The Worst Scifi Snubs in Oscar History

It's Oscar season, so brace yourself for more snubs when it comes to science fiction movies. Speculative fiction has a crummy track record when it comes to the Academy Awards, and even when an iconic scifi flick scores Oscar nods, it tends to be ignored in everything but the technical categories (see: E.T., Star Wars…
The Man With The Iron Fists isn't bad if you imagine Russell Crowe wandered on set and decided to be in a movie
Incidentally, this isn't too far from the truth. As reality would have it, Crowe (a main character in Iron Fists) spent all of ten days on set, channeling legendarily unhinged and deceased Wu-Tang Clan rapper Ol' Dirty Bastard. Said Robert "RZA" Diggs — the film's director and famed Wu-Tang producer — in the movie's …
Just some sublime animated body horror
Courtesy of Katayama Takuto, comes Dissimilated Vision, a gorgeous animated segment about fingers turning into eyes and follicles transmuting into faces and other lovely polymorphing weirdness. (Hat tip to Morris.)
The wall of eyeballs that makes you go blind is our new favorite monster from Japanese mythology
We've discussed yōkai — or supernatural monsters from Japanese mythology — on io9 before, namely the disgusting, turtle-like kappa. But the yōkai artwork of Toriyama Sekien (1712-1788) will introduce you to some even weirder monsters from Japanese folklore, such as the mokumokuren (a blinding eyeball demon that dwells…
Behold a “beard tax” token from the beard-hating days of Imperial Russia
Under the rule of Russian tsar and notorious beard-hater Peter the Great - which ran from 1682-1725 - men sporting facial hair were subjected to a beard tax that afforded them a token informing strangers that they were honest, tax-paying hairballs. As Erik Jensen explains in a 2003 article from the journal Tax Notes:
We visited Rick Grimes' Bizarro World on The Walking Dead
Last week's episode of The Walking Dead saw team leader Rick Grimes rely on some particularly extreme measures. And Sunday's episode,"Walk With Me," focused solely on the adventures of Andrea and her taciturn samurai traveling companion, Michonne. But the women aren't alone on their journey across post-apocalyptic…
A Gorgeous Time-Lapse Film Of An Old West Ghost Town
What happens when you mix Johnny Cash with haunting photography of one of America's best preserved ghost towns? You get this absolute doozy of a video by Colin Rich, who captured the forlorn beauty of Bodie, California. Explains Rich of walking among the ruins of Bodie:
On The Venture Bros., Halloween is a time to summon toast demons
Two years and one music video later, The Venture Bros. made their return to basic cable with "A Very Venture Halloween," a special the show's masterminds proclaimed would hearken back to the heartwarming Halloween specials of yesteryear. Was it a veritable It's The Great Mecha Shiva, Charlie Brown? Not exactly, but…
A first look at the Axe Cop cartoon show!
The very first clip from Fox ADHD's upcoming Axe Cop cartoon show has hit the internet. Check out how the hero — who is the creation of a thirtysomething cartoonist and his elementary-school brother — celebrates Halloween like a lunatic for justice. Axe Cop will air next summer on FOX. Remember, always play it safe…
Awesome Evil Dead Halloween costumes of the cabin and Necronomicon
When most people think of Evil Dead cosplay, Ash Williams wielding a chainsaw hand is the first thing to come to mind. But Kiersten Essenpreis and her friend Marc flipped the script by dressing as the cabin itself and the dreaded Necronomicon. Gold stars all around. [Via Super Punch]
Watch an eerie 12-minute short movie about an astronaut marooned on an alien world
Here's Seed, a starkly handsome short film inspired heavily by 1960s and 1970s science fiction cinema. Explains director Tyson Wade Johnston, "Set in the year 2071, where technology has brought mankind to the brink of colonization on a planet named Gaia, one astronaut takes on an isolated mission and discovers…
Using your 11-foot-beard as a nest for cats is history's great unsung fashion trend
We've examined nineteenth century photographers' obsessions with cats before, but these portraits are a whole other brand of ridiculousness. Behold Monsieur Louis Coulon, born in 1827, the owner of a 3.3-meter-long beard, and the progenitor of the "Hirsute Kitten Cathedral Look." I wonder how his mighty mane smelled?

