Editor’s Note: This week animation industry insider Joe Strike takes us to a charity auction where the who’s who of NYC animation embrace their inner fanboy to swap goodies and gawk at cartoons.
Whatever possessed me to raise my hand? I went into the ASIFA auction on November 20th, as broke or broker as anyone else in the USA today, just to see who was there and what was going on… before I knew it I was bidding on a 1926 copy of Animated Cartoons, by one E.G. Lutz, a copy of the book that taught Walt Disney how to animate (or so the legend goes), for a mere $60. Read more…
In my never ending hunt for cool and unblogged about pop culture in Japan, I found this mysterious item at the convenience store:
What sold me was it apparently went fast enough or was powerful enough to shatter it’s own UPC code. My first impression was that it had something to do with racing given what I thought was a speedometer or cyclometer. Then there is the fake signs of scraping and damage printed on. Read more…
You know what I want for Christmas? I want William Shatner to have a guest spot in the upcoming Star Trek XI film! But if I can’t get that instead I’ll gladly settle for this old school Star Trek Phaser and Communicator Set from ThinkGeek. The phaser has the nice touch of including an overload setting that is followed by an exploding sound effect (or as my computer programming friends would say “If it’s not a bug it’s a feature!”). The communicator is also cool as it features 20 fanboy friendly phrases like “Spock here, Captain”, “Scotty here, Captain” and my personal favorite “Transporter room ready to beam up”.
If you’re a Hello Kitty fangurl (or fanboy) that’s been hit by hard times this Hello Kitty 2009 Limited Edition Swarovski Watch might just be for you. Priced at a mere $579.99 the budget conscience kitty themed watch is a bargain when put next to the $3000 Neiman Marcus diamond-crusted Hello Kitty watch.
The BBC has announced that it will remake two new films based upon the the 1951 science fiction novel The Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham. The best known adapatdation of the novel is the 1962 film directed by Steve Sekely, although the title is an old BBC favorite having inspired radio plays in 1953, 1957, 1968 and a TV series in 1981. The new version will be set in the year 2011 in a post-peak oil setting where mankind has turned to the biofuel Triffid to solve the world’s energy problems — and everything goes wrong when the plant creatures grow hungry for human flesh. You see I always knew that biofuels aren’t the way to go…Read more…
It’s amazing what a bunch of Nintendo fanboys can do if they put their mind to it! I present to you the Pushpin Mario Shrine:
“This is the third revision of this project. From the first pin to the last took about two and a half semesters, though the final version was completed entirely within the first two months of Fall 2008. There are over 17,000 pins on the board, and the work was done entirely by students, mainly members of the CIS Student Association. The board is currently in the Student Computing Center at the University of the Fraser Valley.” Read more…
Posted by Michael Pinto on Nov 27, 2008 in Animation
On Thanksgiving Day of 1950 NBC presented The Rootie Tootie Thanksgiving Party which was sponsored by RCA. By December after the sponsor dropped out the show went by the name Rootie Kazootie. What’s impressive about this early piece of television history is that this special includes an appearance of both Kukla Fran and Ollie and Eleanor Roosevelt. The show lasted until 1954 and had an audience of between 2 and million kids which in turn inspired a line of comic books and other collectables. Read more…
Posted by Michael Pinto on Nov 27, 2008 in Science
We always think of Jupiter as a gas giant, but what’s amazing to think about is that when you get to the core of the planet you have an Earth-like rock core that is 14 to 18 times the mass of Earth (which is twice the size as what scientists use to think):
“Jupiter has a rocky core that is more than twice as large as previously thought, according to computer calculations by a University of California, Berkeley, geophysicist who simulated conditions inside the planet on the scale of individual hydrogen and helium atoms.”
Posted by Michael Pinto on Nov 26, 2008 in Animation
As an animation fanboy I always love it when a cartoon makes a reference (visual or otherwise) to the medium itself. This clever animated spot from the English animation studio small time inc. shows a series of flipbooks that tell the sad tale of a little black dog. To me flipbooks are sort of the “gateway drug” to learning the basics of animation, so they have a special place in my heart!
Posted by Michael Pinto on Nov 26, 2008 in Science
Astronomers have just found a region of our galaxy where the sugar module Glycolaldehyde which is linked to the origin of life is available. This is great news in the search for extraterrestrials as it may help scientists discover the location of earth like planets that support life:
Being a Will Eisner fanboy I sort of have mixed feelings from what I’ve seen of the upcoming film The Spirit so far. The clips seems a bit better than I thought, but I still feel like the idea of turning The Spirit into some sort of superhero is misplaced as what makes him so special is that he’s so ordinary on a certain level.
Posted by Michael Pinto on Nov 26, 2008 in Comic Books
In today’s issue of Batman it seems that after 70 years of good faith our trusty sidekick Robin will go over to “the dark side” and knock off poor Bruce Wayne. Well at least that’s the rumor we’ve been hearing — but it seems that in this latest issue the dark knight will meet with some sort of ultimate demise:
Sometimes I wish the kids toys were for grownups — in this case the Wall.E Learning Laptop has a really cute eye catching industrial design (in fact his right eye does wink at you). The learning laptop features a full QWERTY keyboard, moving arm controllers, a an animated LCD screen.
Posted by Michael Pinto on Nov 25, 2008 in Star Trek
Yes it’s the very same Star Trek XI trailer that you’ve been watching again and again for a week now — but this time J.J. Abrams added some extra special secret sauce: Leonard Nimoy as Spock!
The SciFi Channel just started airing a new promo for the second half of the final season of Battlestar Galactica. The beginning of the end of the series will go on the air January 16th next year.
Posted by Michael Pinto on Nov 24, 2008 in Videogames
Space Fantasy Zone （スペースファンタジーゾーン）was the unreleased followup to the 1985 Sega arcade game Fantasy Zone (ファンタジーゾーン) which was later ported to a wide range of systems from the Nintendo Famicom to the Sharp X68000. The reason Space Fantasy Zone was never released was because NEC developed the game without getting permission from Sega who made it a point of not letting them put it out. The 1991 title was created for the NEC PC Engine Super CD-ROM2 platform which is known in the United States as the TurboGrafx-CD. Over the years a prototype of the game has been floating around (which is what this video is from) and rumor has it that an ISO of the SuperCD has been leaked in the past. Read more…
Posted by Michael Pinto on Nov 24, 2008 in Japanese TV
Kamen Rider was a TV show from the early 70s in Japan, but there were in fact three low budget films also made at the same time. This is a silly clip from Kamen Rider versus Shocker which revolves around a plot dealing with the secret plans for a gravity machine that becomes stolen during a birthday party for Professor Daidōji’s daughter. The best part of this 1972 film is clearly the evil rubber suited character running about with the daughter’s teddy bear while engaging in combat action with Kamen Rider. Read more…
Posted by Michael Pinto on Nov 24, 2008 in Comic Books
It’s funny to me that Garfield (which would never be in my top ten list so let’s just leave it at that) seems to be vastly improved when you make it non-sequential. You best visit this site quickly before the copyright cats get onto them:
“…so this guy noticed that Garfield comics make just as much sense if you throw random panels together, and sometimes are actually pretty funny. He got a cease-and-desist letter. So he made the code available for people who wanted to try it for themselves. Here we go!”
