movie:star wars

The Death Star: Dream, or Future Reality?
▻https://hackernoon.com/the-death-star-d37c82a77f51?source=rss----3a8144eabfe3---4

A Sci-Fi enthusiast or a kid whose childhood was based around Star Wars might dream of one day having the possibility of handling a phaser or firing from the Death Star against the planet Alderaan, home of princess Leia.Though most might think these fantasies are just pure imagination, I believe we might not actually be that far from making them reality.Hold on tight: let’s explore…The Death Star of Star Wars is a colossal weapon. Not only is it the size of the Moon, but with a single blast it could destroy entire planets. Some may even describe The Death Star to have:“Power! Unlimited power!” — Darth SidiousThe dream of controlling light dates back to ancient Greece with Zeus and the ancient nordic god Thor, who were both the most powerful gods of their time.Many scientists tried to understand (...)

#tech #fiction #technology #star-wars #science-fiction

The Case Against The Jedi
▻http://www.filmsforaction.org/watch/the-case-against-the-jedi

At their core, George Lucas’s six Star Wars films are coming of age stories about boys becoming men. Both Luke and Anakin Skywalker are guided and shaped by the principles of the Jedi Order, but...

A Cute Toy Just Brought a Hacker Into Your Home - The New York Times
▻https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/21/technology/connected-toys-hacking.html?emc=edit_th_20171222&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=25

https://static01.nyt.com/images/2017/12/20/business/00TOYHACK1/merlin_131294774_6a643b0e-b08b-4131-97cf-a0e44f1ace0d-facebookJumbo.jpg

SAN FRANCISCO — My Friend Cayla, a doll with nearly waist-length golden hair that talks and responds to children’s questions, was designed to bring delight to households. But there’s something else that Cayla might bring into homes as well: hackers and identity thieves.

Earlier this year, Germany’s Federal Network Agency, the country’s regulatory office, labeled Cayla “an illegal espionage apparatus” and recommended that parents destroy it. Retailers there were told they could sell the doll only if they disconnected its ability to connect to the internet, the feature that also allows in hackers. And the Norwegian Consumer Council called Cayla a “failed toy.”

The doll is not alone. As the holiday shopping season enters its frantic last days, many manufacturers are promoting “connected” toys to keep children engaged. There’s also a smart watch for kids, a droid from the recent “Star Wars” movies and a furry little Furby. These gadgets can all connect with the internet to interact — a Cayla doll can whisper to children in several languages that she’s great at keeping secrets, while a plush Furby Connect doll can smile back and laugh when tickled.

But once anything is online, it is potentially exposed to hackers, who look for weaknesses to gain access to digitally connected devices. Then once hackers are in, they can use the toys’ cameras and microphones to potentially see and hear whatever the toy sees and hears. As a result, according to cybersecurity experts, the toys can be turned to spy on little ones or to track their location.

“Parents need to be aware of what they are buying and bringing home to their children,” said Javvad Malik, a researcher with cybersecurity company AlienVault. “Many of these internet-connected devices have trivial ways to bypass security, so people have to be aware of what they’re buying and how secure it is.”

Un paragraphe spécial pour celles et ceux qui ont lu « Maman a tort » de Michel Bussi :

Consider the Furby Connect doll made by Hasbro, a furry egg-shaped gadget that comes in teal, pink and purple. Researchers from Which?, a British charity, and the German consumer group Stiftung Warentest recently found that the Bluetooth feature of the Furby Connect could enable anyone within 100 feet of the doll to hijack the connection and use it to turn on the microphone and speak to children.

Mais foutez-donc la paix aux enfants !!!!

Toy manufacturers have long searched for ways to bring toys alive for children. While microphones and cameras introduced some level of responsiveness, those interactions were generally limited to a canned response preset by a manufacturer. Internet connections opened up a new wealth of possibilities; now the toys can be paired with a computer or cellphone to allow children to constantly update their toys with new features.

“That’s so scary, I had no idea that was possible,” she said. “What’s the worst hackers can do? Wait, no, don’t tell me. I’d just rather get my kids an old-fashioned doll.”

#Jouets_connectés #Cybersécurité #Enfants

New Technology Brings Star Wars-Style Desert Moisture Farming a Step Closer
▻http://www.filmsforaction.org/articles/new-technology-brings-star-warsstyle-desert-moisture-farming-a-step-

Luke Skywalker wasn’t just a farmer. In the original 1977 Star Wars film, the lead character was desperate to leave his home planet of Tatooine, where his family farmed moisture from the...

Star Wars semiotics – HiLobrow
▻http://hilobrow.com/2010/07/14/star-wars-semiotics

http://hilobrow.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/d9_03.jpg

Over at the blog Star Wars Modern, the Brooklyn-based sculptor/theorist John Powers has decided to map the “visual program” of Star Wars IV. In order to do so, he’s appropriated the so-called Klein Four-Group diagram [better known — e.g., to those of us familiar with Frederic Jameson’s use of the tool — as a Greimas or Semiotic Square] employed by art critic/theorist Rosalind Krauss to map “sculpture in the expanded field” back in 1978.

http://hilobrow.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/StarWarsKlienGroup_2_Sm.jpg

According to one Greimas exegete, who in this quote sounds like a Magister Ludi, the semiotic square is a map of logical possibilities. As such, it can be used as a heuristic device, and in fact, attempting to fill it in stimulates the imagination. The puzzle pieces, especially the neutral term, seldom fall conveniently into place…. Playing with the possibilities of the square is authorized, since the theory of the square allows us to see all thinking as a game, with the logical relations as the rules and concepts current in a given language and culture as the pieces.

Here, for what it’s worth, is Krauss’ diagram:

http://hilobrow.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/krauss.jpg

...
UPDATE: John Powers has responded thoughtfully to my constructive criticism, and also sent me a rendering of my Star Wars Semiotic Square:

http://hilobrow.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/starwars.jpg

Call of the Empire : un superbe mais trop court Fan Film Star Wars
▻http://www.buzzwebzine.fr/call-of-the-empire-superbe-court-fan-film-star-wars

Dans la série fan film Star Wars, voici une nouvelle pépite d’animation 3D qui vaut le coup d’œil même si on aimerait qu’il soit plus long...

Report: ’Star Wars’ toymakers told to exclude Rey
▻http://www.hypable.com/star-wars-toymakers-specifically-directed-to-exclude-rey

http://static2.hypable.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/rey-star-wars.jpg

“One or more individuals raised concerns about the presence of female characters in the Star Wars products,” Boehm reports. “Eventually, the product vendors were specifically directed to exclude the Rey character from all Star Wars-related merchandise.”

Allegedly, the industry insider was told, “No boy wants to be given a product with a female character on it.”

#sexisme #racisme #jouet #commerce

‘Elstree 1976’, A Documentary About the True Stories of Masked Actors and Extras in the Original ‘Star Wars’ Trilogy
▻http://laughingsquid.com/elstree-1976-a-documentary-about-the-true-stories-of-masked-actors-an

http://laughingsquid.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/Elstree1976-poster.jpg

Elstree 1976 is an upcoming documentary, directed by Jon Spira, that shares the true stories behind masked actors and extras in the original Star Wars trilogy. It is currently scheduled to release sometime in 2016.

These people came from a wide variety of backgrounds and went on to have unique careers and lives. This is resolutely not a ‘Making of Star Wars’ documentary. Star Wars is merely the common ground shared by these people and just a starting point for collecting the experiences of this generation of performers. It tells the story of six decades of British theatre, cinema and movie conventions from the perspective of working actors whose characters’ fame often seems to eclipse their own. The film explores the industry, the craft and the acting life. It reflects on what makes and sustains a pop culture phenomenon, how it feels and what it means to be a part of that legacy. Most importantly, it forms a portrait of a generation of performers and the British film industry, which facilitated the rise of the Hollywood blockbuster.

The Minds & Algorithms That Make Hollywood Spectacle - Facts So Romantic
▻http://nautil.us/blog/the-minds--algorithms-that-make-hollywood-spectacle

http://static.nautil.us/3889_86098ef82c97fa789a47a8d2e8800794.jpg

We may not have realized it at the time, but during the 1990s, Hollywood movies were infiltrated by a new presence that outshined even the biggest screen stars: Images created on computers became the main draws for movies like Jurassic Park, Toy Story, The Matrix, and Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace. Since then, the prominence of computer graphics (CG) has become expected and unremarkable, as much a part of the multiplex experience as ugly carpeting and reminders to silence your cell phone.CG began its takeover once the art and technology had distinct advantages over other ways to create images. At the same time, it still has weak points. Realistic human faces are notoriously hard to recreate, for instance. Animators have spent untold thousands of hours trying to get hair to (...)

Star Wars and the 4 Ways Science Fiction Handles Race
The genre has no problem imagining a future full of spaceships and aliens. A racially integrated society, though?
►http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2014/03/-em-star-wars-em-and-the-4-ways-science-fiction-handles-race/359507
►http://cdn.theatlantic.com/static/newsroom/img/mt/2014/03/scifirace/lead.jpg?n2zuvn

It’d be great news if the buzz about 12 Years a Slave’s Lupita Nyong’o being cast in the upcoming Star Wars sequel is true. Casting someone whose breakout role explicitly and thoughtfully engaged with the African-American experience may also, hopefully, kick off a discussion about race in Star Wars and in sci-fi more generally. The franchise has often been criticized for its clueless, tone-deaf use of caricature, especially the nods to blackface minstrelsy in Jar Jar Binks. More importantly, Star Wars encapsulates a pop-culture tradition of space operas that can easily invent spaceships and robots and aliens, but that helplessly acquiesce to old, stereotypical treatments of gender and race. Why does that matter? Sci-fi is at least in part a dream of a different world and a different future. When that future unthinkingly reproduces current inequities, it seems like both a missed opportunity and a failure of imagination.

#sf #s.f. #science-fiction #cinéma #représentations #egalité #minorités

Swedish cinemas take aim at gender bias with Bechdel test rating
Movies need to pass test that gauges the active presence of women on screen in bid to promote gender equality
▻http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/nov/06/swedish-cinemas-bechdel-test-films-gender-bias

To get an A rating, a movie must pass the so-called Bechdel test, which means it must have at least two named female characters who talk to each other about something other than a man.

“The entire Lord of the Rings trilogy, all Star Wars movies, The Social Network, Pulp Fiction and all but one of the Harry Potter movies fail this test,” said Ellen Tejle, the director of Bio Rio, an art-house cinema in Stockholm’s trendy Södermalm district.

[...]

Research in the US supports the notion that women are under-represented on the screen and that little has changed in the past 60 years.

Of the top 100 US films in 2011, women accounted for 33% of all characters and only 11% of the protagonists, according to a study by the San Diego-based Centre for the Study of Women in Television and Film.

Another study, by the Annenberg Public Policy Centre at the University of Pennsylvania, showed that the ratio of male to female characters in movies has remained at about two to one for at least six decades. That study, which examined 855 top box-office films from 1950-2006, showed female characters were twice as likely to be seen in explicit sexual scenes as males, while male characters were more likely to be seen as violent.

“Apparently Hollywood thinks that films with male characters will do better at the box office. It is also the case that most of the aspects of movie-making – writing, production, direction, and so on – are dominated by men, and so it is not a surprise that the stories we see are those that tend to revolve around men,” Amy Bleakley, the study’s lead author, said in an email.

#feminisme #cinema #Bechdel

Star Wars 7 : Harrison Ford revient en #Han_Solo !
▻http://www.actucine.com/cinema/star-wars-7-harrison-ford-revient-en-han-solo-73613.html

71 ans, le gaillard ! :)

Why Science Keeps Rediscovering ’Star Wars’ - Technology - The Atlantic Wire
▻http://www.theatlanticwire.com/technology/2011/09/why-science-keeps-rediscovering-star-wars/42588