The Verge - Culture Posts

'BioShock' creator Ken Levine to pen 'Logan's Run' movie remake, says Deadline

2013-06-18T18:26:01Z

Gaming auteur Ken Levine started out as an aspiring screenwriter before moving on to Looking Glass Studios and eventually the immensely successful BioShock series. According to a Deadline report, he's now making another foray into film: He's apparently attached to a remake of 1976 cult classic Logan's Run. This remake has been in the works for years, with an earlier script penned by 28 Days Later and The Beach writer Alex Garland and others. But the project was officially put on hold in May, some months after prospective star Ryan Gosling dropped out.

Now, Levine is said to be writing a new script for Warner Bros., though he will continue to focus on video games. Of course, the project has long been in development hell, so there's no...

'Monsters University' review: Pixar makes prequels look easy

2013-06-18T17:30:14Z

The film industry is obsessed with prequels, but there's one tiny problem: they rarely work. We know the eventual fate of the characters, so there are no stakes. We want to know more about iconic heroes, but seeing their backstory kills gravitas and mystery. From Star Wars to Prometheus, the landscape is littered with films set in familiar worlds that never come together — and often harm the originals they’re working from.

That’s the environment Monsters University is walking into. A follow-up to 2001’s Monsters, Inc., it’s a test not only of prequels but of Pixar Animation Studios itself. A good-natured callback to the college movies of the 1980s, it’s a tremendously entertaining family movie that shows Pixar hasn’t...

For New York's tech scene, Mayor Bloomberg is a tough act to follow

2013-06-18T17:00:03Z

US Congressman Anthony Weiner

New York's thriving tech sector may wish Mayor Michael Bloomberg would keep extending those term limits.

Come January 1st, the country's largest and most influential city, as well as its second largest hub for tech companies, will have a new leader. Judging from a panel discussion last night between four of the candidates, not one appears ready to fill Bloomberg's shoes when it comes to thinking creatively about technology.

The Verge goes to Hollywood: TV, movies, and the people who make them

2013-06-17T20:00:14Z

There's never been a better time to head to the movies. From the huge blockbusters to the indie masterpieces, from Netflix to the theater, there are great movies everywhere you look. Meanwhile, we're in a "golden age of TV," with some of the best TV shows ever made gracing the smaller screen. There are more ways than ever to watch, and more ways than ever to talk about what we watch. Movies are being funded on Kickstarter and they're being distributed by Amazon, or they're coming to Redbox Instant and streaming to our phones. Whether you make movies and TV, or you just love to watch them, there's more going on now than ever.

Here, we'll collect all our best coverage of Hollywood: film reviews, TV reviews, and interviews with and stories...

How do you build a 'Fast & Furious' car chase? With Hot Wheels and lots of special effects

2013-06-17T16:19:13Z

What goes on behind the scenes of one of the Fast & Furious series' elaborate, physics-stretching car chases? Car and Driver took a look at a seven-minute, $20 million sequence from Fast & Furious 6, from the first written draft to the finished product. The dozens of cars involved are choreographed with Hot Wheels models, and the shooting is done only after the locations have been surveyed and measured with lidar — so that they can be spliced together convincingly and digitally extended to seem larger. At the center of it all, stunt drivers must master dangerous, difficult-to-control vehicles like the "flip cars" used in Fast & Furious 6, though more effects make the cars look faster and sound beefier. There's probably no better...

Edward Snowden says 'the truth is coming,' but when will we see the rest of his evidence?

2013-06-17T16:17:24Z

Edward Snowden, the 29-year-old intelligence contractor who exposed the secret NSA PRISM surveillance program on June 6th, is answering questions from the public for the first time since revealing himself to the world. In the Q&A session, hosted by The Guardian, Snowden repeated his fears about US prosecution, writing that the government "immediately and predictably destroyed any possibility of a fair trial at home, openly declaring me guilty of treason." Snowden also restated his motivation for leaking the PRISM program, saying that "the public needs to know the kinds of things a government does in its name, or the 'consent of the governed' is meaningless."

"The US government is not going to be able to cover this up by jailing or...

Jay-Z giving away 1 million early copies of new album to Samsung owners

2013-06-17T01:43:15Z

It's been four years since Jay-Z’s The Blueprint 3 was released, but Hov is back next month, and this time with Samsung in tow. The new album is called Magna Carta Holy Grail, and Samsung has apparently inked a deal to give it away free to the first million Galaxy S III, Galaxy S4, and Galaxy Note II users on July 4th at 12:01AM ET, 72 hours before the official retail release.

People will be able to download the album with a free app that's coming to the Play store on June 24th, which promises an "unprecedented inside look into the album" with "personal stories and inspiration." The description immediately conjures to mind his book Decoded, which breaks down the lyrics and thoughts that went into the rapper's biggest hits. We'll...

Anti-social: 'Hell is Other People' keeps you as far away from your 'friends' as possible

2013-06-16T20:13:04Z

FourSquare makes keeping track of where your friends are effortless, but what if you're not feeling particularly social on a given day? Hell is Other People is "an experiment in anti-social media" according to its developer Scott Garner. Using data from your FourSquare account, the web app will monitor recent check-ins of your "friends" and calculate a position where you're almost guaranteed to avoid them entirely.

These "optimally distanced safe zones" should make unwanted run-ins highly unlikely — so long as you're willing to let a website decide where you'll be spending the day. Garner, who admits he has struggled with social anxiety, says the project is "partially a satire" and "partially a commentary" derived from his disdain for...

1,200 years later, lost city discovered in the jungles of Cambodia

2013-06-16T16:45:02Z

A team of archaeologists from Australia has discovered an ancient city that had been buried under the jungles of Cambodia for more than 1,000 years. The 1,200-year-old city, known as Mahendraparvata, was uncovered in the Siem Reap region of Cambodia, atop a mountain known as Phnom Kulen, where thousands of pilgrims used to perform spiritual ceremonies. As The Age reports, the city is believed to predate the famed Angkor Wat temple complex (pictured above) by 350 years.

Damian Evans, director of the University of Sydney's archaeological research center in Cambodia, led the mission in Siem Reap with the assistance of a former Khmer Rouge soldier and lidar — airborne remote sensing technology that uses lasers to generate detailed maps of...

The best writing of the week, June 16

2013-06-16T14:30:05Z

We all know the feeling. You're sleepless in the sad hours of the night or stumbling around early on a hazy weekend morning in need of something to read, and that pile of unread books just isn't cutting it. Why not take a break from the fire hose of Twitter and RSS and check out our weekly roundup of essential writing from around the web about technology, culture, media, and the future? Sure, it's one more thing you can feel guilty about sitting in your Instapaper queue, but it's better than pulling in vain on your Twitter list again.

Grab all of these as a Readlist.