“The cloak worn by Sir Alec Guinness in Star Wars, along with Madonna’s dresses from Evita and several of James Bond’s suits are to go under the hammer.Costumes from productions including the Indiana Jones films, Titanic and Doctor Who will also be auctioned on 6 March. Some 350 lots are being sold by London-based costume maker Angels. Bonhams auctioneers said the cloak was expected to surpass its £50,000 reserve price. Guinness, who played Obi-Wan Kenobi in Star Wars, died in 2000.”
“As many as nine suspicious packages found throughout the Boston area were part of a marketing campaign for Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim program, “Aqua Teen Hunger Force,” according to Turner Broadcasting. A statement from the company indicates that it is in talks with law enforcement officials to diffuse the situation.
The ‘packages’ in question are magnetic lights that pose no danger,” said the statement from Shirley Powell, senior vice president of corporate communications for Turner Broadcasting System, Inc.
“They are part of an outdoor marketing campaign in 10 cities in support of Adult Swim’s animated television show ‘Aqua Teen Hunger Force.’ They have been in place for two to three weeks in Boston, New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Atlanta, Seattle, Portland, Austin, San Francisco and Philadelphia. Parent company Turner Broadcasting is in contact with local and federal law enforcement on the exact locations of the billboards. We regret that they were mistakenly thought to pose any danger”.”
There’s no need to fear, Underdog action figures are here! BigBadToyStore.com has a new line of figures based upon the classic Underdog show created by Mezco. Included are classic characters Polly Purebread, Underdog, Simon Barsinister and of course Riff Raff.
“We don’t use any old hubs to bolster our USB connectivity. Good grief, no! We use ones shaped liked Doctor Who’s Tardis. Why? Well, for starters we love Doctor Who. But more than that we love the Tardis. This ingenious product of Time Lord technology is surely one of the most iconic objects in sci-fi history.”
“Some of the video game industry’s smartest minds thought that couch potatoes wanted richer graphics and more challenging virtual worlds. It turns out that a lot of potatoes simply wanted to get off the couch. That may be the best explanation for the growing popularity of the Nintendo Wii, the new video game system that has players jumping, punching and swinging, giving them an aerobic workout right in front of their television sets.
The Wii, which uses an innovative wireless controller to translate the players’ motions onto the screen, has upset the order of the video game world. In electronics stores and elsewhere, there are growing signs that the Wii has taken the lead in buzz and sales over another new console, the Sony PlayStation 3, which offers new superlatives in processing power and graphics.
The competitive picture became clearer on Tuesday, when Sony reported disappointing profits that industry analysts attributed largely to the expensive and shaky rollout of the PlayStation 3 and lukewarm demand for the complex machines. By contrast, Nintendo said last week that its own third-quarter sales were up 40 percent from a year earlier, buoyed by Wii sales.”
Posted by Michael Pinto on Jan 31, 2007 in Animation
Can you imagine the outcry today if they used animated cartoons to sell beer? In the golden age of television the sponsor was king as seen in this 1960 commercial for Carling Black label beer:
NECA is introducing a new series of Pee-Wee Herman figures. Included are figurines based on Cowboy Curtis, Ms Yvonne and of course Pee-Wee Herman. You can pre-order these figures now at BigBadToyStore.com.
“Stephen Colbert is the Emmy Award-winning host of Comedy Central’s Colbert Report . He will be at NYCC on behalf of Oni Press in support of his new 5-issue comic book miniseries, Stephen Colbert’s Tek Jansen , which will arrive in stores on March ‘07. The series is written by John Layman and Tom Peyer with Jim Massey and illustrated by Scott Chantler with others. It is a full color, 32-page comic book that will retail for $3.99. Colbert will be autographing on Friday, February 23 at 4:30pm.”
Posted by Michael Pinto on Jan 30, 2007 in Animation
This is a very well done fan made anime music video! Hare Hare Yukai (ハレ晴レユカイ lit. Sunny Sunny Fun) is the ending theme to the Japanese anime series The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya:
Posted by Michael Pinto on Jan 29, 2007 in Animation
I came across two great blog entries that give a good insight into the golden age of Disney:
Seven “Little People” Michael Sporn’s blog has a scan of several pages of an internal meeting at Disney in which they’re working on the concepts behind the character designs of the seven dwarfs from Snow White. We’re all so use to looking at this film as a finish product that it’s hard to imagine a point when the concepts for the characters were only half formed. It’s also amazing to me that in an era of typewriters and mimeograph machines that Disney took the time to transcribe this working meeting.
The Ropes at Disney
Jerry Beck at CartoonBrew.com has scanned an entire employee booklet from Disney during the 40s (and there are quite a few World War II references to be found). What I love is that the last page gives you a map of all of the various departments at Disney, so you get to know your way around the studio.
