Watching movies on your iPhone is kind of amazing when you think about it, but the screen is so small that it’s not exactly a cinema-like experience. Designer Mike Enayah has created an interesting way to use the iPhone as a personal movie theater while blocking out the rest of the world.

The iPhone Theater consists of a set of headphones with a movable iPhone-holding arm. The arm holds the iPhone in front of the user’s eyes at the optimal viewing position. While the movie plays, the sound is piped through the headphones, creating an isolated movie viewing experience.

Whether anyone would be brave enough to use this contraption in public is still an open question. But it could definitely be useful for keeping a cranky kid (or a cranky adult) occupied on a long car or plane ride.

The post Head-Mounted Cinema Turns iPhone Into Private Movie Theater first appeared on Gajitz.

As far as campy, mocking sci-fi movies go, Spaceballs is probably the best one ever. The 1987 Mel Brooks film was made as a send-up of Star Wars and similar movies and gave us classic lines like “may the schwartz be with you.” The hovercraft driven by Dark Helmet was made to “fly” in the movie with a series of wires and a blue screen, but after the movie finished shooting its creator, Dean Jeffries, installed a motor in the vehicle to let it be driven under its own power.

Today, the little piece of sci-fi history sits in the Justice Brothers Museum. Jeffries is asked often to drive it in parades, which isn’t surprising. What is a bit surprising is the fact that the car has appeared in about 20 other movies, TV shows and music videos, according to the museum’s information. That knowledge kind of feels like a challenge to find and spot every single appearance of Dark Helmet’s hovercar ever caught on film.

The post Sci-Fi History: Spaceballs Hovercar Spotted Alive + Well first appeared on Gajitz.

True movie lovers know that there aren’t many things more thrilling than visiting the very locations where your favorite movies were shot. Call it cinematic tourism or just giving your movie experiences a brand new layer; either way, it can be a fun and interesting way to enhance both your movie experiences and your vacation. A new smartphone app called AR Cinema will use the power of GPS along with augmented reality to actually bring you into your favorite films.

Visit a street corner or landmark where a movie was filmed, hold up your smartphone and the app will show you the scene(s) shot there. The demo video shows films set in London, but the developers want to add additional cities. Of course, the people who live in those cities might not be thrilled with the cinema tourists holding up their phones in the middle of the street to watch movie clips, but this awesome idea could add a whole new layer to the tourism trade in cities like London, New York, Toronto and other frequently-used shooting locations.

The post Augmented Reality Cinema App Brings Movies to Real Life first appeared on Gajitz.

Cinematic special effects have gotten so realistic that sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference between real footage and computer graphics. But, as anyone who’s seen a movie made prior to the last 20 years can attest, it’s been a long road. The history of special effects is amazing, and could take all day to read through. But there’s no need to wade through hours of history when you can watch 100 years of special effects in just five minutes.

This short film was originally created as an introduction to a lecture being given to a group of fifth-graders. It doesn’t take much to impress a 10-year-old, but the special effects highlighted here are from some of the most influential films of the last century. The early effects look positively primitive when put next to the special effects of today. The films featured at in the video are: The Enchanted Drawing (1900),  The Great Train Robbery (1903), The Ten Commandments (1923), Sunrise (1927), King Kong (1933), The Wizard of Oz (1939), The Thief of Bagdad (1940), 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1954), Forbidden Planet (1956), Jason and the Argonauts (1963), Mary Poppins (1964), Star Wars (1977), Tron (1982), Back to the Future (1985), Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988), The Abyss, (1989), Terminator 2: Judgement Day (1991), The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles (1992), Jurassic Park (1993), Spider-Man 2 (2004), King Kong (2005), Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest (2006), Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End (2007), The Golden Compass (2007), The Spiderwick Chronicles (2008), The Curious Case of Benjamin Button(2008).

The post Watch 100 Years of Cinematic Special Effects in 5 Minutes first appeared on Gajitz.

Movie geeks are very particular about the facts surrounding their favorite films. They’re equally protective of the relative ranking of their favorite movies. Cartoonist Dan Meth has put both into perspective. In his Series of Pop Culture Charts, Meth examines everything from the Beach Boys’ song topics to the location of the kitchen relative to the living room in his favorite sitcoms. The Futuristic Movie Timeline, above, gives the location in time of 32 of the most well-known futuristic movies. It also shows the year the movie was released, giving a visual taste of just how forward-thinking the filmmakers were. Charts, sci-fi, semi-obscure data arranged in an aesthetically pleasing format: it’s like geek bliss.

And the chart for which Dan Meth probably receives the most grief: the Trilogy Chart. This chart, while perhaps not as gloriously geeky as the one above, sets out in graphic form the artists’ own ranking of 21 three-part movie franchises. Obviously the chart won’t mesh with everyone’s opinion of the first and second films in a series, but can we all agree that, more often than not, the third movie in a series kind of sucks?

The post Future, Perfect: When Your Favorite Sci-Fi Happens first appeared on Gajitz.