25.12.08

Left 4k Dead

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Left 4k Dead was made by Markus Persson,
for the 2009 Java 4k Competition.
The entire game is less than 4kb.

The game is inspired by Left 4 Dead by Valve Software.

How to play:

Use WASD to move. Move the mouse to look around. Press the left mouse button to fire. To reload, press R. Yellow powerups restore clips. Red powerups restore health. Beating a level means the game gets harder, but you get more points for each zombie.

20.12.08

Final Ninja




Controls
Use the ARROW KEYS to move. Click with the MOUSE to throw a ninja star - click and hold to shoot out a rope to swing from and climb up.

Game by Nitrome.com

30.11.08

Vampire Killing Kit



A complete and authentic vampire killing kit — made around 1800 and complete with stakes, mirrors, a gun with silver bullets, crosses, a Bible, holy water, candles and even garlic, all housed in a American walnut case with a carved cross on top — attained $14,850 in the Jimmy Pippen estate sale by Stevens October 3–4 in the new Natchez Convention Center.


Know more here.

14.11.08

Mirror's Edge 2D



Click to play.
[Click to play the Beta.]

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Controls:
Left and Right arrows: Run
Up arrow: Horizontal wall run, vertical wall climb
Down arrow: Duck
S or /: Jump
M: toggle music
R at pause screen: Reset lap

Programming, gameplay, and level design: Brad Borne
Background Art: Mike Swain, Mike Castro
Character Animation: Mike Miller.
Producer: Mark Spenner

6.11.08

Simon Pegg on Why the Undead Should Never Be Allowed to Run



The dead and the quick
Everyone knows the undead don't run - so how come they were sprinting about in Charlie Brooker's recent TV drama? Simon Pegg argues for a return to traditional zombie values

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As an avid horror fan, I found the prospect of last week's five-night TV zombie spectacular rather exciting. Admittedly, the trailer for E4's Dead Set made me somewhat uneasy. The sight of newsreader Krishnan Guru-Murthy warning the populace of an impending zombie apocalypse induced a sickening sense of indignation. Only five years previously, Edgar Wright and I had hired Krishnan to do the very same thing in our own zombie opus, Shaun of the Dead. It was a bit like seeing an ex-lover walking down the street pushing a pram. Of course, this was a knee-jerk reaction. It's not as if Edgar and I hadn't already pushed someone else's baby up the cultural high street - but that, to some extent, was the point. In Shaun of the Dead, we lifted the mythology established by George A Romero in his 1968 film Night of the Living Dead and offset it against the conventions of a romantic comedy.

Still, I had to acknowledge Dead Set's impressive credentials. The concept was clever in its simplicity: a full-scale zombie outbreak coincides with a Big Brother eviction night, leaving the Big Brother house as the last refuge for the survivors. Scripted by Charlie Brooker, a writer whose scalpel-sharp incisiveness I have long been a fan of, and featuring talented actors such as Jaime Winstone and the outstanding Kevin Eldon, the show heralded the arrival of genuine homegrown horror, scratching at the fringes of network television. My expectations were high, and I sat down to watch a show that proved smart, inventive and enjoyable, but for one key detail: ZOMBIES DON'T RUN!


I know it is absurd to debate the rules of a reality that does not exist, but this genuinely irks me. You cannot kill a vampire with an MDF stake; werewolves can't fly; zombies do not run. It's a misconception, a bastardisation that diminishes a classic movie monster. The best phantasmagoria uses reality to render the inconceivable conceivable. The speedy zombie seems implausible to me, even within the fantastic realm it inhabits. A biological agent, I'll buy. Some sort of super-virus? Sure, why not. But death? Death is a disability, not a superpower. It's hard to run with a cold, let alone the most debilitating malady of them all.

More significantly, the fast zombie is bereft of poetic subtlety. As monsters from the id, zombies win out over vampires and werewolves when it comes to the title of Most Potent Metaphorical Monster. Where their pointy-toothed cousins are all about sex and bestial savagery, the zombie trumps all by personifying our deepest fear: death. Zombies are our destiny writ large. Slow and steady in their approach, weak, clumsy, often absurd, the zombie relentlessly closes in, unstoppable, intractable.


However (and herein lies the sublime artfulness of the slow zombie), their ineptitude actually makes them avoidable, at least for a while. If you're careful, if you keep your wits about you, you can stave them off, even outstrip them - much as we strive to outstrip death. Drink less, cut out red meat, exercise, practice safe sex; these are our shotguns, our cricket bats, our farmhouses, our shopping malls. However, none of these things fully insulates us from the creeping dread that something so witless, so elemental may yet catch us unawares - the drunk driver, the cancer sleeping in the double helix, the legless ghoul dragging itself through the darkness towards our ankles.


Another thing: speed simplifies the zombie, clarifying the threat and reducing any response to an emotional reflex. It's the difference between someone shouting "Boo!" and hearing the sound of the floorboards creaking in an upstairs room: a quick thrill at the expense of a more profound sense of dread. The absence of rage or aggression in slow zombies makes them oddly sympathetic, a detail that enabled Romero to project depth on to their blankness, to create tragic anti-heroes; his were figures to be pitied, empathised with, even rooted for. The moment they appear angry or petulant, the second they emit furious velociraptor screeches (as opposed to the correct mournful moans of longing), they cease to possess any ambiguity. They are simply mean.


So how did this break with convention come about? The process has unfolded with all the infuriating dramatic irony of an episode of Fawlty Towers. To begin at the beginning, Haitian folklore tells of voodoo shamans, or bokors, who would use digitalis, derived from the foxglove plant, to induce somnambulant trances in individuals who would subsequently appear dead. Weeks later, relatives of the supposedly deceased would witness their lost loved ones in a soporific malaise, working in the fields of wealthy landowners, and assume them to be nzambi (a west African word for "spirit of the dead"). From the combination of nzambi and somnambulist ("sleepwalker") we get the word zombie.


The legend was appropriated by the film industry, and for 20 or 30 years a steady flow of voodoo-based cinema emerged from the Hollywood horror factory. Then a young filmmaker from Pittsburgh by the name of George A Romero changed everything. Romero's fascination with Richard Matheson's novel I Am Legend, the story of a lone survivor struggling in a world overrun by vampires, led him to fixate on an aspect of the story leapfrogged by the author: namely, the process by which humanity is subjugated by the aggressive new species. Romero adopted the Haitian zombie and combined it with notions of cannibalism, as well as the viral communicability characterised by the vampire and werewolf myths, and so created the modern zombie.

After three films spanning three decades, and much imitation from film-makers such as Lucio Fulci and Dan O'Bannon, the credibility of the zombie was dealt a cruel blow by the king of pop. Michael Jackson's Thriller video, directed by John Landis, was entertaining but made it rather difficult for us to take zombies seriously, having witnessed them body-popping. The blushing dead went quiet for a while, until the Japanese video game company Capcom developed the game Resident Evil, which brilliantly captured the spirit of Romero's shambling antagonists (Romero even directed a trailer for the second installment). Slow and steady, the zombie commenced its stumble back into our collective subconscious.


Inspired by the game and a shared love of Romero, Edgar Wright and I decided to create our own black comedy. Meanwhile, Danny Boyle and Alex Garland were developing their own end-of-the-world fable, 28 Days Later, an excellent film misconstrued by the media as a zombie flick. Boyle and Garland never set out to make a zombie film per se. They drew instead on John Wyndham's Day of the Triffids, as well as Matheson and Romero's work, to fashion a new strain of survival horror, featuring a London beset by rabid propagators of a virus known as "rage".


The success of the movie, particularly in the US, was undoubtedly a factor in the loose remake of Romero's Dawn of the Dead in 2004. Zack Snyder's effective but pointless reboot parlayed Boyle's "infected" into the upgraded zombie 2.0, likely at the behest of some cigar-chomping, focus-group-happy movie exec desperate to satisfy the MTV generation's demand for quicker everything - quicker food, quicker downloads, quicker dead people. The zombie was ushered on to the mainstream stage, on the proviso that it sprinted up to the mic. The genre was diminished, and I think it's a shame.


Despite my purist griping, I liked Dead Set a lot. It had solid performances, imaginative direction, good gore and the kind of inventive writing and verbal playfulness we've come to expect from the always brilliant Brooker. As a satire, it took pleasing chunks out of media bumptiousness and, more significantly, the aggressive collectivism demonstrated by the lost souls who waste their Friday nights standing outside the Big Brother house, baying for the blood of those inside. Like Romero, Brooker simply nudges the metaphor to its literal conclusion, and spatters his point across our screens in blood and brains and bits of skull. If he had only eschewed the zeitgeist and embraced the docile, creeping weirdness that has served to embed the zombie so deeply in our grey matter, Dead Set might have been my favourite piece of television ever. As it was, I had to settle for it merely being bloody good.




(Original Article)

18.9.08

Don't Give Up



McCann-Erickson has produced a beautifully animated but disturbing PSA for the Portuguese organization Quercus.

Director : FlavioMac. Post-Production : Seagulls Fly.

1.6.08

21.5.08

[Rec]



[Rec] is one of the best new horror films ever made. As it was released only 2 years ago, i'm not in the liberty of posting the video here.

If you really want to watch this film, i suggest you buy the dvd once it comes out. If you really REALLY want to watch it, search in the video area of a website that begins with the letter G and ends with the letters oogle.

Official website (official blog)

Check the trailer and audience reaction.

15.5.08

Game: The Last Stand 2

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After a failed rescue, our hero manages to hole up in a store in the town of Glendale. Hearing a radio broadcast announcing evacuations from the mainland in Union City, he begins gathering supplies and weapons and begins the journey across the state.

The zombie horde are unrelenting, insatiable. The only chance to survive is to make it to Union City in 40 days, before the evacuations end.

Move from town to town collecting all you can carry and defend yourself through the night.

5.5.08

30.4.08

Game: The Last Stand

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The Last Stand series is an action/defence game set in the zombie apocolypse. Blending basic strategy, action and defence game elements.

A great infection has fallen upon the earth. What few survivors made it through the initial chaos of the first few weeks are scattered across the country. The extent of the damage is unknown, all those that survived know is that they must escape.

Survive the night fighting off zombies from your barricade. Survive longer than a day by making use of the daylight hours effectively by:

- Repairing your barricade
- Searching for weapons
- Looking for other survivors to help repair, search and defend the barricade.
-------------------------
Features:

- 20 Days & Nights of Gameplay
- 11 different weapons
- 3500+ random zombie appearances

This Game is made by ConArtists

13.4.08

Steampunk Dalek



Before you ask, no, it isn't a working model.

The main body is made from a plastic Dalek bubble-bath bottle I bought very cheaply at Woolworth's in the post-Christmas sales. At the time I had no idea what I could use it for, but it looked too cool to pass up. I disassembled it and spray-painted the parts with a can of gold Plastikote paint after masking off the two silver arms on the front. The wheels, cylinders, chimney stack, and 'bumpers' came from a rather tacky brass model of Stephenson's Rocket I bought for £5 at a car boot sale. The brass brush on the end of the gun is the head of a rotary wire brush attachment that came with a mini-drill set. The pressure gauge, dome, whistle, safety valve, water level gauge, and valve are all bits and pieces I had lying around the workshop (I used to be into model engineering). All the brass parts were painstakingly cleaned and polished with Scotchbrite, Autosol, and Brasso. It is held together with a combination of screws, hot melt glue, and cyanoacrylate glue. I left the plastic bottle inside the body because the neck acts as the turret bearing - I haven't opened it so it must still be full of bubble-bath!

Steam Wars

If the story of Star Wars had been set in World War II, these would be the action figures sold to support the movies. This set of action figures was customized by Sillof. Yes, he could’ve cheated and substituted Indiana Jones for Han Solo, but he didn’t.

More screenshots in Sillof's Website. Check out other collections as well.

24.3.08

The Black Button



-YouTube Awards 2007 - Top Six Finalist, Best Short Film
-WINNER: Fitzroy Short Film Festival (Melb, Aus)
-WINNER: DearCinemaFest Short Film Festival (Int.)
and more...

Mr Roberts finds himself awoken inexplicably in a white room. A man sits before him at a desk and in between them stands a black button. If Mr Roberts pushes it, he will receive a briefcase filled with millions of dollars. Or he can take the key to the door and leave penniless. The catch? Pushing the button will result in the death of a human being. What would you do?

17.2.08

John Cleese's Letter to America



Dear Citizens of America,

In view of your failure to elect a competent President and thus to govern yourselves, we hereby give notice of the revocation of your independence, effective immediately.
Her Sovereign Majesty, Queen Elizabeth II, will resume monarchical duties over all states, commonwealths and other territories (except Kansas, which she does not fancy), as from Monday next.

Your new prime minister, Gordon Brown, will appoint a governor for America without the need for further elections. Congress and the Senate will be disbanded. A questionnaire may be circulated next year to determine whether any of you noticed.

To aid in the transition to a British Crown Dependency, the following rules are introduced with immediate effect:

More...
1. You should look up “revocation” in the Oxford English Dictionary. Then look up “aluminium,” and check the pronunciation guide. You will be amazed at just how wrongly you have been pronouncing it.

2. The letter ‘U’ will be reinstated in words such as ‘colour’, ‘favour’ and ‘neighbour.’ Likewise, you will learn to spell ‘doughnut’ without skipping half the letters, and the suffix “ize” will be replaced by the suffix “ise.”

3. You will learn that the suffix ‘burgh’ is pronounced ‘burra’; you may elect to spell Pittsburgh as ‘Pittsberg’ if you find you simply can’t cope with correct pronunciation.

4. Generally, you will be expected to raise your vocabulary to acceptable levels (look up “vocabulary”). Using the same twenty-seven words interspersed with filler noises such as “like” and “you know” is an unacceptable and inefficient form of communication.

5. There is no such thing as “US English.” We will let Microsoft know on your behalf. The Microsoft spell-checker will be adjusted to take account of the reinstated letter ‘u’ and the elimination of “-ize.”

6. You will relearn your original national anthem, “God Save The Queen”,
but only after fully carrying out Task #1 (see above).

7. July 4th will no longer be celebrated as a holiday. November 2nd will
be a new national holiday, but to be celebrated only in England. It will be called “Come-Uppance Day.”

8. You will learn to resolve personal issues without using guns, lawyers or therapists. The fact that you need so many lawyers and therapists shows that you’re not adult enough to be independent. Guns should only be handled by adults. If you’re not adult enough to sort things out without suing someone or speaking to a therapist then you’re not grown up enough to handle a gun.

9. Therefore, you will no longer be allowed to own or carry anything more dangerous than a vegetable peeler. A permit will be required if you wish to carry a vegetable peeler in public.

10. All American cars are hereby banned. They are crap and this is for your own good. When we show you German cars, you will understand what we mean.

11. All intersections will be replaced with roundabouts, and you will start driving on the left with immediate effect. At the same time, you will go metric immediately and without the benefit of conversion tables… Both roundabouts and metrification will help you understand the British sense of humour.

12. The Former USA will adopt UK prices on petrol (which you have been calling “gasoline”) - roughly $8/US per gallon. Get used to it.

13. You will learn to make real chips. Those things you call french fries are not real chips, and those things you insist on calling potato chips are properly called “crisps.” Real chips are thick cut, fried in animal fat, and dressed not with catsup but with malt vinegar.

14. Waiters and waitresses will be trained to be more aggressive with customers.

15. The cold tasteless stuff you insist on calling beer is not actually beer at all. Henceforth, only proper British Bitter will be referred to as “beer,” and European brews of known and accepted provenance will be referred to as “Lager.” American brands will be referred to as “Near-Frozen Gnat’s Urine,” so that all can be sold without risk of further confusion.

16. Hollywood will be required occasionally to cast English actors as good guys. Hollywood will also be required to cast English actors as English characters. Watching Andie MacDowell attempt English dialogue in “Four Weddings and a Funeral” was an experience akin to having one’s ear removed with a cheese grater.

17. You will cease playing American “football.” There is only one kind of proper football; you call it “soccer”. Those of you brave enough, in time, will be allowed to play rugby (which has some similarities to American “football”, but does not involve stopping for a rest every twenty seconds or wearing full kevlar body armour like a
bunch of Jessies - English slang for “Big Girls Blouse”).

18. Further, you will stop playing baseball. It is not reasonable to host an event called the “World Series” for a game which is not played outside of America. Since only 2.1% of you are aware that there is a world beyond your borders, your error is understandable and forgiven.

19. You must tell us who killed JFK. It’s been driving us mad.

20. An internal revenue agent (i.e. tax collector) from Her Majesty’s Government will be with you shortly to ensure the acquisition of all monies due, backdated to 1776.


Thank you for your co-operation.
John Cleese


Note: It has been stated that John Cleese didn't write this letter. If he did it would be funnier.

31.1.08

Frozen Smiles


FROZEN SMILES

not your grandfather's ice tray




All of a sudden, dentures aren’t just for Grandpa anymore!
Freeze up a batch of Frozen Smiles and drop them into
any glass - they’re the ice cubes that grin right back at you
(and your esteemed party guests). Don’t you think they’ll
add a little bite to whatever you’re drinking? Frozen Smiles

is made from soft, food-safe synthetic rubber and packaged
in clear, peggable, recyclable PET-G boxes.



Design: Jason Amendolara

27.1.08

Evol: Love in a Backwards World



The 5 minute film tells the story of a couple who spot each other across a crowded street and fall in love. Although everyone else in the world around them moves backwards, the couple moves forward as they find each other.

Directed by Chris Vincze.
Platinum Remi Award winnder, WorldFest film festival, Texas
First Place Winner, StudentFilmmakers Summer Shorts 2006
Shortlisted: Kodak Short Film Showcase 2006
Starring: Rick Warden & Lucy Barker. Written & Directed by Chris Vincze. Produced by Wendy Bevan-Mogg

24.1.08

May the Force be with pew: Brothers open Jedi 'church' in Wales



A Jedi "church" has been born in a galaxy far far away - North Wales.

The Holyhead chapter of the self-styled Jedi Church, which claims up to 400,000 members worldwide, has sprung up thanks to brothers Barney and Daniel Jones, both Star Wars obsessives.

The "church" is only one of a handful around the planet, said hairdresser Barney, 26, the Anglesey Order Minister, also known as Master Jonba Hehol.

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The force: Barney Jones 26, aka Jonba Hehol, and his brother Daniel Jones, 21, aka Morda Hehol, have formed the first Jedi 'church' - in Holyhead

"Some people think it will be quite interesting but lots of people will ridicule us because it seems quite nerdy but we've had a good reaction so far," he said.

"We think of it as proper lifestyle enhancement and it should be taken seriously - it can't be bad if it makes life better.

"We live normal day-to-day lives.

"We are trying to take away the humour of it all and bring more structure so people take it more seriously."

The "religion" was born as a result of a nationwide joke in the 2001 census when nearly 400,000 claimed their belief system was Jedi.

And now Barney and musician Daniel, 21 - or Master Morda Hehol, self-appointed UK "church" leader - are getting their new "religion" off the ground.

"It's serious," said Barney.

Luke Skywalker

On film: Mark Hamill played Luke Skywalker

"We will have teachings based on Yoda - the 900-year-old grand master - as well as readings, essays submitted, meditation and relaxation, visualisation and discuss healthy eating.

"The Jedi religion is about life improvement, inner peace and changing your lifestyle so you have a more fulfilling existence.

"It's based on the films but we have brought things into it because the films are a bit more sci-fi.

"But we have developed on the film's teachings, introducing teachings we believe the Jedi Knights would seek.

"We used to watch the films over and over again and it came about from that."

There will be no chance of their empire striking back at people who mock the Jedi, as they are a peace-loving bunch, said Barney.

The Anglesey order has 80 worshippers - whose uniform is head-to-toe black - but is growing daily, said Barney - who as a master wears brown hooded robes.

And when a building has been found to home the movement, the brothers aim to provide lightsabre fighting classes.

"Worshippers" will take a series of tests to scale the Jedi hierarchy.

Plans have also been made to open a Jedi "church" in Surrey and in the Philippines to follow on from America's first in Florida.





Article from: dailymail.co.uk