The Nikon Festival has the theme “A Day Through Your Lens”, and asks budding filmmakers to upload digital films with that theme, of lengths less than 140 seconds, to their website. The contest is six weeks long, starting right now. Festival judges include Rainn Wilson (Dwight Schrute of The Office fame), photographer Chase Jarvis, and some girl unfortunately described as an “Internet Personality” with the even more unfortunate name of iJustine. But guys, Rainn Wilson!

Oh yeah, and Ashton Kutcher will be sharing his own entry, partly because he has an advertising deal with Nikon and partly because this contest is tangentially related to Twitter. That ’70s Show was a long time ago, you know, and now Twitter is his job — and Ashton Kutcher is nothing if not dedicated to his job.

The winning filmmaker will get $US100,000 and some sweet Nikon gear, and there’ll also be an audience favourite award worth $US25,000, in case iJustine is out of touch with modern independent filmmaking. [Nikon Festival]

Priced at around AU$60, you get two Blu-ray movies (choices include films like Batman Begins and 300) and a PS3 Blu-ray remote. The two-movie pack is just a $10 premium on top of the remote price—not a bad deal (for us).

I’ve resisted Sony’s Bluetooth remote for some time—probably long enough that I’m over the need since I’ve gotten so darn good with a Dual Shock by now. But if they threw in some Blu-rays to sweeten the deal, I imagine that Sony could unload em by the truckload. Well, I guess all remotes come off trucks at sometime, but you get what I mean. [JB HiFi via Kotaku]

That Avatar’s going to be shown in 3D has been one of its selling points since the beginning. The thing is, the whole 3D shtick, what with the glasses and specialised display tech, is all but impossible to advertise on traditional mediums. Panasonic Corporation in Japan, which partnered with Twentieth Century Fox for some of the movie’s tech, has a wonderfully over-the-top way of dealing with this: They’re sending trucks all over the US and Europe with freakin’ 103-inch 3D TVs in them, just to make sure that you know that 3D is, in fact, awesome.

There’s going to be a lot—probably too much—hype around this bright blue movie for the next few months, so a lot of you will probably be forcefully tuning it out by the time the December release rolls around. [Panasonic]

Watch the trailer in higher rez and it’s apparent that many of the visual effects (like the mechs in the early shots) are made to look intentionally artificial, hyperreal. And I really don’t know what else to say other than, my interest is certainly piqued. What about yours? [High def downloads possible available at Apple via CrunchGear]

Here are altered clips from four of the year’s biggest movies, made infinitely better by the insane geniuses at Fatal Farm. Oh how I wish all of these movies were all like this.

Fatal Farm made these for the MTV Movie Awards, but they were apparently a bit too insane for their tastes. I guess I can see why, but these are just so good.

And if you haven’t yet, be sure to check out the other stuff on Fatal Farm’s site, such as the alternate TV themes (Designing Women is my favourite). [Fatal Farm]

Director Neill Blomkamp shares his thoughts on his casual presentation of special effects while WETA Workshop designer Greg Broadmore talks about designing the aliens and their weaponry (specifically, why their weapons can be painted bright orange).

This clip isn’t a hardcore look into the movie, but it’s a nice bit of fluff to help you relive the alien invasion that you may have enjoyed last weekend. Or you could skip the clip and get back to work. Because that alternative sounds great. [Wired]

Let’s hope it doesn’t put a buzz kill on my childhood memories the way G.I. Joe and Transformers have.

Dan Lin, who is shepherding Warner Bros’ “Sherlock Holmes” and exec produced the studio’s upcoming family film “Shorts”, will produce the movie through his Lin Pictures, which is also behind a “Tom and Jerry” film that will put the feuding animated characters in a live-action setting.

[Variety via Sci Fi Wire]

Notoriously finicky, Bruce was really a collection of three $US150,000 mechanical sharks that were each capable of only a modest range of movement (one went left-to-right, one went right-to-left and one exclusively did underwater scenes). Why could two of the sharks only swim one way? Because the non-camera-friendly side was nothing but exposed gears. From Time:

Bruce was fairly programmed for mishap. In order to use him, a twelve-ton steel platform, to which the mechanical shark was attached by a 100-ft.-long umbilical cable, had to be sunk to the ocean floor. The controls on the platform were operated by 13 technicians wearing scuba equipment.

Bruce sank when he made his debut. During his second test on water his hydraulic system exploded. “That shark,” says Producer Brown, “was like owning a yacht. We had to dredge a place for it to rest, we had to park it, guard it, stroke it, hide it from the public.”

Bruce caused delays for the open water shoot which skyrocketed Jaws‘ budget to $US7 million (about $US27 million today). Of course, Jaws would eventually be widely recognised as the world’s first summer blockbuster as it’s since made $US470 million (or $US1.9 billion today).

This shot is a scale model replica of Bruce complete with his underwater mechanisms. You can see more official props from Jaws here. [Time][Lead Image]

Hughes made it cool to be a geek. His coming of age flicks usually had underdog social outcasts outwitting their bitchy rivals. 1985’s Weird Science, in particular, celebrated technology in a fun and risqué way, even throwing in a moral story to boot. I still have that image of Kelly LeBrock’s first appearance etched in my brain, along with Oingo Boingo’s annoyingly infectious theme song. And how many of your teenage selves ever tried to pull a Bueller stunt?

As a kid, I had a few core favourite films including Explorers, The Last Star Fighter, and Weird Science. While they all shared a sense that technology can let amazing things happen to anyone—even me—they also showed that every geek can have their day. Thanks again. [Chicago Tribune]