Monster invasions, bionic men, and the future of cool cars in this week’s Staff Picks

Amir Iliaifar: I’ve seen the future of Lexus, and it is glorious There are the cars you drive and then there are the cars you dream of driving. The Lexus LF-CC concept is the latter. First debuted at the 2012 Paris Motor Show in September, and on display this week at the LA Auto Show, this sleek and sexy design study not only signifies the future of automotive design, it gives a gorgeous glimpse of where Lexus, as a brand, is heading.  Like all concept cars, there isn’t much in the way of details. We know the LF-CC, which unofficially stands for Lexus Future – Concept Coupe, will likely sit on the existing GS’ platform and utilize some sort of hybrid engine. Autocar recently quoted an unnamed Lexus source confirming the concept’s push to production sometime in 2015, but when I spoke to Lexus representatives nothing had been announced nor confirmed. Nevertheless, the force is strong with this one, and something tells me of all the concepts Lexus have shown lately, this is the one with the greatest potential to roll out on showfloors. For now, let’s all drool over the pics and check out the video below.

Ryan Fleming: Attack of the Kaiju! We covered this earlier in the week, but it deserves a little bit of extra love. If you disagree, we can’t be friends anymore. The clip shown here is a viral video for the upcoming Guillermo del Toro film, Pacific Rim. If you don’t follow movie news, specifically news about genre films, then you may not have heard much about this movie — yet. At Comic Con earlier this year, fans were treated to a trailer that apparently made sweet love to the eyeballs of everyone in attendance. Reports from the screening had some people declaring a 2013 Best Picture Oscar, while others demanded sequels be put into production, and even more simply wept. So, of course, in its infinite wisdom, Hollywood decided to withhold the trailer for five months/  While we are left to wait until the trailer debuts with The Hobbit, the filmmakers have decided to get a jump on things with a series of viral promotions, including this clip of San Francisco taking it on the chin from an angry Kaiju (Japanese colloquialism for “giant monster who stars in a movie”). Del Toro is no different from the millions of movie fans who grew up on Godzilla-style monster movies, unless you consider his prodigious filmmaking talents and the $200 million major studios have given him to kick around and rejuvenate this particular genre of film. Whether he does or not remains to be seen, but one thing is sure: millions of boys who dream of building giant mechs to combat massive beasts are going to rejoice. And I may or may not be one of them.

Caleb Denison: The 21st century’s own bionic man When I was a kid, lunch boxes were made of metal, came with thermoses, and featured graphics based on the hot television shows of the time. I’m talking about The A-Team, Knight Rider and Airwolf – you know, quality TV shows. One of my favorites from that era, and the star of my personal lunchbox: The Six Million Dollar Man. For those not familiar, the show featured Lee Majors playing the role of a crippled astronaut who was rebuilt and made “better than before” using nuclear-powered bionic limbs and implants. He was the bionic man, and he was a bad-ass. Since then, I’ve longed to see this late 1970’s vision of high-functioning bionic limb replacements become reality. And now it has. Check out this video of Nigel, the recipient of a prototype bionic arm made by Bebionic. The arm uses sensors which translate small muscle movement above Nigel’s elbow into startlingly accurate and nimble bionic hand movement. The man can type, crack open eggs, and perhaps most importantly, crack open a frosty beer.

Andrew Couts: Crack the soul-crushing boredom After spending day-in and day-out online, browsing the Web has become a bit too predictable for my taste, even boring. I inevitably land on the same dozen websites, reading the same stories, looking at the same pictures. It’s high time for something new – something completely out of left field. Which is why I’ve become addicted to The Useless Web, a simple website that takes you to random websites that have literally no purpose whatsoever. Like this terrifying wiggly thing, or this awesome other thing. The variety, as far as I can tell, is endless. So if you truly get bored clicking through your regular list of websites, head over to The Useless Web for some good ol’ fashioned time-wasting.

Source : digitaltrends[dot]com