Episode 129: “Feeling lonely? Buy the new matebot.”

Marvin has the most boring job in the universe – but all is not as it seems…

[Watch on MissGeeky.com]

I’ve never been much of a make-up wearer, but this year I’ve been slowly getting into it. I got a couple of Dior eye products from my sister for Christmas, and I love the quality you get from those. Even if they’re more expensive, it’s a much better experience than say a £5 eye pencil from your local drugstore.

I stumbled on this Fall 2009 collection from Dior, called Jazz Club, inspired by the 1920’s/1930’s. The collection presents deep smokey colours, and I’m especially digging the eye palettes:

Don’t you just love the casing? This palette is called Smokey Eye, and features six Dior eye products: 4 eyeshadows, a brow-shaping powder, and a cream-to-powder eyeliner. I love these colours; it’s similar to what I’m using now, but maybe different enough to justify getting it. Here’s a closer look at the colours:

There’s also an alternate version, exclusive to Nordstrom. I’m not sure about its availability in the UK; I haven’t seen anything mentioned about it. It features more purpley and greyer colours than the one above:

To see more of the collection (including the lipsticks and nail polishes), check out this blog post from Temptalia. If you’re based in the US, both of the above palettes are available on the Nordstrom site.

Via BritishBeautyBlogger

I’ve been avidly following all the coverage from Comic Con; with attendees Twittering and live blogging, it almost feels like you’re there yourself (nah, not really: no sweaty people, no waiting in queues, but then again no seeing really cool features and the celebrities up close). At last year’s Comic Con the great surprise was a very early teaser of the at-that-time-not-even-announced sequel to Tron. This year we get some more VFX concept footage, showing a bit more of the actual world.

After a couple of temporary names like Tron2, Tron 2.0, Tr2N, it’s now finally be revealed to be called Tron Legacy. I won’t say anything more, just watch the footage first (there’s also a high def version available on the site Flynn Lives, which I’d highly recommend seeing):

Yep, if you hadn’t come across it yet, Jeff Bridges returns as Kevin Flynn! I think this trailer looks awesome; it’s been ages ago that I last saw the first movie, but I just love the visual style, and it looks like this could be a worthy follow-up.

Curious Fact of the Day: Tron was disqualified from the Academy Awards nominations for best visual effects, because using computers was deemed “cheating”.

Because of LittleMissLala’s tweet a couple days ago about Tiffany’s, I wandered onto the Tiffany’s website. Oooh, shiny stuff!

I love these key shaped pendants:

My favourites are the more simple designs, but even these are pretty pricy (from left to right: £745, £135, £135, £155):

Check out the Tiffany website for more designs.

Episode 128: X

Beautiful story about a voodoo doll trying to save his friends from death:

[Watch on MissGeeky.com]

Ever since I heard about Tim Burton re-doing the Alice In Wonderland story, I’ve been following the developments with great interest. The casting seems prefect: virtual unknown Mia Wasikowska as Alice, Johnny Depp as the Mad Hatter and Helena Bonham Carter as the Red Queen. Add to that Burton’s dark visuals and you’ve got a match made in heaven.

The side characters also seem spot on: Anne Hathaway as the White Queen, Stephen Fry as the Cheshire Cat, Alan Rickman as the Caterpillar, Michael Sheen as the White Rabbit, Christopher Lee as the Jabberwock, Matt Lucas as Tweedledee and Tweedledum, Noah Taylor as the White Hare and Crispin Glover as the Knave of Hearts. Wow! That’s some cast they’ve put together.

And now the trailer finally has come out:

[Watch on MissGeeky.com]

Cool! I love the vibe they’ve got going on; it reminds me a lot of Labyrinth, a highly magical fantastical world, but slanting towards the dark and the disturbing. I’m not too sure about the effects so far, but this is only a teaser trailer (plus not even a high res one), so I’m expecting that will get better the nearer the film approaches. I only hope that the movie isn’t focusing too much on the Mad Hatter (unlike this trailer); this movie is about Alice, and while Johnny Depp is a great actor, I hope his character doesn’t take the limelight away from Alice. I think that shouldn’t be a problem though; I’m guessing they’re just banking on his character for this teaser to get people hyped up. (And that’s working)

Yesterday evening a trailer of Alice in Wonderland was released accidently, and I managed to watch it before it got taken down. It looks amazing! Anyhow, sometime later this afternoon the trailer will be officially released, so keep an eye on this blog if you want to catch that. For now, here are the trailers that were released in the past week.

Whiteout: Carrie Stetko (Kate Beckinsale) is a lone U.S. Marshal assigned to Antarctica whose investigation of the continent’s first murder draws her into a shocking mystery. Now, with only three days until winter, Carrie must solve the crime before Antarctica is plunged into darkness and she is stranded with the killer. Release Date: September 2009 (UK, US)

I Love You, Phillip Morris: When Steve Russell turns to cons and fraud to allow him to change his lifestyle, his subsequent stay in the state penitentiary results in his meeting the love of his life, a sensitive fellow inmate named Phillip Morris. Release Date: February 2010 (US)

Triangle: The story revolves around the passengers of a yachting trip in the Atlantic Ocean who, when struck by mysterious weather conditions, jump to another ship only to experience greater havoc on the open seas. Release Date: October 2009 (UK)

Bright Star: A romantic drama based on the secret 3-year romance between 19th century poet John Keats and Fanny Brawne, outspoken student of high fashion, which was cut short by Keats’ untimely death at age 25. Release Date: November 2009 (UK)

Surviving Crooked Lake: A summertime canoe trip turns into a nightmare for four 14-year-old girls. Release Date: 24 July 2009 (US)

Mystery Team: At age seven, Oakdale’s Mystery Team was a band of kid detectives dedicated to solving child-sized mysteries (like who put their finger in the pie, and who stole the tricycle), and the town loved them for it. Now they’re eighteen years old, about to graduate from high school, yet they’re still storming the playground to bust little kids, and the town of Oakdale is sick to death of it. When a little girl sees their sign advertising “Mysteries Solved, Ten Cents,” she asks the gang to find out who killed her parents. The Team embarks on a mystery that takes them deep into a violent conspiracy that sees their lives threatened, their friendship strained and tests their claim that they’re “real detectives.” Release Date: unknown

Living in London, you sometimes come across the weirdest/prettiest/surreal campaigns. At the moment, if you’ll stroll down the Southbank, you’ll come across red with white polka dotted trees. I didn’t really know what it was for until I saw this ad:

So it’s for an exhibition at the Hayward Gallery called ‘Walking In My Mind’. The idea of the exhibition is to explore the inner workings of the artist’s imagination through immersive, large-scale installation art. Ten international artists transform the Hayward Gallery’s indoor galleries and outdoor sculpture terraces into a series of gigantic sculptural environments, each of which represents an individual mindscape. Interior worlds of emotions, thoughts, memories and dreams collide with exterior reality, blurring the boundaries between inner and outer space.

It does sound pretty interesting, so I might have to make my way to the museum one of these weeks. Tickets are £9, but there’s a 2 for 1 voucher on the website (so only £4.50!). Anybody want to join me?

The main difference of seeing the TED talks in this conference type structure instead of just online, is that you discover and notice the different themes and structures of the talks. For instance on the first day, there were two sets of session slots: the first called What We Know, the second Seeing Is Believing?. While they’re not all exactly about the same subject, they all are connected in some way or another, and it’s great for your mind just to wander around for 1.5 hours within one related topic, but with different views.

Yesterday there were 12 talks/performances, and I have to admit I did zone out a bit at a certain moment. Not all TED talks are interesting to everyone, but the beauty of TED is that everybody should find something within them that will spike their interest. The talks that really stood out for me were the following:

Alain de Botton: the world we live in is a meritocracy; if you have talent, you’ll get to the top, your position in life is merited and deserved. Because of that our failures “hurt” more than they used to; formerly 200, 300 years ago, it was God/the universe/fate that caused you to fail. Nowadays we take much more responsibility for the decisions in our life and where we end up in life.

Willard Wilgan: Wigan is a microsculptor, who creates miniscule sculptures that fit on the head of a pin. He explained how he got into it, and showed some of his amazing creations. There’s an exhibition going on at the moment here in London; I’m thinking of organizing a geek trip to it (let me know in the comments if you’re interested).

James Geary: Geary is an aphorist; he loves short, witty sayings that are known as aphorisms (I had to look up the definition: “a pithy observation that contains a general truth”). He gave a couple of his favourites, like “Mirrors would do well to reflect alittle before throwing back images.“, “Baldness is the gradual transformation of the head into an ass, first in shape and then in content.“, “A weekend wasted is not a wasted weekend.” While juggling Geary presents, the five laws of aphorisms: 1. brief, 2. definitive, but not necessarily true, 3. personal, 4. philosophical, 5. it must have a twist.

Steve Truglia: as a Hollywood stuntsman, Steve has done his fair share of amazing dare-devil stunts; being set on fire, skydiving, driving a car through a loop de loop. But now he wants to do the biggest stunt on earth: jumping from the edge of space. Steve first tells us about the history of stunts, and how technology has helped moved the art from taking dangerous risks to being in control of the safety at all times. In his Project Space Jump, Steve wants a helium balloon to take him to 120.000 feet, where he’ll jump down. The main challenge was developing a special space suit; one that’s lighter, more flexible and cheaper than the current NASA suits.

I tried to summarize the talks as best as I could, but some of them (especially the first one from de Botton) was much more deeper than only this. All of these should be released on the TED website one day. That’s the problem with TED though; you’ll never know exactly when they’ll release certain videos (they’re still releasing talks from 5 years ago). Anyhow, these are definitely ones you should check out once they’re available online.

For more TED Talks, check out the TED website

This T-shirt from Threadless is just brilliant:

If you don’t get it, you might have to read up on the Three Wolf Moon tee.