Sci-Fi TV Pilot 3% Hurls Brazilians Into Lord of the Flies Mode

Young civilians meet their fate in Brazilian TV pilot 3%.
Image courtesy Jotaga Crema

What the hell is going on in the creepy near-future world envisioned in 3%? The Brazilian sci-fi TV pilot, excerpted in the clip below, suggests that bad things are going to happen to the handsome young adults who file into a warehouse and swap out their clothes for Fascist-friendly uniforms.

In an e-mail to Wired.com, 3% director Jotaga Crema explained the premise: “The story takes place in a world where all people, upon reaching age 20, can enroll in a selective process where 3 percent are accepted to transfer to a better world full of opportunities and the promise of a decent life. The selection process is cruel, filled with tension, and composed of extreme situations of stress, fear and moral dilemmas.”

Crema and his DIY colleagues hope 3% attracts an online following they can use as a bargaining chip to negotiate network funding for an entire season. Information about the show can be found at the 3 Porcento Facebook page.

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Sneak Peek Inside Flashpoint: Emperor Aquaman

DC Comics will begin to unravel the mystery of why Aquaman decided to sink most of Europe, starting with Flashpoint: Emperor Aquaman No. 1, which hits stores Wednesday.

The three-part miniseries ties directly into the core conflict within the world of Flashpoint in the DC universe. Underwire has teamed with GeekDad to bring you a sneak peek at the first four pages of the first issue. Check out the first two pages of Emperor Aquaman on GeekDad, then come back for pages three and four (below). We’ll wait.

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With Sci-Fi Thriller Super 8, J.J. Abrams Stays True to DIY Roots

Director J.J. Abrams, seen on the set of Super 8, has come a long way since his backyard filmmaking days.
Photo courtesy Paramount Pictures

J.J. Abrams took a page from his past in crafting Super 8, his sci-fi thriller about four boys who set out to shoot a zombie movie during their summer vacation in 1979.

Equipped with big imaginations and minimal technical expertise, the DIY filmmakers rely on a Super 8 camera, firecrackers and model airplanes to get the job done. Everything changes when the teenagers accidentally film a mysterious event that catapults their small town into a state of panic. Even as the sci-fi machinations spiral out of control, Super 8 captures the plucky work ethic that Abrams practiced himself as a backyard filmmaker.

“What was great about making Super 8 films is that there was this scrappy, do-it-yourself approach,” Abrams said in a phone interview with Wired.com. “It was about trying to figure out how to use whatever was in your garage, because when you were a kid, you had almost no access to anything. You’d get whatever blazer you could steal from your dad so that one of your friends could dress as a businessman. You had to be inventive.”

Abrams’ moviemaking hero Steven Spielberg, who executive-produced Super 8, also shot homemade movies as a child before making 1982’s E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial and other zeitgeist-defining blockbusters that exert major influence on Abrams’s new sci-fi adventure. Unlike Spielberg, Abrams created TV series (Felicity, Alias) before breaking into film. With Lost, the mysterious island drama he co-created, and his 2009 Star Trek reboot, Abrams cemented his place as one of sci-fi’s most imaginative storytellers.

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Giveaway: Win Doctor Who: The Complete Fifth Series

Part one of Doctor Who's amazing sixth series arrives July 19 on DVD and Blu-ray. Want to prepare by winning a free copy of Doctor Who's complete fifth series? Yeah, we thought you would.
Image courtesy BBC

With freaky new villains and a cerebral episode from Neil Gaiman, Doctor Who’s sixth series has been an ambitious blast of scary, brilliant sci-fi. How scary and brilliant? You tell us, and we’ll reward one Time Lord loyalist with a free copy of Doctor Who: The Complete Fifth Series.

That ought to prime the TARDIS nicely for the July 19 release of Doctor Who: Series Six, Part One on Blu-ray and DVD. The two-disc collection features series six’s first seven episodes, as well as creepy extras on two of the good Doctor’s fearsome opponents — replicants known as The Gangers and memory-stealing telepaths known as The Silence.

After Saturday’s uncanny cliffhanger, “A Good Man Goes to War,” the two-disc set is all Doctor Who fans will have until series six regenerates in September.

To help make the wait for the second half nearly unbearable, Wired.com and BBC America have teamed up for a few weeks of Doctor Who fun, with giveaways, polls and an exclusive interview with the BAFTA-nominated Eleventh Time Lord himself, Matt Smith.

Let us know in the comments below what you think of the first half of the sixth series, and you could win a free copy of Doctor Who: The Complete Fifth Series (right). The comment that best exhibits your Doctor Who smarts with the precision of a sonic screwdriver wins the prize. Entries must be received by 12:01 a.m. Pacific on June 10, 2011. Winners must live in the United States.

Note: If you do not have an e-mail address or Twitter handle associated with your Disqus login, you must include contact information in your comment to be eligible. Any winner who does not respond to Wired.com’s notification within 72 hours will forfeit the prize.

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Songpier Lets Anyone Make a Music App in Minutes

Apps might be the flavor of the minute, but they’re no passing fad. If you think it’s nuts that your phone, tablet and soon car and television will run apps, just wait until your refrigerator and air conditioner get in on the action.

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Every song can and should be an app. Now, it can, for free — no app designers required.

If you’re in a band (or even if you’re not but have managed to record some music) it’s now possible for you to create an app in minutes that anyone can install on a phone or tablet.

Pierlane’s Songpier, released for public beta Monday, walks even the most Luddite of drummers through the process of creating a web-based app for Apple iOS or Android. (Songpier also works with other smartphones, but was designed specifically with iOS and Android smartphones and tablets in mind.)

Songpier apps are web apps, as opposed to apps in the traditional sense of being downloaded from the iTunes or Android app stores. However, users can access these apps the same way they access other apps — by tapping a neat-looking icon on their home screens — and they feel just like regular apps. They load fast, perform responsively and include an artist’s song, pictures, events, merchandise, a link to the artist’s website and more — just about everything you would expect from a standard music app from a band.

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DJ Shadow’s ‘Gotta Rokk’ With Stormtroopers, NASA Footage

NASA footage, a humping stormtrooper and a whole lot of rock mayhem — DJ Shadow’s new video for “I Gotta Rokk” has it all.

Clocking in at just over three-and-a-half minutes, the clip (above) is a wonderful collection of catastrophe — from rock shows gone wrong to boxing battles, and it’s topped off by Corey Haim’s wonderful “death by stereo” quote from The Lost Boys.

“I Gotta Rokk” is on DJ Shadow’s current EP of same name. The turntable virtuoso’s next full-length album is due in September.

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Blade Chases Japanese Vampires in New Anime

Marvel Comics vampire slayer Blade is turning Japanese in a new anime series that debuts next month.

In the TV reboot, previewed in the clip above, Blade partners with Noah Van Helsing and his dog Razor to battle Deacon Frost. Mitsuyuki Masuhara directs the script by Kenta Fukasuka (Battle Royale).

The show, presented by Madhouse and Animax, is part of a project that will also reconfigure the X-Men, Wolverine and Iron Man as cartoon characters. Blade debuts July 1 in Japan.

[via Comics Alliance]

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Video: Green Lantern, Magneto Spar Over Summer Blockbusters

In terms of long-running geek beefs, Mac versus PC and Marvel versus DC are two of the most notorious. This video makes light of both of them, as Green Lantern and Magneto square off in a battle over who has the better summer-blockbuster movie.

Riffing on the Apple commercials that pitted John Hodgman’s Windows guy against Justin Long’s Mac user, the clip (above) gives giggle-worthy diatribes from DC Comics’ Green Lantern and X-Men villain Magneto.

“Talk about our franchises or I’ll really reboot your ass to the ’60s,” the Green Lantern action figure says, defending his eponymous film coming out June 17. Meanwhile, in the Marvel Comics corner, Magneto fights back with X-Men: First Class, which opened this past weekend.

“Excuse me, I have a franchise, you have Van Wilder in space,” Magneto says. Dude, sick burn.

Watch more Marvel-versus-DC parodies from ItsJustSomeRandomGuy (aka voice-acting teacher Michael Agrusso) on Agrusso’s YouTube page.

[via Topless Robot]

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Amon Tobin’s ISAM Merges Music, Meat, Machines in 3-D Show, Creepy Hardcover

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Amon Tobin 2011 Photo: Nathan Seabrook

Amon Tobin is blinded by the multimedia light in his latest effort ISAM and its stunning live show. (Photo courtesy Nathan Seabrook.)

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Electronic musician Amon Tobin launches a formidable one-two punch with his new full-length work, ISAM, and a visually ambitious tour that pairs the record’s sonically challenging music with shape-shifting 3-D animation.

“The idea was to integrate myself, quite literally, into an audio and visual presentation of the album,” the Brazilian-born Tobin told Wired.com in an e-mail interview.

As previewed in the gallery above and the in-depth video below, the live show will find Tobin performing from within an arty geometric hive. Ensconced within the 25-by-14-by-8-foot central cube, Tobin will use real-time projection mapping, generative imagery and audio-reactive elements to produce a brain-teasing electronic music performance with little in the way of precedent.

“The show isn’t about being a big flashy production,” said Tobin of the visual component, which was created by V Squared Labs and Leviathan. “It’s not giant walls of LEDs constantly flashing meaningless visual content at you until you puke. It’s completely unique and actually quite bizarre.”

LISTEN: “Lost & Found” by Amon Tobin

Just as bizarre is Control Over Nature, a collaboration between Tobin and artist Tessa Farmer on exhibit at London’s Crypt Gallery through Sunday. (The exhibit crosses the pond in the fall.)

Control Over Nature matches ISAM’s lush, inorganic soundscapes with Farmer’s sculptures of flies, microbot fairies and decomposing natural life. Photographed by Pelle Crepin, the images in Control Over Nature will be featured in limited-edition packaging for ISAM. (For a look at the imagery, see the gallery above. For a taste of the music, check out “Lost & Found,” at left, or Wired.com’s exclusive download of Two Fingers’ remix of ISAM’s “Surge,” below.)

Tobin’s tour started Wednesday in Montreal, extends through Europe throughout the summer and reaches U.S. shores this fall. We pick Tobin’s brain on digitalism’s divide, DJ culture, scoring film and more in the interview below.

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Photos From Sasquatch 2011: Great Bands, Amazing Venue

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foo fighters

Dave Grohl rips it up, and the Foo Fighters leave fans reeling and excited about the rest of the weekend after finishing a forceful Friday set on the main stage.

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There comes a moment here at Sasquatch — the annual music festival held in the Columbia River Gorge in rural Washington state — when the frontman or frontwoman of some hyperventilated-over indie band ascends the main stage to a tidal wave of applause, turns his or her back on the grassy amphitheatre of adoring fans, and just stops to take in the scenery. Out past the synthesizers and drums, over a vast precipice, the silver-blue Columbia River snakes its way through sage-dotted canyons that fade out into infinity and reflect the clouds’ shadows like a mirror.

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And that’s when they say it:

“This is the most amazing venue we’ve ever played.”

“Give it up for Mother Nature!”

You realize this is more than praise. It is, in fact, a magical incantation. Magical because upon its utterance, you, adoring fan, and him, untouchable frontman, are suddenly equals. You are both unabashedly geeking out at the scenery. And then it’s loud. And it is the most epic TV on the Radio show you’ve ever seen. And it is the most epic place they’ve ever played! And did you see that shooting star? And is that an eagle? And do we even need to eat those mushrooms?!

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