Showbits

Today's action-packed film is What's in the Box?, inspired by the the computer game Half-Life:

Although I consider myself a purveyor of fine video games, I've not experienced Half-Life, and so the connection between this movie and the game was unclear. The film's official Web site is oddly cryptic, with an inscrutable text field and a HAL-like red circle. Clicking around brings you to the film itself, but there appears to be no additional content. This air of mystery originally led to public wonderment of whether the video was a commercial, a trailer, or something else entirely. An interview with its young Dutch creator reveals that it was simply a labor of love:

Like World Builder, this film demonstrates the power of special effects, especially as applied to virtual interfaces. Microsoft has predicted that similar tools are in our own future. I hope we'll use them to make our lives simpler, and not to fend off invaders from other dimensions.