January 28, 2008
Whiz of the Web: Monday Meat Slices
The best of the internet, chopped into tiny bits and grilled for your enjoyment.

- Guillermo del Toro is in talks to direct both Hobbit movies. Woo hoo!
- Awards season continues! Cinematical was liveblogging as Sundance gave out their awards. The SAG and DGA awards also were announced, and the results seem to suggest that the Coen brothers' film No Country for Old Men is a shoe-in for an armload of Oscars.
- The Top 20 Geek Movies of All Time, courtesy The List Universe. This Phillyist has seen all of these except two, and we think we're proud of that fact, although that feeling could be shame... (Via)
- There are various (via) articles around the internets (via Jill) this morning about a US satellite about the size of a bus, which may or may not contain hazardous materials, and may or may not contain sensitive intelligence data, that has gone out of control and is expected to crash to Earth some time in late February or March; nobody knows exactly when or where. Um... what?! Apparently this has happened a number of times before and the satellite has always burned up harmlessly on reentry, but it's still a bit astounding and upsetting.
- Terry Gilliam is hoping that Johnny Depp will be able to take over for Heath Ledger on The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus.
- Some crazy new gameplay footage from Super Smash Bros. Brawl.
- Local game company Peccable Productions recently released a cool new card game called Realpolitik. And yeah, we'll admit, part of the reason we're pimping it is because the guy who designed it is a close friend, and because this Phillyist, his wife, Star Foster, and some of his other friends appear on the cards. But we've also played the game, and we swear it's totally fun.
- John Cleese is in negotiations to play physicist Dr. Barnhardt in the upcoming remake of The Day the Earth Stood Still. Oh, man, they're not going to make Dr. Barnhardt a comic relief character, are they?
- The Museum of Baby Heads. We'll let you click through to figure out for yourself what that's all about. It's not nearly as creepy as it sounds, we swear. (Via Jill)
- The guys who made the Meat House have now made a Meat Ship, and documented the creation of their masterpiece with a YouTube timelapse video, and a picture gallery. (Via Joel)
- Police in Wales recovered a stolen Wii, but don't know who it belongs to, so they've released the names of several of the Miis on the console, as well as the system's ID code in the hopes that the rightful owners will come forward.
- More on that new Jack Ryan movie, supposedly starring Ryan Gosling: rumor is now that the front-runner to direct is Fernando Meirelles, and the title is By Any Means Necessary.
- A chimp has beat the British memory champion in a competition involving a video game that requires you to remember the positions of numbers on a screen. Wait... the British have a memory champion?!
- The guys who tried to do a Zelda game marathon for charity a while back started a series of weekend charity game marathons this past weekend with a marathon run through Paper Mario.
- This Chinese super techno device sounds almost impossibly cool. It's solar powered, it can power other devices via USB, it can play MP4s and MP3s, it can store e-books, it works as an emulator for NES, GameBoy, and GameBoy Color games, records audio, and displays images.
- Download Squad suggests an unorthodox solution to the lack of new episodes of your favorite shows due to the writer's strike: develop an AI software program that generates scripts based on data about previous episodes.
- Try on sunglasses virtually with the Revolutioneyes online application. Just upload a photo of yourself, pick the glasses you want, slap them on your digital face, and see how they look.
- This video of a press conference about the new Bond film reveals some interesting details about the movie. And you can find interesting details about the new Star Trek movie in the transcript of a live chat (via) with the cast and crew which went down this past Friday.
- Just how many different types of pizza are there in the US? Slice attempts the impossible task of listing them all. (Via Sarah, via Slashfood)
Image Credit: Flickr user Lisa Lenscap








