“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.
Posted by Michael Pinto on Jan 29, 2007 in Star Trek
Leonard Nimoy will host “Star Trek: Beyond the Final Frontier” on the History Channel. The show will be a documentary that will take a look at the 40-year history of Star Trek. The special airs Feb. 19 at 9 p.m. ET/PT and will feature interviews with actors from the various incarnations of Trek, including Nimoy, Patrick Stewart, Kate Mulgrew and Avery Brooks. The documentary will also include footage from the Christie’s auction of Trek costumes, props, set pieces and models last October.
Posted by Michael Pinto on Jan 29, 2007 in Animation
For most of animation history the mouse is always shown as cute creature, but in this 1960’s commercial for ‘Raid Mouse Killer’ the goal is send Mickey six feet under:
Posted by Michael Pinto on Jan 28, 2007 in Comic Books
It doesn’t get any more silly or low budget than this Superman song from the 1988 Indian film Dariya Dil starring Govinda. Watch out for the girl dressed like Spider Woman:
“During the movie there is a with a song called Too Mera Superman (You are my Superman), which features the leading pair, hero Govinda thrusting pelvis in Supe-suit, and ‘heroine’ Kimi Katkar dressed as (sacrilege!) Spidey. The song takes them from the typical running around trees to a supermarket and finally to a dance floor, with a lot of very badly chromakeyed flying thrown in.”
This is some old school cosplay from AnimeCon 91 (the first major American anime con with major guests from Japan)! This is Robert Fenelon cosplaying as Leader Desslok from Star Blazers:
I first met Rob about ten years (or more?) before the above video was shot. Anime fandom was very small back in the day, we were blown away if you could get 100 people to show up at a C/FO (Cartoon/Fantasy Organization) meeting. Rob was very much a central figure back in those days, and after I handed the Star Blazers Fan Club over to him he created the first full color anime fanzine “Anime-Zine” back in the early 80s.
Posted by Michael Pinto on Jan 27, 2007 in Animation
This is a great early series of television ads by Jim Henson:
I love the dark sense of humor in the ads! Here’s some background info from Wikipedia:
“The success of Sam and Friends led to a series of guest appearances on network talk and variety shows. Henson himself appeared as a guest on many shows, including The Ed Sullivan Show. The greatly increased exposure led to hundreds of commercial appearances (mostly for Wilkins Coffee) by Henson characters through the 1960s. Being puppets, they have been able to get away with a greater level of slapstick violence than might be acceptable with human actors.”
Posted by Michael Pinto on Jan 26, 2007 in Animation
A while ago we reported that a 80s anime classic Robotech was out with a new movie for a limited theatrical run. On February 6th the new movie (Robotech: The Shadow Chronicles) will be out on DVD, here’s the latest trailer:
I have to say that I’m not too crazy about the 3D animation for the spaceships, what made Macross amazing is they did all of that great animation by hand. Although I admit that it’s pretty cool having Mark Hamill do voiceovers!
Doctor Who and Martha are about to step into a new dimension – a cartoon one. David Tennant and Freema Agyeman will star in The Infinite Quest, a 13-part animated adventure that will run weekly in the second series of Totally Doctor Who.
“The Doctor And Martha follow a trail of clues across wild and wonderful alien worlds, to find the location of the legendary lost spaceship, the Infinite,” revealed Russell T Davies.
The Infinite Quest is written by Alan Barnes and directed by Gary Russell. The spectacular animation will be crafted by Firestep, the creative team behind previous Doctor Who animated adventures for the BBC. Thanks to developments in animation and computer technology, expect some amazing advances on previous animations.”
“Nikko has a solution for the Star Wars fans that need to stay connected while gripping a weapon of Jedi justice. The company’s Lightsaber USB phone compliments the R2D2 projector we covered back at CES. The handset features a full keypad hidden under the rotating rubberized hand grip. The business end of the lightsaber glows blue when powered on and turns red when a call is made, apparently in tune with the likely sinister nature of your communiqué.”
“While Starfleet personnel of the 24th century view Klingons as their allies, in the Star Trek universe of Captain Kirk’s time, the Klingons were always viewed as being on the wrong side of their struggles with the United Federation of Planets. As a species, they were allegedly responsible for some reprehensible acts (resulting in some classic TV episodes and movies), but were they really in the wrong? Or did they just not have a fair chance to present their side of the story?
Starting in April, they’ll get their chance. “Star Trek: Klingons: Blood Will Tell” is a new, five-part miniseries that will finally give the Klingons their due. In this special miniseries, we will see five historic Federation-Klingon incidents revisited through the eyes of the Klingon people. After this miniseries, you may never be able to look at episodes like “A Private Little War” or “The Trouble with Tribbles” in the same way again. These stories, viewed from the Klingon perspective, will explain much more of why the Klingon Empire functions the way it does.”
You know it might not be such a bad idea to give them a television series too…
“Mars is losing little water to space, according to new research, so much of its ancient abundance may still be hidden beneath the surface. Dried up riverbeds and other evidence imply that Mars once had enough water to fill a global ocean more than 600 metres deep, together with a thick atmosphere of carbon dioxide that kept the planet warm enough for the water to be liquid. But the planet is now very dry and has a thin atmosphere.
Either some other process removed the water and CO2 or they are still present and hidden somewhere on Mars, probably underground, Barabash says. “We are talking about huge amounts of water,” he told New Scientist. “To store it somewhere requires a really big, huge reservoir.”
Barabash is not sure what form this reservoir – or reservoirs – would take, but he points to findings from NASA’s now lost Mars Global Surveyor. This data provided evidence that water had gushed down slopes on Mars in recent years, possibly originating from beneath the surface.”
