Johnny Mnemonic was THE nerd film event of 1995. Based on the short stories of William Gibson this mega budget flick was the talk of every geek. So why has this film been forgotten? Frankly it’s because Keanu Reeves was such a bad actor! Granted that this may be the partial fault of artist/director Robert Longo but in the scene above makes a William Shatner performance look subtle by comparison. So how were so many smart fanboys fooled? Well the marketing for the film was stellar — for example this trailer gives no hint of the uneven nature of the film: Read more…
Posted by Michael Pinto on Feb 27, 2009 in Television
“The year: 2500 AD. The ‘Phoenix Five’. The crew: Captain Roke, Ensign Adam Hargreaves, Cadet Tina Kulbrick, and their computeroid Karl. Their mission: to patrol the outer galaxies for Earth Space Control, to maintain peace, and to capture Zodian the humanoid, who with the aid of his computers Alpha and Zeta endeavours to become dictator of outer space.”Read more…
Posted by Michael Pinto on Feb 26, 2009 in Pulp Fiction
Flesh by by Philip Jose Farmer, 1960 first printing, illustration by Gerald McConnell
Philip José Farmer was part of that first generation of authors who put science fiction on the map — above is a clipping of a 1954 newspaper that shows him, his wife and Isaac Asimov sporting a bow tie to give you a context of the man and his times. Farmer was unusual in that unlike so many other writers of the genre he managed to weave many sexual themes into his science fiction stories.
The book that would put him on the map was the novel Flesh which was published in 1960. When it first came out the book received a rather lukewarm review, but a revised expanded edition eight years later won him more praise — and today the book is acclaimed as a landmark novel of the genre. Later Farmer would go onto write the Riverworld series of books which would inspire a role-playing game, a television series and a PC computer game. Read more…
Editor’s Note: As a creative person I’ve been watching the urban toys scene in awe — and the first question that pops into my head is always “What’s the process of making these cool art objects into reality?” Long time artist David Foox has just introduced a line of toys called Organ Donors, so I asked him as a favor to write up an article giving his start-to-finish experience as a first time creative tackling the world of designer toys.
Step #1 Concept
The most important aspect of any custom vinyl toy is CONCEPT. “If your concept is solid, your toy is a success.” – Erick Scarecrow, friend. While this is the first step of the project, it is actually the most important step – and the one that is most often neglected. People are typically in a hurry to get to the other steps and fail to adequately delve into the concept that is being developed. In order to best develop a concept, I would advise people to first create an inhabitable environment, world, universe, or cause. Read more…
Posted by Michael Pinto on Feb 24, 2009 in Comic Books
On February 2010 we’ll find out what happens when you mix up Spiderman, Bono and a Broadway musical together. The website for Spider-Man, Turn Off The Dark has gone live and come June you’ll be able to sign up for tickets for a show that promises a new take on the story of Peter Parker, whose life is turned upside down when he’s bitten by a genetically altered spider. Read more…
Introduced in 1964 the IBM System/360 was THE most popular computer of that era when such devices were the exclusive domain of big business and government. Each computer supported floating-point calculations and ran with up to 8 megs of memory! Sadly there are very few of these gems still in existence today — in fact the Smithsonian owns a 360 but sadly it isn’t even on display.
But the real story behind this computer is the project manager — who was Fred Brooks. As fate would have it in addition to the hardware Brooks also had to manage the development of the operating system for the 360 which was System/360. Luckily for all of us the project was a disaster going over budget and over time. However Brooks turned lemons into lemonade by writing the book The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering which was first published in 1975: Read more…
My guess is that this commercial dates from the very late 70s or early 80s — I tend to associate Vincent Price more with the horror than the mystery genre although there is a bit of an overlap. By the way it should be noted that the Franklin Library wasn’t a serious book publisher but an arm of the Franklin Mint which was more in the business of selling collectables than literature. From my own point of view these ornately bound books lack the charm that one would find in the cover illustration of low brow mystery paperback.
Update: Nick Kent has pointed out to me the missing Vincent Price mystery connection! Price was host of the PBS series Mystery in the 80s:Read more…
When I first came across this commercial my first thoughts were “this has got to be an upcoming CGI Star Blazers movie that I’ve been waiting for my entire life!” But then I noticed at the end of the advert that there seemed to be some sort of box — I figured then that it had to be some sort of amazing videogame:
Well after a minuter or two of googling the subject it turns out that this amazing animation is for a new Space Battleship Yamato Pachinko machine! By you’ve got to check out the website — it’s all in Japanese but the interface with make any old school Star Blazers fan weep with joy: Read more…
Posted by Michael Pinto on Feb 21, 2009 in Science
The planned February launch of the Discovery has been delayed for the forth time due to potential faulty fuel valves. But that’s not the real story here: The fact of the matter is that the Discovery first flight was in August of 1984. Think about that for a minute — that’s just a few months shy of 25 years ago! In that time we’ve had five Presidents in office spanning three generations — and when Discovery first launched geeks were first discovering dial up bulletin boards. Read more…
Johnny Mnemonic was THE nerd film event of 1995. Based on the short stories of William Gibson this mega budget flick was the talk of every geek. So why has this film been forgotten? Frankly it’s because Keanu Reeves was such a bad actor! Granted that this may be the partial fault of artist/director Robert Longo but in the scene above makes a William Shatner performance look subtle by comparison. So how were so many smart fanboys fooled? Well the marketing for the film was stellar — for example this trailer gives no hint of the uneven nature of the film: Read more… 
