A depiction of Los Angeles in 2019 by Syd Mead for ‘Blade Runner.’
 
Artist Syd Mead is probably best known for his work for the 1982 film Blade Runner, though his vast contributions to cinema can be seen in other groundbreaking works such as Aliens (1986), TRON (1982), and 2013’s Elysium which was directed by Neill Blomkamp. Blomkamp had a life-long obsession with Mead and his artwork which was what led him to engage the services of the then 80-year-old artist to design the sets for his futuristic film.

Mead’s background in industrial design is clear and present in his paintings. During the 1970s his artistic services were highly sought-after and widely respected within the companies and industries he spent time working for such as Ford and Phillips Electronics, illustrating catalogs and other types of publications. Mead also worked closely with elite members of the architectural design world including large hotel chains and other high-end establishments. His relentlessly busy schedule led him to move his base of operations to Los Angeles where he quickly found himself working as an artist for the motion picture industry in the late 70s. Though Blade Runner would not be the first Hollywood film that Mead would lend his visionary talent to, it can’t be disputed that his work on the film left an indelible imprint on the minds of filmmakers and cinephiles around the world, who adopted Mead’s grungy vision of what the year 2019 looked like, and other aspects of Blade Runner’s‘s essence in their work, like the hardwired goths from The Matrix, Paul Verhoeven’s Total Recall and Luc Besson’s The Fifth Element.
 

A sketch of a uniform from ‘TRON’ by Syd Mead.
 
After meeting with director Ridley Scott to discuss the film (which at the time was going by the working title of Dangerous Days) Mead recalls that Scott told him that his intention was to create the framework for a noir film around its science fiction premise. To help drive his point home Scott used Michael Anderson’s 1972 film Logan’s Run as an example of the “slick and clean” presentation of more conventional cinematic sci-fi, opting instead for more of a bad-side-of-town feeling, pulsating in neon lights and depravity. Ridley Scott quite literally gave Syd Mead the job of creating 2019 Los Angeles for Blade Runner using his own conceptual ideas. During the process, Mead incorporated elements and influences from his travels around the world. Some of the vehicles in the film are based on autos from Cuba or the colorful “jitneys” (also known as “Jeepneys”) that serve as public transportation all around the Philippines. Architecturally, the future city of Los Angeles was based on a combination of Chicago and New York, and Mead’s work in Blade Runner continues to not only inspire filmmakers but also architects and a style that the artist referred to as “retro deco,” or “trash chic.”

Though I’ve only really scratched the surface when it comes to Syd Mead, I’m hoping it was more than enough to pique your interest in the impossibly cool artist. If that’s the case there are many publications based on Mead’s life and his long line of accomplishments. Perhaps the most lust-worthy is the forthcoming The Movie Art of Syd Mead: Visual Futurist which is set for release in September. The 256-page book is the largest and most comprehensive take on Mead’s career yet, including some never-before-seen works.

Mead is very much a living legend who deserves every bit of praise his fans give him and more.
 

‘TRON.’
 

Another conceptual work by Mead for ‘TRON.’
 
More Mead after the jump…

 
Guillem H. Pongiluppi is a thirty-something Spanish artist with a whole bunch of colorful talents to his palette. He’s a painter, illustrator, a matte and concept artist who’s worked on best-selling games, films and TV shows—from David Jones’ Warcraft to international productions for National Geographic and the BBC. He’s a cool guy.

He is also a fan of the movies Star Wars and Aliens. And what better way to share your love of something great than to create a series of fantastic fan art paintings that mash these two movies up into a series called Star Wars vs. Aliens.

Check more of Guillem’s work here.
 

 

 
More Darth Vader vs the Alien Queen, after the jump….

 
Is your home décor lacking a certain je ne sais quoi? If so, might I tempt you with this life-size silicone model of android Bishop from Aliens? He would make an excellent accent piece to any livingroom, bedroom or office space. 

Made by Florida-based artist Neil Goldsmith, the model is currently for sale on Etsy with a pricetag of $3000.

 

 

 
via Laughing Squid

 
YouTuber wingnut Projectinsighter uploaded an in-depth video breakdown about the reptilian thing-a-ma-bobber implanted on the back of President Obama’s head.

Notice the Days of Egyptian Gods..The Alien in the back of the Head. Then look at the new scars of Obama and his alien in the back of his head..Hell is upon us.

BarondePencier points out in the YouTube comments, “As a reptilian alien symbiote, working in the ancient Anti-American conspiracy department, I’d like to say that this video is insulting to reptilians everywhere.”

Agreed.
 

 
Via The Daily What

 
Curiouser, and curiouser… The Daily Mail reports on a memo that appears “to prove that aliens did land in New Mexico.”

A bizarre memo that appears to prove that aliens did land in New Mexico prior to 1950 has been published by the FBI. The bureau has made thousands of files available in a new online resource called The Vault.

Among them is a memo to the director from Guy Hottel, the special agent in charge of the Washington field office in 1950.

The memo has been published on the FBI website. In the memo, whose subject line is ‘Flying Saucers’, Agent Hottel reveals that an Air Force investigator had stated that ‘three so-called flying saucers had been recovered in New Mexico’.

The investigator gave the information to a special agent, he said. The FBI has censored both the agent and the investigator’s identity.

Agent Hottel went on to write: ‘They were described as being circular in shape with raised centers, approximately 50 feet in diameter.

‘Each one was occupied by three bodies of human shape but only 3 feet tall,’ he stated.

The bodies were ‘dressed in a metallic cloth of a very fine texture. Each body was bandaged in a manner similar to the blackout suits used by speed flyers and test pilots.’

He said that the informant, whose identity was censored in the memo, claimed the saucers had been found in New Mexico ‘due to the fact that the Government has a very high-powered radar set-up in that area and it is believed the radar interferes with the controlling mechanism of the saucers’.

He then stated that the special agent did not attempt to investigate further.

The release of the secret memo is likely to fuel conspiracy theorists’ claims of a government cover-up.

The town of Roswell in New Mexico became infamous after reports that a flying saucer had crashed in the desert near a military base there on or around July 2, 1947.

The bodies of aliens were said to have been recovered and autopsied by the U.S. military, but American authorities allegedly covered the incident up

Military authorities issued a press release, which began: ‘The many rumours regarding the flying disc became a reality yesterday when the intelligence officer of the 509th Bomb Group of the Eighth Air Force, Roswell Army Air Field, was fortunate enough to gain possession of a disc.’

The headlines screamed: ‘Flying Disc captured by Air Force.’ Yet, just 24 hours later, the military changed their story and claimed the object they’d first thought was a ‘flying disc’ was a weather balloon that had crashed on a nearby ranch.

Amazingly, the media and the public accepted the explanation without question. Roswell disappeared from the news until the late Seventies, when some of the military involved began to speak out.

Another memo published in The Vault from 1947 claimed that an object ‘purporting to be a flying disc’ had been recovered near Roswell.

The disc was ‘hexagonal in shape’ and ‘suspended from a balloon by a cable’, according to the memo, marked as ‘Urgent’, to the FBI director.

The memo noted that the disc resembled a weather balloon - but claimed that a telephone conversation between the Air Force and the field office ‘had not [word censored] borne out this belief’.

The disc and balloon were being transported to Wright Field for further inspection, the memo noted.

It added that the information was being flagged up because of ‘national interest’ in the episode, and noting that both NBC and the AP were set to break the story that day.

Of course, such loose-leaf documents are easy to forge, but it should be possible to confirm the existence of “Agent Hottel”. If it is a forgery, I doubt it will effect the interest in Roswell or, stories of alien landings. Indeed, the Daily Mail ran another story on Roswell in 2007, in which an officer’s deathbed confession confirmed extraterrestrials had landed back in 1947. This report can be read here.
 

 

When I read a headline like “Ancient weapons emerge from melting Arctic ice,” three things immediately pop into my mind:

1. Oh f_K, they’ve discovered an ancient spaceship under the polar icecaps which contains Aliens, Predators, Alien-Predators, Terminators, Terminator-Alien-Predators and/or the Da Vinci Code;

2. These things will probably kill all of us as they see us as little more than pawns in an epic game/hunt that has been conducted across the universe for millennia and which we have just reactivated by finding this Arctic trove which should have stayed buried;

3. Lance Henriksen will be involved.

However, all that happened is they found some old caveman spears. *Phew.* Headlines should know better than to scare me like that.

A treasure trove of ancient weapons has emerged from melting ice patches in the Canadian Arctic, revealing hunting strategies thousands of years old.

The weapons, which include a 2,400-year-old spear throwing tools, a 1000-year-old ground squirrel snare, and bows and arrows dating back 850 years, have been found high in the remote Mackenzie Mountains, a region where Mountain Boreal caribou abound in the summer months.

Dotted with ice patches resulting from accumulation of annual snow that, until recently, remained frozen all year, the mountains have been the caribous’ shelter for millennia.

Seeking relief from the heat and annoying bugs, the animals huddle on the ice patches, becoming an easy target for hunters who recognized this behavior millennia ago.

(Discovery News: Ancient weapons emerge from arctic ice)

(A 24x36 poster of LANCE HENRIKSEN about to take down a perp aka the SWEETEST FREAKING THING IN ALL OF HUMAN HISTORY)

Physicist Stephen Hawking has suggested (in his new documentary series) that aliens almost certainly exist in the universe (by dint of the sheer numbers and probabilities involved)—but that we’d probably be better off not looking for them, since they might eat our poor asses.

THE aliens are out there and Earth had better watch out, at least according to Stephen Hawking. He has suggested that extraterrestrials are almost certain to exist — but that instead of seeking them out, humanity should be doing all it that can to avoid any contact.

The suggestions come in a new documentary series in which Hawking, one of the world’s leading scientists, will set out his latest thinking on some of the universe’s greatest mysteries.

Alien life, he will suggest, is almost certain to exist in many other parts of the universe: not just in planets, but perhaps in the centre of stars or even floating in interplanetary space.

Hawking’s logic on aliens is, for him, unusually simple. The universe, he points out, has 100 billion galaxies, each containing hundreds of millions of stars. In such a big place, Earth is unlikely to be the only planet where life has evolved.

“To my mathematical brain, the numbers alone make thinking about aliens perfectly rational,” he said. “The real challenge is to work out what aliens might actually be like.”

(Image above is taken from a Bad Astronomer post on a New York Times depiction of aliens from Venus and Mars from 1912.) (He also counters Stephen Hawking here.)

(Times Online: Don’t Talk to Aliens)

(Stephen Hawking: A Briefer History of Time)

Bulgaria has, apparently, contacted aliens. Not suprisingly, no reaction from the world at large. Metro.co.uk reports:

Bulgarian researchers are analysing pictograms contained in 150 crop circles which have appeared around the globe in the past year. And the researchers say they have already posed the extra-terrestrials 30 questions, one of which might have been: ?

Maybe we should add a new “WTF?” category:

NASA started to beam the song towards the North Star, 431 light years from Earth at midnight GMT on Monday, drawing congratulations from former Beatle Sir Paul McCartney and John Lennon’s widow, Yoko Ono, who mused that it marked “the beginning of the new age in which we will communicate with billions of planets across the universe.”

But today’s New Scientist asks whether such signals could expose us to the risk of attack from mean spirited aliens.

Beatles space broadcast ‘risks alien attack’

Thank you Mister Mark Jordan of London, England!