Blog: The Sly Oyster

EW got a bit of dirt from Marvel about its potential Phase Three plans , which may or may not align with previous rumors that Planet Hulk was on the table . We'll save you from jumping over to EW, because they were nice enough to lay it all out in a ten-page slideshow. Fuckers. Anyway: Ant-Man is definitely happening with Edgar Wright attached to direct; Doctor Strange is one of the "prime candidates" to get his own franchise; there's a good chance we'll see Iron Man 4 but Marvel said the [...]

There's a Kickstarter going on right now to get a giant coffee table book made of the band's early days. Seems like $75 is a bit spendy, but then again that's probably the typical going rate for a big, beautiful, one-of-a-kind coffee table book. Any music history or Pixies fan will probably want this.

"Internally the project was code-named Project Acela, a reference to the high-speed train between Boston and Washington. A team led by Albert Cheng, Ms. Sweeney’s executive vice president for digital media, was given a deadline of May 14, the date of the ABC upfront. While Apple devices came first, other phones and tablets will be supported in the coming months, Mr. Cheng said. Securing the necessary rights from programming providers was laborious, but ABC will be able to stream all of its stations’ local newscasts, syndicated talk shows like “Katie,” and national series like “Grey’s Anatomy.” The live-stream functionality comes [...]

Well, I'll be. Looks pretty darn good for longtime fans of the show. Lots of funny callbacks and slightly insidery jokes. Seeing this it makes me think there's no need for a feature film. Just give us a new season of AD every few years and we can call it good. [via complexmag ]

It's only six seconds, so hopefully, we'll get a longer look later tonight when ABC drops a preview during that fairytale show they air at 8 p.m. It looks Marvel-y, it looks superhero-y, it looks very TV-y! The biggest thing to note, is it looks like Luke Cage is the guy jumping off the building in the first second. Sadly, not Isiah Mustafa , but still. The prevailing belief is it could be J. August Richards, better known to Angel fans as Charles Gunn. Thoughts? [via Whedonesque ]

Carpenter Andy Stewart learned boat-building as a young age because that was his family's trade. To hear him talk about his craft and the process of hand-making a wooden boat will make you ache for a bygone era that only exists in your mind. Just as easily, though, Stewart could be discussing boats and boat-building as a greater metaphor for what it takes to succeed in life. No man is an island, not even one living on a boat. [via gizmodo ]

Yowzahs . Skygazers across the Australian Outback were among the lucky few to witness a solar eclipse on Friday as the moon glided between Earth and the sun, blocking everything but a dazzling ring of light. The celestial spectacle, known as a “ring of fire” eclipse, was the second solar eclipse visible from northern Australia in six months. In November, a total solar eclipse plunged the country’s northeast into darkness, delighting astronomers and tourists who flocked to the region from across the globe to witness it. The eclipse lasted between [...]

I've been dying to get a first glimpse of Gravity ever since the movie was in development and there were all kinds of crazy rumors swirling around it, like it would essentially be a single tracking shot in the vein of that famous scene (original doesn't appear to be on YT) from his excellent Children of Men. According to Gravity executive producer Chris DeFaria, the movie “ opens with a continuous 17-minute shot ” that shows everything we see in this trailer. The movie probably won't be one continuous tracking [...]

High intensity interval training is essentially the principal for which P90X and Jillian Michaels' 30 Day Shred are based off of. Those workouts really do work - if you stick to the regiment. That was my biggest problem. Well, my inherent laziness was really my problem. But, anyway, I digress. Turns out, you don't have to devote 30 minutes or even an hour per day to get in shape. You can devote as little as seven minutes per day ( Farrelly Brothers nailed it way back when [...]

The 9 Film Frames Tumblr tries to sum up various movies - capture their story essence, really - by pulling out and arranging nine frames of (digital) celluloid. Above is Roman Polanski's classic noir  Chinatown. [via petapixel ]

Slow motion video of little kids trying new foods for the first time. Simple. Perfect. Well done. What reaction was your favorite? Mine was the kid who tried pickled onion. [via GND ]

GeoGuessr  is a cool new game consisting of five rounds wherein you plopped into an unknown location on Google Maps and asked to guess your location. It's hard. My high score so far is around 11,000. My first thought was this is the next evolution of Andrew Sullivan's long-running View From Your Window contest .  [via Kottke ]

Yes, Roland Kelts is ostensibly writing about the ins-and-outs of translating Japanese author Haruki Murakami from his native tongue into English. But, even within that narrow literary chore are several interesting nuggets about the cultural literary (and otherwise) differences between Japan and America. It's nearly impossible to find just one nugget worth pulling out, but I'll try: The Japanese language acquires much of its beauty and strength from indirectness - or what English-speakers call vagueness, obscurity, or implied meaning. Subjects are often left unmentioned in Japanese sentences, and onomatopoeia, with vernacular [...]

Okay, that's a bit of hyperbole, obviously, because as long as as the government is still engaging in domestic spying and the TSA makes getting through airport security a nightmare, we will constantly experience the ripples of 9/11 in America. But, I couldn't help but feel some sense of closure as the spire was placed atop 1 World Trade Center to the height of 1776 feet. (Photo courtesy of NBC's Anne Thompson.) More at HyperVocal .

Leno, of course, had nothing to do with the amazingness of this Pump News skit. Someone should just give this couple their own show, stat. [via gawker ]

Andy Greenwald, writing for Grantland : The reason Marvel's shared movie universe made waves was the visual impact of seeing its iconic characters brought to life, sure. But the reason it continues to make money — truly insane, Tony Stark/Warren Worthington amounts of money — is due precisely to the sort of sprawling serialization usually found on TV.10 TV can't beat movies by fighting over the unwanted crumbs of empire, the dwindling reserves of crime-fighting C-listers. (Matter-Eater Lad: The Series, coming soon to Hulu Minus!) TV can't beat movies because, in this instance, movies [...]

It's a little known fact that I'm a huge Rick Moranis fan. It started with the trio of 'Spaceballs', 'Ghostbusters', and 'My Blue Heaven', obviously, and before I knew it I was binge watching Moranis as a young teen relishing his zany comedic timing. Later, like all Moranis fans, I wondered how such a gifted comedic actor could just walk away from Hollywood at the height of his creative juices with no fanfare. Like Keyser Soze he was just gone. Moranis, as it's now known, quietly retired from showbiz in 1997 to raise [...]

"A brilliant American financier and his exotic wife build a lavish mansion in the jungles of Costa Rica, set up a wildlife preserve, and appear to slowly, steadily lose their minds. A spiral of handguns, angry locals, armed guards, uncut diamonds, abduction plots, and a bedroom blazing with 550 Tiffany lamps ends with a body and a compelling mystery: Did John Felix Bender die by his own hand? Or did Ann Bender kill him to escape their crumbling dream?" - Ned Zeman's Outdoor Magazine article, 'Love and Madness in the Jungle' , is like The Shining combined [...]

Betaworks describes itself as "a company that builds companies," but really it's a start-up incubator and the most interesting media technology company at the moment. Lately, it has scooped up a bevvy of smaller companies. We know they are working on a Google Reader replacement . It bought the much-maligned Digg last year and gave the site a nice facelift, doing the impossible - it revived a dead corpse and made it better. Last month, the company bought a majority stake in Marco Arment's [...]

A slice of David Foster Wallace’s now-legendary Kenyon College commencement speech gets turned into a great short film by The Glossary . In 2005, author David Foster Wallace was asked to give the commencement address to the 2005 graduating class of Kenyon College. However, the resulting speech didn’t become widely known until 3 years later, after his tragic death. It is, without a doubt, some of the best life advice we’ve ever come across, and perhaps the most simple and elegant explanation of the real value of education. We made this [...]