What would your toys do if they came to life? Many of us have imagined this very idea at some point during our childhoods. But Canadian photographer Daniel Picard has taken it a step further than most, putting action figures in front of realistic backgrounds and photographing them to make them appear life-sized. Picard’s ongoing photo series, “Figure Fantasy,” shows the more mundane side of some of the most popular heroes and villains in pop-culture: Batman is seen engaging in some very uncharacteristic petty crime, Cobra Commander has dog problems, while Darth Vader takes a trip to the bathroom — complete with his personal Stormtrooper guard duty in tow. Picard uses some digital post-processing effects on his photos to add motion and flares, but the real magic comes in his reliance on forced perspective, making his small subjects appear much larger than their 1:6-scale. See a sample of some of his work below and the full series on his website.

Those pesky deadites won’t stay dead! The Evil Dead, the influential 1980s horror/comedy trilogy from director Sam Raimi, is being resurrected as an original TV series on Starz in 2015, the company announced today. That follows Raimi’s confirmation last summer that he and his brother Ivan were writing the series. And not only is Raimi back onboard to direct the pilot, but Bruce Campbell will return in his iconic starring role as Ash Williams, the tenacious and wisecracking warrior/stock boy. The 10 half-hour-long episode series, titled Ash vs. The Evil Dead, which takes place about 30 years after the events depicted at the end of Army of Darkness, will air on Starz sometime in 2015. Here’s the official synopsis from the network:

The STARZ Original series officially titled “Ash Vs. Evil Dead” will be 10 half-hour episodes. Bruce Campbell will be reprising his role as Ash, the stock boy, aging lothario and chainsaw-handed monster hunter who has spent the last 30 years avoiding responsibility, maturity and the terrors of the Evil Dead. When a Deadite plague threatens to destroy all of mankind, Ash is finally forced to face his demons –personal and literal. Destiny, it turns out, has no plans to release the unlikely hero from its “Evil” grip…

If that doesn’t get you excited, this quote from Campbell should:

“I’m really excited to bring this series to the Evil Dead fans worldwide – it’s going to be everything they have been clamoring for: serious deadite ass-kicking and plenty of outrageous humor,” said Bruce Campbell.

The original Evil Dead trilogy, with its charmingly low-budget (but effective) gore effects and schlocky dialogue, is responsible for spawning an entire generation of “cabin in the woods” horror imitations. It later became the subject of a musical, several comics and video games, and the original film was remade last year in a far more serious fashion. The fact that Starz would seek to breathe new life into it isn’t surprising in the least, especially given the network’s aspirations to reinvent itself as a destination for more celebrated original programming in the mold of its sibling HBO (see The Knick, which premiered earlier this year). Now it just remains to be seen how many boomsticks will be in store for viewers come next year.

Pink Floyd fans freaked out when they found out the legendary psychedelic rock band would be putting out a whole new album of previously unreleased music titled The Endless River. The first single landed last week and only further stoked interest in the band’s turn toward mostly instrumental songs (many of them originally recorded in 1993). Last night, it became the most-preordered album in history on Amazon UK. Now the full album The Endless River is out on iTunes and Amazon and available for streaming on Spotify and Rdio. Take that, Taylor Swift!

On top of that, the band has released a new teaser music video today for “Louder Than Words,” the only lyrical song on the album. The video is fittingly surreal for the same band responsible for the classic 1982 film The Wall, with haunting scenes of the environmentally devastated Aral Sea captured on location in a remote area on the border of Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, as Rolling Stone reports.

Pink Floyd guitarist David Gilmour and drummer Nick Mason discuss the album in another video released last week:

All of which means if you can’t get in touch with your resident prog rock fan today, you’ll know why.

Selfie. It’s a popular word these days for describing a self-portrait, usually taken on a mobile phone, in many cases posted to a social media website with a faux-vintage colored filter. It was also, briefly, the name of a comedy TV series on ABC starring Karen Gillan (formerly of Doctor Who) and John Cho (Harold in the Harold and Kumar series). Although seemingly doomed from the start by its irritating, forced topical name and threadbare premise (an obnoxiously narcissistic woman learns important life lessons from her nebbish male colleague), it actually won praise from some viewers who found it a surprisingly effective critique of the emotional vacuousness of modernity. Or something. In any case, it’s gone now: ABC won’t be ordering a second season of the series, according to TV Line. With the speed with which the show arrived and disappeared, perhaps it would have better been named Snapchat.