Posted by Michael Pinto on Jan 19, 2009 in Television
Danger Will Robinson! Any fanboy who has loved the 60s sci fi drama Lost in Space knows that one of the more interesting characters in the show was the Robot. Sadly the the man behind the robot just passed away — his name was Bob May. It should be noted that Bob didn’t give the robot his voice — that privilege belonged to Dick Tufeld. Although silent you could say that May was the man pulling the strings of the puppet and bringing him to life.
I love the clever industrial design of this Mickey Mouse Desk Light which is from Japan. The top light enclosure with the ears is a bit of an obvious concept although what I think makes the design so great is the added touch of making the base of the lamp have the buttons from Mickey’s pants. Read more…
The year is 1982 and Crazy Eddie (with prices so low he’s practically giving everything away) decides to hawk home computers like the Commodore VIC-20 and the Apple ][. Crazy Eddie was a retail chain that was started in Brooklyn in the early 70s and hit a high point in the 80s until the Feds shut them down for fraud charges. By the way the guy in the commercial isn’t the owner of the store who was busted — he’s Jerry Carroll who was an FM radio DJ at the time. Here is an example of his more creative work: Read more…
Posted by Michael Pinto on Jan 16, 2009 in Television
In 1962 Sean Connery stars in Dr. No and the spy genre takes over the world of entertainment. Within ten short years several more Bond films follows and a host of second rates clones follow — from TV shows like The Saint to comedy films like Matt Helm. In the swinging 60s the two things that make the spy genre special are guns and go go girls: Bond has a license to kill and the spy genre wouldn’t be what it was without the sex and violence.
During this era Patrick McGoohan was a successful actor as the star of Danger Man which ran as Secret Agent Man in the United States. But after a few years McGoohan grew tired of the show and was offered the chance to do something new by Lew Grade of ITC Entertainment. So McGoohan gave his pitch — and it was pure genius: Read more…
Posted by Michael Pinto on Jan 15, 2009 in Star Trek
The year is 1982 and Star Trek is all but finished — the first Star Trek movie was a disaster of bland storytelling and had no life at all. Yet Paramount decides to take a chance and allows Nicholas Meyer to direct Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. To be blunt about it: The movie was so damn good that not only did it turn the film series into a franchise — but it’s now over 25 years later and there have been four additional series and a new set of films in the works.
A huge part of that is due to the screen performance of Ricardo Montalbán (November 25, 1920 – January 14, 2009). Firstly in 1982 to all of America he was known as Mr. Roarke from Fantasy Island — and maybe lesser known for selling automobiles that featured “soft Corinthian leather”. Meyer could have cast anyone for the part, but the fanboy in him (and God bless him for doing it) made him go back to Montalbán. In fact it was Montalbán’s performance in the original 1967 episode of Space Seed that played a role in him coming up with the story in the first place. Read more…
In the good old days (a year ago) we’d somehow get our hands on a preproduction sketch from an upcoming film — and then within hours await for the lawyers to contact us. But in the modern world of viral marketing the smarter film folks actually stalk fanboy oriented websites and reach out to us fanboys via Twitter!
So it seems that the fanboy friendly folks behind Ghostbusters III are doing an outreach campaign to plug their film production. So far they have a Twitter account and a production blog setup which features footage from the field and even some production artwork.
Here’s a scene featuring panicked folks fleeing some unseen sort of CGI monster:
Posted by Michael Pinto on Jan 12, 2009 in Japanese TV
This is latest sketch from one of my favorite Japanese comedians — Ken Shimura (志村けん)! What I love about his work is that even if you don’t speak Japanese his comedy is physical enough to get a sense of what’s going on while making you laugh in the process:
Posted by Michael Pinto on Jan 11, 2009 in Animation
I had always falsely assumed that the animated Sugar Bear character was created just for commercials, but this isn’t the case as it turns out that he got his start on Saturday morning TV in 1963. He was featured in the cartoon Linus the Lionhearted which crossed the now unimaginable line of having advertising characters (pushing junk food no less) appear on regular cartoons aimed at kids. Also it turns out that Sugar Bear was based on Dean Martin which explains his demeanor — I guess I could see Sugar Bear drinking a martini and starring in a Matt Helm movie. Read more…
Posted by Michael Pinto on Jan 10, 2009 in Japanese TV
This Pocari Sweat advert is clearly aimed at the fanboys! You’ve got a little of everything here: A sword welding lady in full battle armor, an exotic kitty cat, sphinx and some sort of 3D CGI alien creature mascot sidekick. What more could you ask for?
