to ring the bell. But the rest of the recruits were all killed and only Oliver moved on, because the Bratva recognized the intelligence in Oliver and admired how he “used” his fellow recruits to get ahead. See? Ruthless.

What did you think of this week’s episode of Arrow? Tweet me your thoughts at @SydneyBucksbaum!

Images: The CW

Meet Cinder the Augmented Reality Cat Who Runs a School

In case you were ever in doubt, the online world is actually powered by cats. And at one school in the United Kingdom, there’s a cat running the school’s world and teaching students and teachers alike about their environmental footprint through augmented reality. Meet Cinder, the cat who runs things at Trumpington Community College in Cambridge!

As originally reported by The Creator’s Project, Cinder is the avatar of Trumpington Community College’s building management system. She was created by a collective of architects, creative technologists, and designers at Umbrellium to engage students and teachers alike with their environment over the course of their education. Over 18 months, Umbrellium worked with the staff and students at the school to design Cinder. Now that she is live, the community within this state of the art school interacts with her via an augmented reality ‘mirror’ in the main hall as well as their Chromebooks, where she pops up and pesters students to be fed (just like a real cat!). She feeds on solar energy that the building collects in real-time helping students learn about sustainability and the ways their school is impacting the environment around them.

Part mascot, part avatar for the sophisticated building management system, Cinder is a constantly growing and changing part of the environment around her. She responds to students gestures in the augmented reality screen, even rubbing against them as you can see in the photo up above, and sometimes just running off to find the solar energy that keeps her fed. Over time, she will be able to change her appearance and even has “easter egg” accessories for the students to discover. For example, there’s a very charming birthday hat in the video below to give you an idea.

“We wanted to find a creative way to help bring the building environment to life and give students a unique and engaging experience of the world around them. We are delighted that the students and staff have taken Cinder as their own digital pet,” Umbrellium’s founding partner, Usman Haque, said in a press release. While Cinder was created with a very real purpose of building monitoring and innovation in mind, she’s also struck a cord with the staff and students at the school. Teachers talk about how engaged their students became while involved in the design process and how that interest has continued now that Cinder is live with students seeking out opportunities to use their Chrome Books in hopes that she will appear even when they aren’t in class.

It will be very interesting to see how she grows and changes in the coming years and how much she can teach the students as she goes. Who knows? Maybe we’re only a few innovative steps away from this kind of cat technology.

What do you think of Cinder? Let us know in the comments below!

Images & Video: Umbrellium

GIF: YouTube

Schlock & Awe: THE CURSE OF THE WEREWOLF

Welcome to week two of Schlock & Awe‘s Nerdoween Hammer Horror Schlocktober! Last time, we talked about the middle entry in the studio’s long-running Frankenstein series (Frankenstein Created Woman); sequels and off-shoots were a mainstay of Hammer’s Gothic horror output, churning out seven Frankenstein movies, four Mummy movies, nine Dracula movies, and a dozen or more other vampire-themed flicks. But in all of their near-15-year dominance of the horror film, Hammer only ever did one movie featuring one of the biggest monsters in the canon, and they weren’t even supposed to—that’s 1961’s The Curse of the Werewolf.

Back in the ’50s, ’60s, and ’70s—when Hammer were producing films at a fever clip—they were always at odds with the BBFC, or the British Board of Film Censors. Unlike in the U.S. with the MPAA, which “suggests” that movies be cut to get particular ratings, film scripts had to be submitted to the BBFC before the movies were even made and they were told directly what had to be cut. Following their initial success, Hammer was going to mount two productions, Curse of the Werewolf and a Spanish Inquisition flick; both were submitted to the BBFC and both were essentially banned outright at the script stage. However, Spanish village sets had already been built, so the werewolf movie which was meant to be set in France was remounted and moved to Spain, while the Inquisition movie was dropped entirely. This would not be The Curse of the Werewolf‘s last run-in with the censorship board.

The Curse of the Werewolf has a very odd pace compared to the kinds of movies Hammer had been making, which largely got right to the point. This movie’s length of 91 minutes seems brief, but it’s a full ten minutes longer than Hammer’s other Gothic films to that point. There are three sections to the story; the first concerns a beggar man who traipses into a village to find it deserted and the church bells ringing. It isn’t Sunday; where could everyone be? He’s told that everyone is up at the palace to celebrate the wedding of the cruel Marques to his attractive young bride. The beggar goes up to the palace to beg and the Marques drags him in, forces him to drink wine, tosses scraps of food to him, makes him dance, and then pays him to “buy” him as a pet for his new wife. She’s a kindhearted sort and doesn’t want him hurt, so the Marques just tosses him into the dungeon and promptly forgets about him.

He’s left there for 20 years, enough time to watch the jailer’s mute daughter become a beautiful young woman as he becomes slowly more feral. One day, the now widowed and pock-covered Marques sees the daughter and gets enraged when she won’t speak to him (she’s mute, you fucker) and has her tossed in the dungeon for the night… which is where the feral beggar is, and he has his way with her and then dies shortly after. After being brought back to the Marques’ room, the mute girl kills the horrible old man and flees into the night, only to be found half-drowned by Don Alfredo Corledo (Clifford Evans) who brings the girl to his villa to be attended to by his housemaid, Teresa (Hira Talfrey). Uh oh! The mute girl is pregnant and everyone is terribly concerned to learn that she’s due at Christmas; a child made in such a horrible fashion being born on the Lord’s birthday is a terrible omen.

Then we begin the second part of the film, in which the young child Leon—his mother having died in childbirth, he’s being raised by the Don and Teresa—begins to show signs of his curse: werewolfism. The local priest is consulted and believes the beast can be contained within Leon, but the child has been killing livestock and the village shepherd is on the hunt. After a dog is killed for the crimes and Leon is treated and believed to be at bay, we cut to the last and longest act of the film: Leon, as a young man (played by Oliver Reed), goes to work at a vineyard and falls in love with the vintner’s daughter. As these feelings appear in him, the wolf inside cannot be quelled any longer, and Leon finally learns of his curse. It doesn’t end well, I’ll say that.

It’s a full 45 minutes before we see Reed in the movie, meaning we basically have half the film of prologue before the actual story starts. Certainly, it’s interesting to see the beginning of the life of a werewolf—being borne of so much sadness and evil—but the first act seems to go on very, very long. As a result, there’s only about 10 minutes at the end of the movie when Leon is in full werewolf mode, and while it’s definitely impressive, it’d be cool to get some more of that peppered around a bit more.

However, that being said, I think The Curse of the Werewolf does succeed in a number of ways; first and foremost the sets and costumes are truly lovely and they allow Hammer to explore a different aesthetic than the usual English manors or Bavarian castles. The story doesn’t need to be set in Spain—obviously, it was meant to be in France—but it’s great for variety’s sake that it is. Second, Terence Fisher’s direction (especially at the end with the werewolf stalking the roofs of the village at night) is tremendous and is some of his best work. And finally, the much-delayed performance by Reed showed us what a talent the young actor would become, and he adds a great deal of pain and gravitas to the tortured young Spaniard.

I mentioned earlier the problems the film had with the BBFC. After the movie was made, several minutes were forced to be excised to even receive the intended X rating (which was the adults-only rating of the time). Were these bloody sequences not trimmed, the film would have been banned outright. As a result, for 30 years the movie was seen in a truncated, neutered version and most people found it severely lacking. However, it being a Universal International co-production, the American company had the film released in America uncut (cuz we don’t give a crap!) and in 1992, the uncut version was finally shown in Britain. And those bloody murder sequences really make up for some of the lengthier exposition scenes.

While it might lack a Cushing or a Lee, The Curse of the Werewolf is a standout in the early Hammer canon and is one of the handful of good werewolf movies that exists. Give it a look; you’ll be in for a howl.

Images: Hammer Films/Universal International

Kyle Anderson is the Associate Editor for Nerdist. He writes the weekly look at weird or obscure films in Schlock & Awe. Follow him on Twitter!