Director Paul Feig talks about the campaign against Ghostbusters

The man behind Freaks and Geeks, Bridesmaids, The Heat and Spy opens up about the stunning campaign to take down the new 2016 all-female reboot of Ghostbusters. He talks about why he chooses to work with funny women and why he wants to push them into starring roles. Feig also takes us on a journey through his groundbreaking tv show Freaks and Geeks that introduced the world to the likes of Seth Rogan, James Franco.

Quentin Tarantino: Piracy, Learning Curves & Hateful Eight.

You’ll never get an easier job as an interviewer than Quentin Tarantino. He is a total pleasure. He responds to pirates uploading his movie, he talks about his steepest learning curve and, of course, his brand new film The Hateful 8. Enjoy, share:) 

Ice Cube: Make Your Own NWA Movie

Ice Cube interview with Marc Fennell - The Feed

Ice Cube on 80s hair, racial relations in America, and why #StraightOuttaCompton omits Dre's history of violence against women. #TheFeedSBS

Posted by SBS 2 on Monday, September 7, 2015

Straight Outta Compton shows the rise of seminal gangsta rap group N.W.A.

Ice Cube - a.k.a O'Shea Jackson - and his son who plays him in the film, O'Shea Jackson Jr., sat down with The Feed to talk the controversy surrounding the new film.

In particular, why the film which has Ice Cube and Dr Dre as producers, doesn't reference Dr Dre's history of violent attacks on women. 

"People are welcome to do their own version of the N.W.A story. There's been a thousand movies about Elvis, we can tolerate a few more N.W.A movies," Cube told SBS.

"That being said, and that put to the side, this is a situation where you could pick and choose what you want to put in the movie. There are things that are bigger that aren't in the movie."

Gillian Armstrong: Australian Film Pioneer

Gillian Armstrong on the most famous Australian you've never heard of. #TheFeedSBS

Posted by SBS 2 on Thursday, July 16, 2015

When Gillian Armstrong burst onto the scene with her film My Brilliant Career she because the first Australian feature film director in over 50 years. She is a pioneer. She turned Cate Blanchett and Sam Neill into international names. She talks about her experiences with rampant sexism in the early days of her career, how far we've really come as an industry. She also explains why she resisted directing arguably her most famous film Little Women and she reveals the biggest bullshit artist in Hollywood

oscarnomics

The Oscars are terrible when your favourite movie doesn’t win or when Gwyneth Paltrow does. But there is a reason your favourite didn’t win today and it all comes down to the demographics.

There are nearly 6000 people who decide who wins and who looses at the film industries night of nights. Oscar voters are nearly 77% male and 94% Caucasian.
 
The academy is broken down into branches. Actors, producers, special effects etc. Caucasians currently make up 90% or more of almost every one of the 14 academy branches. 
 
But age is the real issue here. The median age of an Oscar voter is 62. Only half of academy voting actors have even appeared on screen in the last two years, and hundreds haven't worked in decades. 
 
Back in 2011, Sony Pictures executives argued that the reason 'The Social Network' lost to 'The Kings Speech' for best picture is simply because old white men don’t get Facebook.
 
But Oscars don’t come cheap. These days the average cost to win yourself an Oscar is about $5 million. Last year, the makers of Silver Linings Playbook even hired Obama’s deputy campaign manager to help their chances. 
 
And then there’s the vote itself - which is a big part of why sometimes Oscar wins can be a bit bland. 
 
The Academy is one of the few parts of America to use preferential voting.
 
PriceWaterhouseCoopers literally print out every ballot - even if you voted online - and they stack them up according to who people put at the top of the list. You need over 51% to win.

Let’s say it’s a close year - and this year’s almost definitely was - you suddenly have 2-3 contenders. But none of them have that golden 51%.

So you then head to the other end of the list and take the movie with the least votes and see what was their 2nd preference. Then you redistribute the votes and you keep on redistributing shifting down the 3rd, 4th preferences until someone hits the 51% mark.

But often only a fraction of the winning votes were from people thinking it was the best. Most people thought it was 2nd or 3rd best. 
So, no matter what you wanted from this year’s Oscars - it's important to remember that who wins an Oscar is not quite as simple as who is the most popular but who most voters think is OK.

proving ground: face substitution

Have you ever imagined yourself looking like a film star or perhaps a president? Well a new piece of software aims to help you become your favourite celebrity by replacing your face with theirs - but does it work?

Imagine being able to broadcast yourself to the internet but with someone else’s face? Face Substitution is an application that claims to offer just that.

Want to be Nic Cage? Sure! Want to be a terrfying pseudo-Rihanna? Okay! Want to be Bieber for a day? No problem!

Face Substitution can track your favourit celebrities face on yours as you’re skyping away. But is it very convincing?

The app maps your facial features and lighting from your webcam and currently has has 17 different faces for you to “wear” in full Silence of the Lambs mode from The Queen to stranger, more abstract masks like “Picasso”.

It's an unusual idea but is Face Substitution something you would ever use?

proving ground: seene

Selfies. footstagrams. babygrams. drinkstargams. They are the lifeblood of the social web. But now you can exponentially enhance your narcissism with a third dimension.

Seene is an app that wants to bring the third dimenson to your phone. Quite simply it lets you take photos in 3d.

The technology itself has been around for a very long time but they’re using the motion senseors inside the phone to help you map a shape.

You select the subject and rotate around it. Then Seene maps it into a 3d shape. It doesn't always work and when it doesnt you just get the stuff of childhood nightmares.

But the cool part is that that you can use the images Seene creates on any platform - mobile or desktop.

Just last week Seene was even named the UK’s most innovative mobile company by the Smart UK project.

proving ground: leap motion

Of all of the things Minority Report promised at least one thing is finally coming true: the ability to interact with your computer with the flick of a wrist.

Well that is the promise of a small device called Leap Motion. If you’ve ever played with a Microsoft Kinnect, think of Leap Motion as small one of those but attached to your computer.

The Leap Motion controller tracks your hands in 3D space and converts your movements into actions and gestures on screen. The tiny LEDs and infrared cameras tracking your movement can generate around 300 frames a second of data - almost 12 times as much detail as what you see on TV.

Certain kinds of lights directly above your desk can tend to freak it out but clearly it’s struck a chord because computer manufacturers are now starting to build Leap Motion straight into laptops.

There's also a steadily growing app store - mostly of games where you can stroke radioactive trees or play serial killer. You can also use it to read The New York Times and potentially even completely do away with the mouse and computer handsfree.

proving ground: sphero

Why re-invent the wheel when you can re-invent the ball. That seems to be the thinking behind Sphero. 

At $170 Sphero is halfway between Wall-E and your favourite pet. You control Sphero with your phone and can let it roll in water, change colour, and even impersonate Evel Knievel.

It may seem stupid, it may indeed even be stupid, but credit where credit is due there is a lot of innovation that’s driving this ball of stupidity.

Inside the sealed white shell is a tiny robot that uses a gyroscope to balance on two wheels. The robot drives up the side of its own shell creating forward and upward movements. Think of it like a Segway stuck inside of a ball. The trick is that it runs on gravity. 

wires, or battery compartments. Instead Sphero has its own built-in batteries that are charged by passing energy through the shell itself.

The charging station is basically a copper coil, which generates an alternating electromagnetic field and Spehro converts that invisible field into electricity.

Where it really gets fun, apart from torturing your cats and toddlers, are the augmented reality games. Sphero uses your phones camera to overlay a game environment, with say zombies, to give you a unique game play experience. It's fun but gameplay can be challenging. After all you are trying to control a ball that has a tendancy to run into objects.

proving ground: emotiv insight

Once upon a time the only people with the power to move objects with their mind were upside-down jedi and the demonically posessed... but not anymore. The power of mechanically-enabled telekinesis is just one of the promises of Emotiv Insight: a snazzy bit of sci-fi that is actually a wireless brainscanner you can wear on your head.

Emotiv can sync to applications on a computer or iPhone translating your brain waves into specific movements which can then be used for real-world applications - like steering a remote controled drone.

Firstly you’ve got to calibrate the Emotiv headset and then teach it to recognise how your brain perceives movement. This is an odd process of attaching a very star trekkian headset on to very specific parts of your head and visualising an object moving up, down, forward or back. If you're really adventurous you might even try spinning the object. Once you’ve got the headset programmed you’ve got a pretty fun recipe to destroy the walls of your local office with your choice of remote controlled device. (The walls of SBS will never be the same again!)

The flying example is fun, in an OH&S nightmare kinda way, but it’s the less punishing applications where this starts to get interesting. There’s already been a crowdfunding effort to use the Emotiv to drive a wheelchair and even help with disabled communication. But the real goal is for Emotiv to become the fitness bracelet of your brain - measuring data like 'focus' and 'attention' in realtime throughout the day.

But is Emotiv the sort of thing you would ever want to be seen wearing in public? And What are the limitations of it? And can you call yourself Professor X when you’re wearing it?

juliette binoche: interview

Elegant, outspoken and fiercely intelligent, Oscar winner Juliette Binoche spoke to me in Paris about acting, filmmaking and more. She gives Marc the first taste of what to expect from the hugely anticipated “anti-blockbuster" reworking of Godzilla from director Gareth Edwards (Monsters). She explains why she turned down iconic roles in Jurassic Park and Schindlers List and how a sculpture she saw when she was 15 years old has changed the way she approaches art, acting and more.

real life video games

Most of us play video games by furiously thumbing a console or hurling a Wii around the living room. But not Drew Hobbs and Zoe Tame. The prefer to play games with flesh and blood. Literally. They are the team behind IRL Shooter and they stage real life video games that you can physically play, level-up and win.

IRL's first event Patient Zero: Melbourne remains the biggest crowdfunded venture in Australian history. It was played in a 7000sqm warehouse meticulously converted into an abandoned underground medical facility with over 200 non-player character (ahem.... zombies) radio communications and more. Now as they get set to mount an even bigger game in Sydney the team have added even more advanced infrared weapons and electrical “pain belts”.

The Mk.2 is IRL’s 2nd generation gun, an upgrade from the one they ran in the first version of the game. It’s reasonably close to the weight of a Colt M4 rifle and fires with a gas-powered recoil that replicates about 80% of the real recoil of a weapon of this nature. They’ve also replicated the process of reloading. You have to expel the empty clip and put in another – which is kind of stressful with 20 zombies bearing down on you. The weapons are also capable of affecting the building environment itself. You can ‘shoot out’ lights for example, if you want to employ stealth tactics in certain parts of the facility.

But far more notable this time round are the Pain Belts. It’s basically like strapping a cattle prod to your chest. It gets triggered by proximity to the zombies, misfires from your home team or by the game designers if you behave like a douche. There's seven settings and the impressive thing is the contractions you get from the electrical pulses actually do replicate a feeling of impact. And when I say ‘impressive’, please understand I actually mean “fundamentally awful”.

robot therapy

Robots are being used everywhere around the world. From manufacturing, to bomb disposal, robots have become a necessary part of our modern existence. Now robots are making their way in to therapy sessions. The Feed's Marc Fennell looks at how robots are being used in therapy sessions.

up all night to get loki

He's invaded New York with aliens, he went to school with Princes William and Harry and is the star of Thor, The Avengers plus the brand new THOR 2. The Feed's Marc Fennell talks to Thor 2 star Tom Hiddleston. The Feed airs weeknights at 19:30 on SBS 2.

making virtual a reality

 Virtual reality devices have been promised for many years, but until recently those VR devices were expensive and cumbersome. Now there's a flood of portable head mounted devices on the market that aim to bring virtual reality to the masses. The Feed's Marc Fennell looks at the portable devices that are changing virtual reality.

daniel bruhl : rush & the fifth estate

Daniel Brühl is an Austrian/Spanish actor who has been making movies in europe for years. But in 2013 Brühl's breaking out and headlining two major films, The Wikileaks biopic 'The Fifth Estate' - and RUSH, where be plays 1970's formula 1 racing icon Niki Lauda.

hugo weaving

The Feed's Marc Fennell interviews Hugo Weaving about his new movie 'The Turning.'

Julian Assange is easily the most internationally recognised person running in the 2013 Australian Federal election. But ever since he set up the Wikileaks Party, it's been plagued by resignations and a preferences scandal. Has Assange already blown his chance to become a Senator and what is really motivating his political run?

Oh, and what does Assange think of Benedict Cumberbatch playing him in a movie? Well, he's not a great fan of the accent.  

the feed: datamining your vote

How do you feel about political parties knowing exactly what tv shows you watch, or changing the look of their website based on what particular electorate you're in?

Magda Szubanski & Laura Michelle Kelly on Gods, Goddesses, Feminism and Bitches

See Magda and Laura talk about their brand new musical comedy GODDESS. ​