Eppu – Page 32 – Co-Geeking

The Aeronauts Trailer

October 3, 2019September 21, 2019Eppu

I’ve been aware of the movie The Aeronauts for a good long while (got it on a list that I blogged about here, in fact). Now it’s two months to release time!

Set in 1862, the story is about two people looking to break barriers by hot-air-ballooning higher than anyone before. Felicity Jones stars as Amelia Wren, a female balloonist who agrees to take meteorologist James Glaisher (Eddie Redmayne) up to the sky to perform experiments.

Here’s the trailer:

The Aeronauts – Official Trailer by Amazon Prime Video on YouTube

Whoa—looks rather incredible! Although there seems to be a little too much of a pet peeve of mine: climbing on things only to fall down. It’s getting to be an overused feature in contemporary visual storytelling, if you ask me.

The trailer says it’s inspired by true events. Indeed: Glaisher broke the world record for altitude in September 1862, although Wren’s character is a complete fabrication. If you’ve come across more, please share.

The Aeronauts is directed by Tom Harper, written by Jack Thorne (with Harper’s input on the story), and set to come out on December 06, 2019, here in the U.S.

Hey, look! We found a thing on the internet! We thought it was cool, and wanted to share it with you.

Enormous Deep Space Nine Lego Model Is Enormous

September 25, 2019September 8, 2019Eppu

Benjamin Stenlund at The Brothers Brick shared this enormous, HUGE Deep Space Nine station made from Legos. The builder, Adrian Drake, is by no means a novice, and his skill and dedication really show.

Drake describes the project:

“The entire model is 8 feet in diameter, and has approximately 75,000 pieces. There is a steel and aluminum framework holding it together, and about 50 linear feet of strip LEDs lighting it up. All told it took me about 2 years to build.”

Wow. Wow, wow, wow, wow!

Image by Adrian Drake via Flickr. (Make sure to visit his account for more of his builds.)

In Making Stuff occasional feature, we share fun arts and crafts done by us and our fellow geeks and nerds.

Downton Abbey the Movie Is Out on Friday!

September 18, 2019September 8, 2019Eppu1 Comment

Downton Abbey the movie comes out on Friday! Here’s an official trailer:

DOWNTON ABBEY – Official Trailer [HD] by Focus Features on YouTube

Situated in 1927, this story will have the king and queen—George V and Mary of Teck, of whom I know nothing—visit the Abbey. From the IMDB casting list it sounds like we have a few new characters.

Since there seems to be little hope of another Jane Austen production (beyond Sanditon, which has not been released yet, and another Emma, which is of very unknown quality) I guess Downton will have to do. Even though I’m not really a fan of the era, I am looking forward to seeing the fabulous, fabulous acting (especially Maggie Smith!), multi-faceted characters, and gorgeous costuming and sets again.

I do, however, confess that the rigid adherence to artificial rules of “good” society really rubs me the wrong way at times. Sadly, a royal visit makes it sound like there might be overly much of the artificial, but we’ll see.

Hey, look! We found a thing on the internet! We thought it was cool, and wanted to share it with you.

Walden Grove High School Dance Team Does Infinity War / Endgame

September 17, 2019September 15, 2019Eppu

The PAC Dance Team from Walden Grove High School in Sahuarita, Arizona, went above and beyond in their Marvel Homecoming Assembly Dance performance:

“Marvel” Homecoming Assembly Dance by ThePac Walden Grove on YouTube

Based on the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the performance recaps the story of Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame.

You go, kids! 😀

Found via File 770.

Hey, look! We found a thing on the internet! We thought it was cool, and wanted to share it with you.

WoW Classic “Not a Bug” List

September 13, 2019September 8, 2019Eppu

On their forums, Blizzard shared a list of features that aren’t bugs in the recently re-released Classic version of World of Warcraft. The list has been out since May this year, but not being a special friend of the vanilla rendition I only came across it now.

Browsing through promptly hurtled me back to reminisce over things we’ve since lost. Oh, boy—some things on the list I couldn’t even remember!

Here are some of the things, not all mentioned on the list, that I absolutely wouldn’t take back:

The abysmal creature respawn rates. Sometimes in the later expansions it seems mobs just spawn way too quickly, but I’d rather not go back to the Classic speed, either.
Gold accumulation. It was just. So. Slow! (I don’t enjoy the current rate of inflation either, for the record.) And, in connection to that, how difficult it occasionally was to get your armor repaired. Remember the little armor image that was superimposed in the (right?) corner of your screen when you took enough damage? The one that first turned yellow and then red as the damage on each area increased? I actually remember at times having to pick and choose which armor piece to repair, even occasionally taking spare pieces with me to a dungeon to switch to when the pieces I wore got too damaged. At the time I was still new to the game, though, and playing a clothie with another clothie. Not very smart, perhaps, but it did teach me a lot. 🙂
Frequent bugging during escort quests. Aaarrgh! Nopety nope!
Limited bag space. Need I say more.
No tracking available on the minimap, either of quest areas or points of interest. As a visually oriented person and a map lover, I give minimap tracking my highest seal of approval!
Non-shared gathering nodes. Remember when ore nodes were only available for whoever got there first? In multi-faction areas it was sometimes impossible to mine on a lower-level toon. (I hate pvp, so I’m so out of luck in some places.)

I’ve come to enjoy the increased player character animation when looting or interacting with quest objects, so that’s nice. The graphical upgrades are also lovely, even if it took me time to get used to some of the new face designs. The new terrain and environmental design I’ve already talked about elsewhere. Finally, a few pragmatic details I love to bits in modern WoW include mass looting and the Flight Master’s Whistle. Wouldn’t change them for the world!

What about you? Chime in with your favorites, features you love to hate, or both.

Image via PC Invasion.

Of Dice and Dragons is an occasional feature about games and gaming.

Trailer for Sanditon

September 11, 2019September 11, 2019Eppu

Emmy Award winning screenwriter Andrew Davies has adapted Jane Austen’s last, unfinished work Sanditon into an 8-episode series. To my knowledge it hasn’t been adapted for the big screen before, so this is rather a big thing!

Here’s the trailer:

Sanditon Preview by Masterpiece PBS on YouTube

Among the big names in the production are Rose Williams as Charlotte Heywood (e.g. in Medici) and Theo James as Sidney Parker (the Divergent movies, The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance, among others). Anne Reid as Lady Denham is also a well-known career actor (I mostly remember her from Doctor Who “Smith and Jones”—the Judoon on the moon episode).

I heard through the grapevine that Davies will move entirely away from Austen’s material after the first half of the first episode. Wow, that’s soon! I did already notice a number of character names not found in the book in the IMDB listing. I hope Davies will not go overboard, though; I’ve seen a number of his adaptations, and he can be a bit of a hit or miss for me.

The U.S. release set to 2020. Can’t wait!

Found via Frock Flicks.

This post has been edited to update a removed link to video.

Hey, look! We found a thing on the internet! We thought it was cool, and wanted to share it with you.

Visual Inspiration: Aztec-Engineered Floating Garden Islands

September 4, 2019October 15, 2022Eppu

Did you know that Aztecs created floating garden islands on swamps to feed 200,000+ people? I didn’t before now.

An article by Lynette Townsend for the Museum of New Zealand descibes the structure of the chinampas:

“These ingenious creations were built up from the lake bed by piling layers of mud, decaying vegetation and reeds. This was a great way of recycling waste from the capital city Tenochtitlan. Each garden was framed and held together by wooden poles bound by reeds and then anchored to the lake floor with finely pruned willow trees. The Aztecs also dredged mud from the base of the canals which both kept the waterways clear and rejuvenate [sic] the nutrient levels in the gardens.”

Apparently the chinampas were separated by channels, and canoes were used for transport. In addition to food crops and flowers grown, fish and birds drawn to the chinampas were caught for food as well.

What an incredibly smart feature to engineer! It also strikes me as a fantastic (no pun intended), pragmatic thing to adapt into a SFFnal world.

Found via Ultrafacts at Tumblr.

Images: models by artisan collective Te Mahi via Museum of New Zealand / Te Papa Tongarewa.

The Visual Inspiration occasional feature pulls the unusual from our world to inspire design, story-telling, and worldbuilding. If stuff like this already exists, what else could we imagine?

Trailer for Manikarnika

August 23, 2019August 18, 2019Eppu2 Comments

The story of Rani Lakshmibai, Queen of Jhansi, is not a new one and has been both written and filmed before, but the 2019 movie Manikarnika is the first I’ve heard of her. Apparently she was one of the leaders of the Indian Rebellion of 1857 / the First War of Independence against the British East India Company in northern India after the death of her husband, the Raja of Jhansi.

Manikarnika – The Queen Of Jhansi | Official Trailer | Kangana Ranaut | Releasing 25th January by Zee Studios on YouTube

Phew—the trailer’s even bloodier than the one for Tomiris. (I wonder whether it’s a Game of Thrones effect—the popularity of that bloody show begetting other series with high liquid velocities?) Apart from that, the two trailers and/or stories seem to share a remarkable amount of basic similarities, yet are set thousands of kilometers apart. An interesting coincidence.

On the other hand, Manikarnika looks incredibly gorgeous! According to IMDB, it’s already available—the release date is given as January 25, 2019—and Amazon offers streaming versions in Hindi, Telugu, and Tamil with a selection of subtitles.

The bloodiness makes me really apprehensive, though. I’m in for more humane stories at the moment, but I think I’ll have to keep Manikarnika in mind.

Found via Frock Flicks.

Hey, look! We found a thing on the internet! We thought it was cool, and wanted to share it with you.