MIB 3 - Will Smith, Tommy Lee Jones and Josh Brolin

Easy money making a third movie. I'll probably see it since Will Smith didn't say anything like, "Daaaammmmnnn". You all know what I'm talking about.

Machinima Exclusive: GI Joe: Retaliation

Fucking 'Murica = Tons of Fucking Ninjas

Luc Besson's "Prison Break in Space" - Lock Out

Well...Guy Pierce can take a punch.

Check out the first trailer for Lock-Out, the action movie which Luc Besson co-wrote and produced. Guy Pearce is a convict who has to go inside a maximum security prison — in space! — to rescue the president's daughter (the perrenially captured Maggie Grace). If he succeeds, he gets his freedom. I just love Pearce's surly attitude, mixed with the shots of space combat and space punching. The whole thing has a Battlestar Galactica feel, only with more money and a faster pace. And Peter Stormare!

The actual directors of Lock-Out are cinematographers James Mather and Stephen St. Leger, who previously directed a short film, Prey Alone. Mather also co-wrote the script with Besson. Lock-Out hits U.S. cinemas on April 20.

Ever wonder about Superheroes normal life...Trailer for Alter Egos

Could have some potential...

The film is set in a version of our world in which super heroes are real but have recently lost all government funding and public support, and out of that setting comes a quirky comedy about an out of work superhero who needs to be saved from his own emotional crisis, and the girl who helps him do it.

While I won't spoil the cause of the 'emotional crisis' here - it's contained in the trailer and is pretty damn fantastic - this whole thing just oozes style and charm and a sense of comedy based in wit and a sincere love for the genre. Galland takes himself in some new directions here while still preserving the unique voice that made Rosencrantz an indie hit. It's Sundance selection season and this looks like an obvious pick from where I'm sitting. Here's hoping the powers that be agree.

Alter Egos was produced by Dan Farah of Farah Films, Carlos Velazquez, Jordan Galland and Milan Chakraborty of Attic Light Films with Ed McWilliams and Doug Weiser as executive producers. Kris Lemche, Brooke Nevin, Joey Kern, Christine Evangelista, John Ventimiglia and Danny Masterson star. Check the trailer below.

Batman is the 1%

Sequelitis - Mega Man

Not saying I'm a huge Mega Man fan (but I am), but this video is pretty funny. It goes for about 19 minutes, I'd say the good stuff is until 10 minutes in. But watch it all, fuck if I care.

And sorry for the ads...fucking Youtube

AKA Jessica Jones will fall in the Marvel Universe

Jessica Jones was once known as Jewel, a crime fighting hero in the Marvel universe, sharing space with the likes of Spider-Man, Iron Man, the Hulk and other well known super heros.

Now she’s given up the cape and gone into business as a private investigator, only to find that getting out of the whole super hero thing is tougher than she thought.

She finds herself working on cases that frequently involve super heroes from the broader Marvel universe, and this is essentially the challenge for the upcoming television show: not all those heroes can be used, since other entities own the television rights to the characters.

Spider-Man, for example, is currently owned by Columbia Pictures.

Luckily, since the acquisition of Marvel by Disney, both ABC and Marvel are owned by the same parent company, so all of the characters currently still owned by Marvel are at least a possibility.

However, that doesn’t mean Disney will want the characters to cross over too much, since the Marvel Film Universe has been very lucrative so far, and they wouldn’t want to take the chance of diluting the characters.

This means that we probably won't see Iron Man or Black Widow actually appear on the television show - but they are free to explore some of the minor Marvel characters alongside newly created personalities for the show.

Clearly, whenever possible, the show will attempt to draw directly from those films. It will exist in the same story world as the films, so events there will affect the plot of AKA Jessica Jones, even if the characters are unlikely to appear directly.

"As we go along things will alter in terms of what is made available to us, but we’re definitely in that universe," Melissa Rosenberg told Hitfix during a recent interview about the release of Breaking Dawn, Part 1, which she co-wrote. "... And as much as I can, I’m going to pull everything in from there that I can use." Rosenberg went on to confirm that Tony Stark and Stark Industries will be integral to the plot of the pilot.

AKA Jessica Jones - Alias will be part of the ABC fall pilot season if it gets picked up. Unfortunately, this is not yet a sure thing. Confirmation may arrive early next year when the major networks start rounding up their pilots.

Oh Shit, Don't Bring Siri Into This! - Siri Argument

See all the CollegeHumor Original Videos here.

Take a Moment - The Most Beautiful Footage of the Aurora

Kinda makes me want to be an astronaut....kinda

Earth | Time Lapse View from Space, Fly Over | NASA, ISS from Michael König on Vimeo.

Full Trailer for The Hunger Games

Eh... May check it out. I remember the Japanese version called "Battle Royale". Hope it's as action packed, and not all PG, Narnia-esque violence.

An Adult take on a Classic - Snow White and the Huntsman

Not gonna lie, I'm rooting for the Queen in this one...

Why We Can't Have Great Movies

Last Thursday, Universal Pictures chief Ron Meyer caused a splash late last week, when he admitted that "we do make a lot of shitty movies," and listed Land of the Lost, The Wolfman and Cowboys & Aliens among the studio's clunkers.

But the really fascinating thing about Meyer's presentation at the Savannah Film Festival was the insight he gave into why so many movies are crap: there's a kind of downward spiral where the more movies flop, the more risk-averse the studios become, and the more they make movies that are probably going to flop.

Meyer's comments came just before Universal had a bad weekend — Universal's Eddie Murphy comedy Tower Heist crashed and burned at the box office, being beaten by Puss in Boots. Meyer had been trying to set up a controversial deal to release Tower Heist on Video on Demand just a couple weeks after it hit theaters, and now he must be wishing he'd succeeded.

Now Tower Heist looks likely to join a long line of recent flops for Universal, including Dream House, The Change-Up, The Thing, Your Highness, Scott Pilgrim, Repo Men, The Wolfman, Cirque du Freak: The Vampire's Assistant, and many others. If it wasn't for the Fast & Furious and Fockers franchises plus Despicable Me, Universal would have had a pretty dismal last few years.

Movie Line's account of Meyer's remarks in Savannah is pretty fascinating, and well worth reading in its entirety. Super briefly, here are the highlights:

1) He goes into the problems with The Wolfman and Cowboys & Aliens, and says Land of the Lost was "just crap."

2) He says 3-D only makes sense for a small number of movies, like the otherwise-unappealing Journey to the Center of the Earth 3-D.

3) Says that the projects he recently killed, The Dark Tower and At the Mountains of Madness, were just too risky.

4) Says almost nobody can afford to do what James Cameron did with Avatar, and he's proud of A Beautiful Mind — but he wouldn't do it again because he'd rather make money than make critically acclaimed award bait.

What's interesting is the innate contradiction there — Meyer says, on the one hand, that he hates the fact that his studio puts out shitty movies like Land of the Lost and The Wolfman, or mediocre movies like Cowboys & Aliens. On the other hand, he says that aiming too high, with potentially brilliant projects like Dark Tower, Mountains of Madness, or something visually ambitious like Avatar, is too risky. And he wouldn't do Beautiful Mind again.

So Meyer wants movies that are better than Cowboys and Aliens, but not as good as A Beautiful Mind. Not mediocre, just not great. (What's in between mediocre and great? I think the answer to that question would be worth a billion dollars in Hollywood.)

Let's just state the obvious — Meyer wouldn't be apologizing for Cowboys and Aliens and Land of the Lost if they had made money. If Land of the Lost had been a runaway hit, he'd be talking about how Land of the Lost 2 was going to be a lot of fun.

It also seems likely that Universal's recent box office misfortunes have made the studio more risk-averse. Meyer says that Dark Tower and Mountains of Madness were both going to be super-expensive films that might not make enough money back. That calculation might have turned out the same way regardless, but it might be easier to justify a big outlay for a couple of prestige projects if the last several gambles had paid off.

Looking at the list of Universal films for the past decade, it's amazing how few of them stand out as having been great. Children of Men, for sure. I liked Despicable Me a lot. Drag Me to Hell was fun. Slither. And Serenity, of course. Out of those, only Despicable Me was a monster hit.

So after chewing over Meyer's unusually candid remarks for a few days, I'm left with the feeling that there's a downward spiral at work here — one that will probably get worse as box office receipts continue to fall. As people get more and more used to watching movies on demand at home, on their big flat panel screens — a trend that Meyer seems happy to try and cash in on — they'll be less likely to go out of their houses to see a movie on the off chance that it might not totally suck. As more mediocre movies fail, Universal and other studios will try to find the level of "fun concept and cute actors" to get you into the theater.

You can also expect to see more movies budgeted in the $100 million to $150 million range, not so much the $200 million and up range — what Mountains of Madness and Dark Tower have in common with Avatar is the high price point. With visual effects getting ever more expensive, you have to spend a lot of money to make a huge, visually stunning epic — as opposed to a smaller risk, which is a movie with just a few big greenscreen sequences or a few big action set pieces.

That, in effect, means that the economics of movie-making are pushing us towards movies where something unusual happens in the real world, or there's a portal, or there are a couple big fight scenes. Not so much with the "become immersed in a strange alien world" stuff. Oh, and one of Universal's most profitable recent movies? Was Skyline, which made an amazing profit margin on a teeny budget because it was filmed in someone's apartment. Everybody hated Skyline, but it made stupid amounts of money.

Also, R-rated movies are going to have to be cheap, like low-budget horror movies. Big-budget movies had better be family friendly, or at least accessible to teens.

So reading between the lines of Meyer's comments, it sounds like the sort of movies he's likely to be greenlighting going forward are: 1) Modestly budgeted. 2) Family friendly, unless they're much cheaper. 3) Movies which "show how great the human spirit is" the way he feels United 93 did. 4) Movies which may turn out to have a decent story, but not a great or particularly challenging story. In other words, comfortable, middle of the road fare.

And you know, sometimes diner food is pretty tasty. You just don't want to eat diner food for every meal.

Take a Moment - Thousands of Starlings Moving at Once

A vast number of starlings is known as a "Murmuration"

Murmuration from Sophie Windsor Clive on Vimeo.

Craig, Bardem star in new Bond thriller 'Skyfall'

LONDON (AP) — Ah, Mr. Bond, we've been waiting for you — and at last 007 is back, several years after his last screen adventure.

Producers announced Thursday that filming has begun on "Skyfall," the delayed 23rd film in the series and Daniel Craig's third outing as the suave British superspy.

Craig, who has brought a hard edge to his portrayal, told reporters that the movie, directed by Sam Mendes and shot in London, Scotland, Turkey and China, would be "Bond with a capital B."

Craig said he was "tremendously excited" to be stepping back into the role for the first time since 2008's "Quantum of Solace."

Work on the film was postponed, and Bond's future looked uncertain, when studio MGM filed for bankruptcy in 2010. But MGM's new management and EON Productions announced earlier this year that the spy would live to fight another day.

Craig will be joined by Spanish star Javier Bardem as Bond's nemisis, while British actors Albert Finney, Ralph Fiennes and Ben Whishaw will play as-yet-undisclosed roles.

Judi Dench returns as spy chief M and the film introduces two new Bond girls — English actress Naomie Harris as a field agent named Eve and French performer Berenice Marlohe as "a glamorous, enigmatic character" named Severine.

"There's lots of surprises," said Mendes, who won an Academy Award for his 1999 film "American Beauty."

"I think this has all the elements of a classic Bond movie, including — to quell any rumors — a lot of action," Mendes said.

Some have questioned the choice of Mendes, best known for his stage work and emotionally intense dramas like "Revolutionary Road" and "The Road to Perdition."

But he and the producers said they did not plan to take the series in a radically new direction.

Producer Michael G. Wilson said the series had "started down a path" with Craig's first appearance as a gruff, muscular Bond in "Casino Royale" in 2006.

"And we're sticking to that path," Wilson said. "An interesting story, well written, with a great cast and plenty of action."

Mendes said action movies were "a world that's new to me, and I've embraced it."

"The action needs to coexist with the drama, and that's the balance we've got to strike," he said.

Filming will take place in London's government district of Whitehall, at Pinewood Studios outside the British capital and on location in Istanbul, Shanghai and the Scottish wilderness.

Early reports that the film would shoot in India and South Africa have not materialized, but the producers insisted they had not trimmed Bond's budget since "Quantum of Solace," which was widely reported to have cost roughly $200 million.

"It is in the same range as the last one," Wilson said. "We haven't had to change anything in the script to get what we want."

Cast members said they had been training hard for their roles — Craig, it seems, by growing the designer stubble he sported at Thursday's press conference.

Bardem joked that the hardest part for him was "learning the English vowels." Harris said she had been doing practicing yoga, learning stunt driving and firing machine guns, "which I've discovered I have a real taste for."

Producers Wilson and Barbara Broccoli — old hands at building suspense around the movies — kept many details under wraps.

Of the plot, they revealed only that "Bond's loyalty to M is tested as her past comes back to haunt her" and MI6 comes under attack.

As for the meaning of the title, Broccoli said it "has some emotional resonance which will be revealed in the film."

Broccoli said the producers hoped Mendes would sign up for a second film, and "definitely" wanted Craig to return as Bond.

"Skyfall" is due to be released on Oct 26, 2012 in Britain and Nov. 9 in the United States, 50 years since the release of the first 007 film, "Dr. No."

There will be no change to one part of the series' winning formula — attractive women and hunky men. Asked whether Craig and Bardem would take their shirts off, Broccoli sought to reassure fans.

"Damn right," she said.

"If Barbara gets her way," Wilson added, "it'll be more than just their shirts."

Red Band: New 21 Jump Street Trailer

This actually looks pretty good and I'll probably go see it. It looks like Channing Tatum will join the ranks of Jon Hamm by trying comedy. Could pay off...

StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm Trailer

Really?!? Nothing for like 10 years, then 2 games in a year....

Welcome to Gattica

For years, mothers wanting to screen for genetic abnormalities in their unborn children have had few options, the most common being an invasive procedure known as amniocentesis, which requires the mother's womb to be tapped with a needle.

That test is very accurate, but also carries with it a small risk of miscarriage. Now, a new, non-invasive genetic screening technique promises to make prenatal testing easier and safer — but it raises a number of important ethical questions.

The new genetic screen is called MaterniT21, and it's a Down syndrome test marketed by a company called Sequenom. Unlike amniocentesis, the MaterniT21 test can be performed with just a small sample of the mother's blood, no womb-jabbing necessary.

While non-invasive screening methods, which can estimate the chance that a woman is carrying a child with Down syndrome, do exist, MaterniT21 is the first to offer the accuracy of a test based on genetic analysis; and as of October 17th, the test is available to physicians upon request in 20 major metropolitan areas across the US.

So why is this a big deal? Well, if reviews like this one (written by Hank Greely, who chairs the steering committee for the Stanford Center for Biomedical Ethics) are to be believed, MaterniT21 is just the first drop in what could soon swell into a "flood" of fetal gene screening, as similar non-invasive genetic analyses are developed for detecting a variety of other conditions.

"There's every reason to think that in the future you'll be able to extract an enormous amount of information from that sequencing data," says Peter Benn, director of the Diagnostic Human Genetics Laboratories at the University of Connecticut Health Center.

Of course, releasing the floodgates on prenatal genetic screening could have any number of consequences. Some ethicists, for example, predict that as it becomes increasingly routine to check for genetic abnormalities, more parents will have to confront the decision of whether or not to bring "unhealthy" children into the world.

"The idea that couples have choices about whether to continue their pregnancies may become strained," explains Mildred Cho, and ethicist at Stanford University, "because parents may be seen as irresponsible for allowing 'defective' pregnancies to go to term."

On the other hand, genetic screens like MaterniT21 could one day be used to not only detect genetic ailments, but could even serve a diagnostic purpose, representing the first step towards actually correcting genetic abnormalities with gene therapies administered in the womb. Whether or not the practice of fetal gene therapy would be considered eugenics raises even more ethical conundrums.

For now, however, Sequenom is seeking to distance itself from the idea of eugenics by focusing on developing tests for conditions that are already included in prenatal screening regimens.

"We do not want to invent new applications," explains Mathias Ehrich, Sequenom's senior director for R&D diagnostics. "Our focus is on making existing clinical applications safer. I don't think that we are in a position to say that we should determine what hair color the baby has."

"Get Your Shit Together" - The Walken Dead

New from POYKPAC

Blomkamp's ELYSIUM Needs You To Build The Future

Though District 9 director Neill Blomkamp's sophomore feature Elysium does not arrive for another two years Sony have already launched a viral campaign for the film at this year's San Diego Comic-Con.

Other than the cast - Matt Damon, Jodie Foster, Sharlto Copley, Wagner Moura, William Fichtner, Alice Braga and Diego Luna - and the involvement of legendary Blade Runner designer Syd Mead details about the film are being kept firmly out of the public eye but what we get here is a recruitment video by future engineering corporation Armadyne, looking to recruit a workforce for a massive project. Take a look below and see if it doesn't offer some clues into what Blomkamp is planning.

Roman Polanski's Carnage

Ill see it for John C. Reilly and Christoph Waltz. Kate Winslet and Jodie Foster...ehh. But who knows maybe they are funny....maybe...

Xavier Gen's The Divide - The Best, and Most Disturbing, Apocalyptic Thriller in a While

So this movie is getting amazing reviews all over the spectrum...ranging from performances to just the best apocalyptic thriller in a long while. The trailer, which I've seen around for over a year and a half, looks amazing. Apparently a ton of time and effort has gone into this...and I think it was worth it cause I'm looking forward to this film.

Semi-Sequel to Once: The Swell Season

Now there’s a documentary doing the rounds called “The Swell Season” which chronicles the rise, fall and faded romance between the actor/musician duo.

Here’s the official synopsis for the film, followed by the trailer for what looks like a goosebump-evoking documentary :

In 2008, Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova captivated audiences and earned two Academy Awards for their musical collaboration in the film Once, which reached $10 million at the box office and grew their popularity and fan base by tens of thousands in North America and throughout the world. As their fictional romance blurred with reality, they fell in love, recorded an album, and embarked on a world tour. Fueled by two years of exhilaration, performance, and psychological turmoil, The Swell Season is much more than a music documentary. It is a volatile and intimate portrait of a romance that fractures in the face of life on the road and personal tragedy. As Glen and Marketa’s relationship unhinges, ultimately music prevails as their enduring connection.

With incredible performances from around the world and an intimate seat on Glen and Marketa’s tour, The Swell Season will resonate with film fans and music fans alike.

If You Could Freeze Your Age, Which Age Would You Choose?

By Drew Magary
I recently wrote a novel called "The Postmortal" in which a scientist discovers a way to stop the human body from aging. You can still die after taking this cure. You can get shot or get AIDS or whatever. But your age stays the same. In the book, people freeze their age at various points. Old people still around when the cure is invented freeze their age and become the perma-elderly. Sex workers take it or are forced to take it at a relatively young age to appeal to clientele. But many people are allowed to freeze their age at any point they see fit (the main character does so at 29). Which got me wondering: What would be the BEST age for you to freeze yourself?

Keep in mind that maturity doesn't play a factor. If you freeze your age at 19, you don't stay as naive and stupid as a 19-year-old, you just look like one. I asked my parents this question and they didn't come to a mutual consensus. My dad said early thirties. My mom said forty, which I thought was crazy. Then again, I've never been forty, so I don't know how good it feels to be that age. I assumed turning forty felt like the Grim Reaper smacking you on the ass. But no! Apparently, some people are okay with it! Astounding.

Choosing an age to freeze yourself is shockingly difficult. You might choose age twenty, when you're young and fresh and wrinkle-free, and your ass hasn't started to sag and your tits still hold up. The problem is that, if you're frozen at twenty, you may mature but it doesn't APPEAR that you have. People may eternally think of you as an innocent waif who doesn't know anything, and that wouldn't be much fun. I'm 34 years old, and there's no way I'd ever choose to remain the 20-year-old me. I look like someone dropped me off in the city from a fucking cornfield. I don't want to look like that forever. And any younger would be out of the question as well. I was a fat child.

This question also cuts along gender lines as well. It's an old cliche that men age better than women, but I bet men would end up choosing to freeze themselves at an average older age than women if a cure for aging were ever found. George Clooney is fifty years old and I bet he considers himself in the prime of his life right now, this instant. He wouldn't go back very far to freeze his age. But society puts far more pressure on women to remain youthful-looking, and so you'd have a majority of ladies probably getting cured somewhere in their twenties. Of course, this is what I assume because I'm a horrible sexist pig.

It's also a difficult question to ponder if you've never experienced being every age. If you're 21 years old and someone offers to freeze your age, you might be stupid enough to be like, "HELL YES!" and do it without considering how you'll look and feel ten years hence. It's one of the things I realized when I was dicking around and writing this book. Each age is a step. Each age has its own unique value. And people have wildly different ideas of when they consider themselves to be in the prime of their existence. I think I'm in mine now. I think 34 sounds just about right. But maybe that's because I haven't been 44 yet. Or even 54. Maybe the best age to be is the one you are, to constantly be aging and changing and experiencing life as the person you've slowly become. I don't know. All I know is that freezing it at 65 would SUCK.

Joseph Gordon Levitt is a busy guy - New Trailer for "Premium Rush"

Aaron Sorkin is back with new HBO drama - More As This Story Develops

We have been guaranteed Jeff Daniels and Olivia Munn will appear on HBO, as Aaron Sorkin’s much talked about pilot has been picked up to series by the premium cable network. The drama, once known as More As This Story Develops, is without a title, but the names of the people involved more than make up for that. The show stars Daniels as a cable news anchor, as well as Emily Mortimer as the new executive producer. Sam Waterson appears as the big boss, while Olivia Munn, Alison Pill, John Gallagher Jr, Dev Patel, and Thomas Sadoski all play various staff members. They all hope to do good news despite commercial and corporate obstacles and their own personal issues. Deadline reports that there’s no set number of episodes that will be produce, though it’s probably safe to bet the number will be 10. I’ve been vaguely interested »

Fresh Air Interview: Jon Stewart

This little gem is from a Fresh Air interview back in Oct 2010. Really a great interview with Jon Stewart and about the depths of the Daily Show. If you have an hour to kill, listen to this.
PS: Go NPR for having a very well organized data base of interviews.

Sam Worthington, Jeffery Dean Morgan - Texas Killing Fields

Rumor has it that Danny Boyle of "Slumdog Millionaire" was originally attached to direct but left after saying, "fantastic script, really special script, but so dark it would never get made.'
Its got a great cast and apparently an amazing script. The fact that it's a true story adds an extra layer of darkness that also peaks my curiosity. Looking forward to it.

Real Steel featurette

I don't know what it is about this movie, it doesn't look good but for some reason i'm interested...

Awesome Live Action PORTAL film - No Escape

I tip my hat to this crew...well done sir.

Wired - Sad Astronaut is Sad

Astronaut Suicide Photos Inspired by Shuttle Program’s End

Goodbye Shuttle....

This is the closet to Fair and Balanced as you can get

Many in the Fox News World look at the Daily Show with Jon Stewart as simply liberal comedy without any trace of journalistic merit. I say regardless of how The Daily Show leans politically, it isn't hard to see obvious gaps in "real" journalism. Take, for example, this rant about Ron Paul's unfair media treatment. And if you agree with that, check out his "defense" of Michelle Bachmann on this week's Newsweek Cover.

The Daily Show
Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook

Top Gear's wild ride - 60 Minutes Interview

It works because what happens in the male mind is funny....cause absolutely nothing goes on up there.

Sleight Bells- Riot Rhythm

This song will be to the movie 30 Minutes or Less what MIA's Paper Planes was to Pineapple Express

First Look at Anne Hathaway as Selina Kyle in The Dark Knight Rises

Again, going the realistic route with the costume, featuring goggles and ear buds instead of a leather cat mask.But how'd she get Batman's bike?

Olivia WIlde, Justin Timberlake, Amanda Seyfried - In Time

Time is the new Money


In Time Sizzle Reel

Tron: Uprising teaser goes live

Canonically, it takes place between the betrayal of CLU which sent Kevin Flynn into exile, and the discovery of the ISOs.

CLU is attempting to rule the grid with the help of General Tesler, who seems to be the main villain for the series - since CLU needs to be dealt with by Sam Flynn later.

Red Tails - George Lucas gets to tell a new story

After the mega-phenomenon of Star Wars, George Lucas has often complained about being imprisoned by the series.



However, at the same time, he keeps swearing to do the smaller movies he’s always wanted to make, like THX, but never gets around to it.

Now reports are surfacing that Lucas’s new original story, Red Tails, about the Tuskegee Airmen, is finally ready for a January 20, 2012 release, and the trailer’s already hit online. 

If this story seems somewhat familiar, it is probably because the The Tuskegee Airmen was done as a cable movie in 1995 with Laurence Fishburne.

Humanity Goes Off-Line in Bryan Singers "H+"

Watch the first trailer for Bryan Singer's futuristic webseries H+, in which the population has ditched smart phones for brain implants. And of course, it all goes horribly wrong.

Here's a quick synopsis:

H+: The Digital Series takes viewers on a journey into an apocalyptic future where technology has begun to spiral out of control, a future where 33% of the world's population has retired its cell phones and laptops in favor of a stunning new device – an implanted computer system called H+.

This tiny tool allows the user's own mind and nervous system to be connected to the Internet 24 hours a day. But something else is coming… something dark and vicious… and within seconds, billions of people will be dead… opening the door to radical changes in the political and social landscape of the planet - prompting survivors to make sense of what went wrong.

No word yet on when the series is set to go online, but rumor has it, it will air by 2011. Fingers crossed for this one, the FX are pretty compelling. Let's hope the story works as well!

The Last Airbender: Legend of Korra

Getting goosebumps already...

Homeland - An Original Showtime Series

Knights of Badassdom Trailer = EPICNESS

The Amazing Spider-Man Trailer Officially Debuts

‘Assassin’s Creed: Revelations’: Secrets of the Game

Games, particularly those of a science-fiction bent, often use alternate histories to generate an atmosphere more evocative, and perhaps more human, than what gleaming metal corridors and space-age technology can allow. Perhaps they picture a 1960 underwater city ruined by gene splicing and steam-powered abominations. Or they insert jet packs and giant robots into one of the World Wars. The results usually fall somewhere between speculative fiction and camp, and leave a slew of cool ideas for guns and superpowers.

Fewer games take the very idea of history, and the alteration of history, as their subject. In Ubisoft’s most recent Assassin’s Creed games, players control Ezio Auditore, a Florentine noble who, finding himself in the middle of various conspiracies, becomes a shadowy figure running through the alleys and rooftops of Florence, Venice, and Rome in search of various arcane truths. The fictional twist is that players are controlling Ezio through his modern descendant, Desmond Miles, who “plays” through his ancestor’s memories through a virtual-reality device called the Animus. This is a game not only about re-imagining history, but about reliving and reenacting it. The coming Assassin’s Creed: Revelations will be the final game in the series of Ezio’s story, and takes place largely in a meticulously constructed 16th-century Constantinople. Speakeasy recently talked with lead writer Darby McDevitt about the themes and changes in the game.

Do you know what Ubisoft liked about the city of Constantinople?

I think as a metaphor for our first two assassins, Ezio and Altaïr. Altaïr was an Arab living in the holy land, and Ezio was an Italian born in Florence. Constantinople, apart from being incredibly beautiful and having an incredibly rich history, had this symbolic meaning of sitting on the border of Asia and Europe. The more research we did about the city, the incredible architecture, the almost seven-layered-dip quality of who had been there, how many people had lived there—Greeks, Romans, and Ottomans—it just became this city that we felt in love with. We ended up sending a huge number of our team, mainly our artistic director and mission and sound designers, there for two weeks to gather information.

In the previous games Ezio had a boyish, endearing quality and here he’s obviously aged and grizzled. The tenor of the action seems more serious; there’s a lot more gravitas to it. Would you say that that’s representative of a tonal shift in the game as a whole?

Definitely. Whether that’s me, or whether that’s the creative director, or a combination of everybody—games are, I think, the most collaborative medium around. For instance, a scriptwriter can write a movie and then hand it off and never touch it again. But that’s impossible in games; I’m always working on it, always tweaking.

We have actually worked pretty hard to make this a grittier, more morally gray universe. We like the morally gray aspect of the first Assassin’s Creed. Ezio is a fish out of water here; he can’t walk around being very cavalier about things. He can’t make too many assumptions about what he’s allowed to do. He can’t just kill people with impunity—not that he could in the last ones. At the same time, the boyishness; we just thought, this was a game where we would give him his love interest. There’s a woman named Sophia that plays a huge role in this game. She’s a Venetian living in Constantinople. I just thought, from a writing point of view, that you couldn’t have a 52-year-old guy still acting like a teenager and make it believable. Especially when he was trying to woo this incredibly intelligent woman who is almost immune to his sillier charms. It was just time to make Ezio grow up.

What do you mean by morally gray?

We’re in the middle of the Ottoman Empire, and it’s expanding and expanding at this period. Suleiman the Magnificent is really well-known for introducing an incredible legal system in the Ottoman Empire. At the same time he’s expanding its borders like crazy. [In our game] there are Templars who are remnants of the old Byzantine Empire, who we feel have a fairly legitimate reason for being angry at the Ottomans. A lot of our other Templars that you’ll meet in the game come from different areas around, at the borders of the Ottoman Empire. There’s Wallachia, where Romania is now; in 10 years they’ll be taken over by the Ottoman Empire. There are places in Egypt where Templars come from. So all the Templars in our game have these legitimate grievances against the Ottomans. They’re not just teeth-gnashing bad guys. They’re all people with a clear sense of how the Ottomans have wronged them.

While Ezio is doing certain favors for the Ottoman royalty, he’s careful to not get too involved, because it’s getting harder and harder to pick sides. He’s on a mission for himself; he just wants to get into this ancient library, and he finds himself wrapped up with all this political intrigue. By the end of the game I think it’ll be very, very difficult to say what he should have been doing, who he should have been siding with. It’s almost like an accident of circumstances that [he decides to] work with these people.

Are those ambivalences palpable in the mechanics of the gameplay?

That’s a good question. Probably not. Can you think of an example of how?

Through ambient dialogue, maybe, catching hints of the atmosphere that you’re describing, just in the process of walking through the city?

Yeah—we have this thing where Templars, because they’re Byzantine, descended from Greeks, can take over areas of the city. And when you’re in those areas, you will hear some of the Greek populations outright supporting—like, thanks for protecting us from the Ottomans. So hopefully you’ll get a sense of feeling like there’s a lot of tension in the city. There are definitely missions that you play where you might realize at the end that Ezio did the wrong thing. There’s an old political phrase that I tried to use in here: “There are terrible ways to do good things.” That’s maybe the theme of part of Ezio’s story

The Animus is an obvious metaphor for gaming, and you talk about how it causes multiple personalities, schizophrenia; and how Desmond is in a coma this time around. Can you speak to that decision, and the more surreal environment he’s playing through?

As for the Animus, it’s interesting because it is a metaphor for playing games, but when it was first invented, it was as a justification for doing certain game-y things—like locking a player off, like “you can’t go there yet.” Because that’s not how that character actually played through that life. And when you die in this game, it’s because you’ve de-synched. It’s taken on this great meta-commentary but it was actually invented for more practical reasons.

What we try to do is ask ourselves, what do we want to do, and then how can we justify it with our Animus—it’s hard to say. A lot of times, the decisions that are made are practical. And yet … the coma thing was just because of the way that [Assassin's Creed:] Brotherhood ended. And we also knew we had this Ezio story left to tell, and we thought, what’s the best way to deal with Desmond’s story? We don’t know a whole lot about Desmond; some people think he’s kind of a cardboard cutout right now. So let’s pause for a moment and see if we can find a way to tell more of his backstory. The coma idea became a way of saying, we can actually have him go through his own memories. We haven’t said much about it, but we’re planning a new type of experience for the coma. I think most people will think we’re being incredibly bold.

Assassin’s Creed: Revelations is released Nov. 15, 2011 on Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PC.

Dark Knight Rises teaser trailer goes live

Warner Bros. Pictures' and Legendary Pictures' "The Dark Knight Rises" is the epic conclusion to filmmaker Christopher Nolan's Batman trilogy.

Leading an all-star international cast, Oscar winner Christian Bale ("The Fighter") again plays the dual role of Bruce Wayne/Batman. The film also stars Anne Hathaway as Selina Kyle; Tom Hardy, as Bane; Marion Cotillard ("La Vie en Rose"), as Miranda Tate; and Joseph Gordon-Levitt, as John Blake.

Returning to the main cast, Michael Caine ("The Cider House Rules") plays Alfred; Gary Oldman is Commissioner Gordon; and Morgan Freeman ("Million Dollar Baby") reprises the role of Lucius Fox.

The screenplay is written by Christopher Nolan and Jonathan Nolan, story by Christopher Nolan & David S. Goyer.

Edward Norton To Play 'The Bourne Legacy' Villain Opposite Jeremy Renner and All Star Cast

Damn, this is major fine casting. Edward Norton is in negotiations to play the villain in Tony Gilroy's The Bourne Legacy which is already set to star The Hurt Locker lead Jeremy Renner. Currently there are no further details on Norton's role, how it will play into Gilroy's continuation of the Bourne sage, but we know that Matt Damon won't be returning and by all accounts this is a side story that exists within the realm of the greater Bourne universe.

Aside from Doug Liman, who first brough the Bourne films to Universal as a labor of love (he burned that bridge during The Bourne Identity) Gilroy, who wrote and had a hand in all three "Bourne" scripts (even though some were rewritten without him after the fact) is said to be the brains behind the action thriller franchise.

While we, and others, speculated and assumed months ago that "The Bourne Legacy" would follow the further clandestine exploits of Treadstone, Renner will play an operative from a covert government program, however it isn't that Treadstone's brainwashing program that birthed Jason Bourne, and it's apparently a group that is "even more dangerous than Treadstone."
Norton and Renner is some heavyweight casting and they’ll join Rachel Weisz who is scheduled to play the love interest (seriously, what a cast). We’re hoping some of the other actors who were in the mix for the lead, like Luke Evans and Dominic Cooper show up in supporting roles, but they’re being booked solid as their star meter is rising quickly. How about Anthony Mackie for a “Hurt Locker” reunion? Gilroy’s directorial debut “Michael Clayton” earned him a Best Directing nomination and earned itself seven Oscar nomination. Tilda Swinton won for Best Supporting Actress, but damn, that’s not too shabby for your first time out of the gate. His follow-up “Duplicity,” was stylish, but a little hollow, so here’s hoping he anchors the directorial leaps he made on his sophomore film with the gravitas and character building he mastered with his debut. Our hopes are extremely high. “The Bourne Legacy” is scheduled to land in theaters in August 2012.

Anonymous to launch Operation Bohemian Grove

Eerie....

Trailer release - Batman: Year One

One of the greatest superhero graphic novels of all time will receive its animated adaptation in late July at Comic Con.

Get More: Movie Trailers, Movies Blog

BRAVE teaser released on heels of poor CARS 2 reviews

Timing is everything for Pixar, and this teaser release, coupled with Tom Hanks hinting at a Toy Story 4 already in the works will ensure no faith in lost in Pixar.

Warrior

Joel Edgerton (King Arthur, Animal Kingdom) and Tom Hardy (Inception, Bronson) pack on the pounds in the upcoming action/drama WARRIOR. This actually looks extremely good, and I have to say I'm looking forward to it; something of a mixture between Brothers and Cinderella Man (Basically, family crossed with a redemption theme).

Tom Hardy, the shape shifting forger in Christopher Nolan's Inception, packed on nearly 40 pounds of muscle, which is probably being sustained or added to since his current role is the medically enhanced muscleman Bane in Nolan's The Dark Knight Rises. And Joel Edgerton has been fine toning his Australian career with this past years Oscar contender Animal Kingdom. Now I say this knowing he played freaking Gawain in King Arthur, a strong supporting character in a somewhat "Eh" movie, but still to go from that to step brother to Anakin Skywalker in the new Star Wars series. Anyone else catch that? Totally missed it myself. Still it's Star Wars, and he got to leave his mark.

Anywho, check out the trailer...it's gonna be awesome. And the synopsis is at the bottom. Enjoy.




Two brothers face the fight of a lifetime – and the wreckage of their broken family – within the brutal, high-stakes world of Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) fighting in Lionsgate's action/drama, Warrior.

An ex-Marine haunted by a tragic past, Tommy Riordan returns to his hometown of Pittsburgh and enlists his father, a recovered alcoholic and his former coach, to train him for an MMA tournament awarding the biggest purse in the history of the sport. As Tommy blazes a violent path towards the title prize, his brother, Brendan, a former MMA fighter unable to make ends meet as a public school teacher, returns to the amateur ring to provide for his family. Even though years have passed, recriminations and past betrayals keep Brendan bitterly estranged from both Tommy and his father.

But when Brendan's unlikely rise as an underdog sets him on a collision course with Tommy, the two brothers must finally confront the forces that tore them apart, all the while waging the most intense, winner-takes-all battle of their lives.

New 3 Minute, Spoiler trailer for Rise of the Planet of the Apes

This will definitely push you off the fence if you we're still questioning this movie. Not gonna lie, the latest trailer makes me want to go see this....

Lytro: The camera that could change photography forever

Have you ever taken a picture that would have been great if only it were in focus? Of course you have. So have we, countless times. But those days may soon be past all of us with the introduction of Lytro, an entirely new kind of camera that allows users to completely change the focus of a picture after the shutter clicks. And, according to AllThingsD, this next-generation camera will be available before the end of the year.

The secret behind the Lytro camera is a new type of sensor that gathers much more information about the light coming into the camera than the sensors found on all other types of digital cameras. Rather than record a finite amount of information about the light in a photograph, as is the case with other camera sensors, the Lytro sensor records the entire “light field,” which is made up of “all the light rays in a scene,” according to the Lytro website. This includes the color, intensity and direction of the rays of light. Other cameras simply record all the light as a single amount of light.

With this vast amount of data, the focus of a photo can be fully adjusted to match a photographer’s desires, using a computer, in the same way one might use Photoshop to adjusts hue, brightness or contrast on a regular photograph. This means never having to worry about whether auto-focus centered on the right part of a picture, and it makes capturing fast-motion much easier.

The Lytro sensor’s sensitivity to light also makes it possible to take photos in very low-light conditions without the need of a flash. It also makes it possible to take 3D-like photographs with only a single lens, and without the need for glasses to see the immersive effects.

Of course getting into the camera-making business isn’t a cheap endeavor. Not surprisingly (considering the truly astounding capabilities of the Lytro technology), the company has so far managed to raise $50 million from a variety of investors.

“Lytro’s breakthrough technology will make conventional digital cameras obsolete,” says Lytro investor and well-known venture capitalist Marc Andreessen of Andreessen Horowitz, which has invested in Lytro. “It has to be seen to be believed.”

According to Lytro founder and chief executive, the first Lytro camera “will be a competitively priced consumer product that fits in your pocket,” and will be available for purchase by the end of this year. To reserve a camera now, simply visit Lytro.com and enter your email address.

Ashley Judd comes with the funny in FLYPAPER

There’s a bank heist movie coming out starring Patrick Dempsey, Ashley Judd, Tim Blake Nelson, Mekhi Phifer, Jeffrey Tambor and Rob Huebel, directed by one of the guys behind The Lion King and written by the guys who did The Hangover. Sounds pretty good, right? Flypaper, directed by Rob Minkoff and written by Jon Lucas and Scott Moore tells the story of what happens when three separate crews mistakenly decide to rob a bank at the same time. It premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and will come on demand July 15 before opening in theaters August 19. After the jump, check the trailer and read why you didn’t hear much about the film after Sundance.

The End of Spider Man!

Marvel today announced that, for the second time this year, one of their major characters is going to be killed. Spoilers ahead!

Yes, in the grand tradition of comicbook spoilers, Marvel has decided to let the cat out of the bag about the final moments of Peter Parker’s life. The point, just as it always is, is to bring increased sales for at least that issue, expecting non-regulars to the line will all want to have copies of the final issue. It worked well enough earlier this year with the death of The Human Torch, though sales went right back down again after the firstfew issues of FF.

The spoilers deepen as Marvel reveals everything but who the killer will be: Parker is going to die specifically protecting his aunt, fulfilling the promise he made to his uncle so many years ago, and simultaneously becoming a posthumous role-model for another character who will decide to take up the Spider-Man mantle.

So, the Spider-Man line will not be at an end, but Peter Parker will be gone from it. This new young web-slinger will likely join the Future Foundation, and don the new white Spider-Man costume which was announced earlier this year.

"This is the last hurrah. This is it," Writer Brian Michael Bendis told the New York Post, "There's a real point to this and the point doesn't work if we don't stick to our guns."

"I won't lie to you,” he told the Associated Press, "It's embarrassing to say this out loud. Tears were rolling down my face, I was very emotional in writing it. This is a character that I have stayed with the entire time, that I have been almost solely responsible for. It represents such a great deal of my life."

Of course, we all know life is cheap in comicbooks, so Parker may be back someday.

Spider-Man’s death will occur in Ultimate Spider-Man #160, which will be released this Wednesday.

Secret Teaser Shot for "Avengers"?

We don't like to ruin any big surprises, but this news was too good to pass up. I love surprise/secret teaser trailers that we don't know are coming (well not anymore), as they're so much more exciting to experience when they are unveiled. Ain't It Cool News is reporting that Marvel has already shot a teaser trailer for The Avengers that will most likely (but so far unconfirmed) show in front of Thor and/or Captain America this summer. This is big news because Joss Whedon hasn't actually started rolling cameras on The Avengers yet, even though its due out in 2012. Additionally, if you want to hear a few more spoilers about this, read on.

Spoilers from this point on - you've been warned! Harry Knowles of AICN says this teaser includes Loki, the villain from Thor played by British actor Tom Hiddleston and evil brother of that superhero, who has long been rumored to be one of the primary villains in Marvel's The Avengers movie, which Joss Whedon is directing. Additionally, Latino Review says they've learned that Loki is indeed going to be the main villain in Avengers, but that's not all... Apparently he'll be using the cosmic cube (last seen being held by Red Skull) to bring in the aliens known as The Skrulls, who will also be one of Avengers villains, although to what extent we're not sure, or if it might be another big setup for a cinematic universe following The Avengers of 2012.

We've written about this exact situation before - specifically that Loki and The Skrulls would be the villains in The Avengers movie, not the Hulk (which was the original rumor tied to various comic storylines as well). We will not reveal any details about the teaser, not that any are known yet, but that's something that despite now knowing it's coming, I would rather wait and be surprised watching it in theaters before Thor than read about it online. I have a feeling it will be short like a real teaser, but will show Loki kicking ass or coming to Earth. And if you're in a theater packed full of geeks, there is going to be some very loud cheering after this.

HBO's Next Huge Series - American Gods

HBO today announced that American Gods, their new series based on the novel of the same name by Neil Gaiman will have a total of 60-70 episodes divided into six seasons.

Since it’s an HBO series, rather than a typical network-style 40 minute episode format, each episode will be an hour. That’s a lot of hours to fill, and immediately after the announcement, questions stareted to roll in from fans about how the current novel would be expanded to fill 60 hours of air-time.

The answer came late last night on Gaiman’s own Twitter feed. “And for those asking, No, 6 years of AMERICAN GODS on TV doesn't mean just the 1st book. It means I need to write the 2nd now, for a start.”

Gaiman has been planning a series of novels in the American Gods story for some time, but has so far only managed to produce a novelette sequel, and a spin-off novel.

Both of which were excellent - Anansi Boys is one of my favorite novels, but neither of which adds many hours to the American Gods storyline.

Likely, he is now planning to write a pair of trilogies, to match with the six seasons.

If you’re not familiar, the stories take place in a world where belief makes things real, and all gods are psychic products of men.

The more belief men have, the stronger the gods are, meaning that gods and their powers and strengths are constantly shifting throughout history. In the timeline of the first novel, Americans have created new gods from the things they ‘worship’ in the modern world, like The Internet. A cabal of old gods, led by the All-Father Odin set out to confront these new Gods, dragging a recently released convict - our POV character - along with them.

The series is planned to be big-budgeted and effects-heavy, not really a surprise for an HBO series featuring gods.

"There are some crazy things in there.” said Gary Goetzman, a partner in the production company, Playtone Productions, "We’ll probably be doing more effects in [American Gods] than [has ever] been done on a television series," said Goetzman.

If that’s true, then I think we figured out who George Lucas needs to talk to about producing his live-action Star Wars series. HBO just keeps rolling out good ideas, and near-film production values. It’s at the point where everytime I hear a good idea for a television show, I hope HBO takes it up.

Uncharted 3 Thins the Line Between Game and Movie

More Uncharted 3: Drakes Deception Videos

When the PS3 was first announced in 2005, Sony promised to make games look and feel more like movies.

In 2011, that vision is becoming closer to reality. When the first Uncharted game came out early in the PS3's life cycle, it was heralded as part game, part cinematic experience.

The problem, though, was that they were two separate parts. While the story cutscenes were beautiful and the script was written like something you'd find on a Hollywood director's desk, it almost seemed like an interruption when gameplay resumed.

This has been a fundamental issue for these high-profile adventure games. It seems impossible to make that transition from pre-rendered animation to real-time gameplay.

But Sony improved on that aspect in Uncharted 2, and it looks like the progress will continue in the hotly anticipated sequel.

Sony demonstrated some Uncharted 3 gameplay at its pre-E3 press conference earlier this week, but we saw a deeper sneak peek into the game this afternoon.

Specifically, we were shown a level in which Drake has to run around a debris-strewn airfield, make his way to a taxiing plane, and jump on before it lifts off.

In the demo, everything Drake did reacted just like you'd expect in real life - e.g., fall down on a pile of barrels, and they'll topple over, no matter how ancillary or in the background they may be.

The more interesting thing, though, was that when a cutscene began playing, it actually took a couple seconds to realize the live gameplay was over. It was able to bleed almost seamlessly into the game.

That's the kind of game we've been expecting on the PS3, and even though this is just one level - admittedly, a level where there wasn't a lot of user interaction - it shows there is still progress being made.

Uncharted 3 is arguably the most hotly anticipated PS3 exclusive on the show floor at E3 this year, and will be coming to stores in November.

E3 Announcement : Halo 4 - Official Teaser Trailer

Syfy's First Look at ALPHAS

Marketed as a mix between Leverage and the comic Powers. I say it looks like Heroes with a purpose and better budget.

X-Men First Class : Beast

X-Men First Class : Havok

X-Men First Class : Mystique

X-Men First Class : Banshee

Scourge of the High Seas, 21st Century Style - World Trade

by Drew Feldman

Posted: June 2, 2011

Modern piracy is a growth industry. The International Maritime Bureau (IMB) reported in April that during the first three months of 2011, pirates attacked 142 vessels in international waters, seizing 18 vessels, three of them tankers with more than 100,000 deadweight tons—an all-time high number of pirate attacks for any three-month period. During all of 2010, pirates attacked 445 vessels, capturing 53 of them. Some highly publicized incidents of piracy in recent years have spurred governments and nongovernmental maritime organizations to coordinate their efforts to suppress piracy, with some limited successes in some places.

Yet, the problem grows. Somalia has become infamous in recent decades as a nation-sized haven for pirates, and for good reason. Some 70 percent of total pirate attacks worldwide during the first quarter of 2011 occurred off the coast of Somalia, either in the Gulf of Aden to the north of the country or in the Indian Ocean to the southeast, sometimes hundreds of kilometers off shore. But, Somalia isn’t the only hotbed of modern piracy. Elsewhere during the same quarter, nine attacks occurred off Malaysia and five happened near the coast of Nigeria. A scattering of other places have seen pirate attacks on commercial vessels in recent years as well, such as in the vast Indonesian archipelago.

Chatham House, a London-based think tank, estimates that piracy costs the global economy between $7 billion and $12 billion annually, and further that Somali pirates are responsible for perhaps as much as 95 percent of that total. Those are wide-ranging estimates, which only illustrates how murky things can get when calculating the costs of a widespread criminal activity. According to a separate study released in April by the economic consultancy Geopolicity, the global cost of piracy could be as much as $15 billion by 2015.

Whatever the actual totals, it’s clear that the costs of piracy are high, and borne largely but not exclusively by shippers, who find themselves paying for security equipment and training, insurance premiums to mitigate the risk, and, in some cases, ransoms and other costs associated with a ship being held hostage. But the largest expenditure for the shipping industry—an estimated $2.4 to $3 billion, according to a report by One Earth Future, a private foundation—arises from re-routing ships to avoid high-risk areas.

Complicating matters is a disturbing recent trend of greater violence by pirates. The IMB states that during the first quarter of 2011, pirates murdered seven crew members and injured 34. Five years ago, during the first quarter of 2006, just two injuries and no murders were reported.

The business of piracy

Whatever romantic notions we have about the pirates of previous centuries, there shouldn’t be any doubt that modern piracy is a stone-cold business. It’s an unlawful business and one detrimental to shipping interests and international commerce, but nevertheless an operation whose guiding purpose is commercial in nature. That makes Somali and other pirates largely the concern of workaday ships of commerce that ply danger zones, though non-commercial vessels are at risk as well.

Wherever piracy occurs, it’s the result of a confluence of factors (and it’s an age-old problem; early in his life, no less a personage than Julius Caesar was captured by pirates). The recipe for piracy is this: a seafaring but poor people who live near a prosperous trade route, combined with little or no government control of their territory. Somalia is a text book example. The country has not had a functioning government for about 20 years, and is essentially a lawless patchwork of quarreling warlords, tribal entities and terrorist groups lording over a population that gets by on about $500 a year per person.

Moreover, the Somalis have a long history of seafaring, especially as fishermen. As such, they have jealously guarded their fishing grounds for years, using their vessels to drive away foreign trawlers. As the government of Somalia melted into anarchy, this “coast guard” discovered new opportunities as pirates, and as they grew experienced, they started venturing further out and seizing larger vessels such as bulk cargo containers and oil tankers. Somali pirates are now known to strike in an area of roughly 2.5 million square nautical miles off Somalia’s coastline, which is an increase of about one million nautical miles from only two years ago, according to Geopolicity.

The usual modus operandi for pirates, Somalis especially but others as well, is to attack early in the morning, using small, speedy skiffs to approach a target vessel. Often the skiffs themselves are launched from “motherships” that can range hundreds, or even thousands, of kilometers off shore. Once next to their prey, the pirates use grappling hooks to attach ladders to the side of the vessel, and then climb aboard, typically armed with AK-47s. Speed is of the essence during a pirate attack. Their goal is to waylay the crew and capture the ship’s bridge as quickly as possible.

Once they capture a ship, the pirates are interested in one thing: ransom. The cargo itself is largely irrelevant. The only important thing about the cargo is that there’s an owner somewhere that wants it, and the ship, back and the crew released. The pirates will be happy to do that for a large fee.

Somali pirates take their captured vessels to the coast of Somalia and keep them there, but sometimes disperse their hostages. Negotiations then begin, typically through an intermediary organization that specializes in dealing with pirates (by long distance, of course), and often the process takes several months. Eventually, a ransom that averages in the range of $ 4 million to $5 million is dropped from a small airplane for the pirates to pick up and divide among themselves, after which the ship and hostages are released. For an ordinary Somali, the economic incentive to be a pirate is clear. A successful raid might net him thousands of dollars, a considerable fortune in Somalia. The pirate higher-ups and their allies, including land-based warlords who protect the pirates’ lair, probably stand to make a good deal more.


Protection against pirates

Statistically speaking, the risk of being taken by pirates while transiting near Somalia is actually fairly small and it’s even lower elsewhere in the world. About 21,000 vessels transit the Gulf of Aden each year, and another 10,000 ply the Indian Ocean within striking distance of Somalia. Since only 49 ships were seized by Somali pirates in 2010, only a fraction of the vessels sailing in that part of the world end up in their clutches; a minuscule number, unless it happens to be your ship. In fact, among all of the risks involved in shipping cargo from point A to point B, piracy may represent the most significant risk for ships operating in the parts of the world where pirates operate.

How can ship owners and charterers take steps to protect their vessels, crew and cargos from modern day seafaring predators? Even before sending a ship into such risky waters, adequate insurance is necessary. Some hull and war risk insurance policies cover aspects of piracy, but there may be gaps in protection. More recently an insurance product known as a kidnap and ransom (K&R) policy has been tailored to more specifically address the problem of piracy. Depending on the policy, K&R insurance might not only pay the ransom itself, but also the costs of negotiation and delivering it, along with such expenses as loss of hire (business revenue), travel costs, medical expenses, and should the worst happen, death benefits for crewmen.

Well worth consulting is Best Management Practices to Deter Piracy off the Coast of Somalia and in the Arabian Sea, (BMP3) which details how to protect vessels against pirates. The publication is specific to the Somali pirate threat, and not all of the measures it suggests apply to every type of ship, but it’s nevertheless a good guide to help mitigate the risk of piracy.

BMP3 strongly recommends that ships navigate within the Internationally Recommended Transit Corridor (IRTC) through the Gulf of Aden, where naval forces are concentrated. Also, if possible, ships should participate in a “group transit” plan, which groups vessels together by speed for maximum protection as they transit through the IRTC. If it isn’t possible to transit through the IRTC—or even if it is, considering that the transit corridor isn’t an absolute guarantee against piracy—it behooves ships to take their own measures to protect themselves against pirates. Simply moving at a speed over 18 knots can often prevent pirates from boarding a ship, for example.

Since pirates typically use grappling hooks and ladders to board vessels underway, physical barriers can be used to thwart them, such as well-placed razor wire. Also, the use of automated water (or foam) guns has been found to be useful for knocking pirates who are trying to board a vessel into the drink. When physical barriers fail, some ships have employed a safe haven—“citadel” is the term for a long-term safe haven—to which the crew can retreat to hold off the pirates until help arrives. Ideally, such a space would have self-contained air-conditioning, emergency rations, water supply, and other useful features. wt


Drew Feldman is a vice president and worldwide ocean marine manager for the Chubb Group of Insurance Companies. He can be reached at dfeldman@chubb.com.