Editor’s Note: In this column animation critic Joe Strike gives us an overview into his adventures running around the New York Comic Con this past weekend.
This damn thing keeps getting bigger and bigger, not that that should be a surprise to anyone. The only surprise is why did it take so long for NYC to get a world-class con of its own. When the New York Comic Con opened for business in ’06, four years ago, its exhibit area was a tiny (for the massive Javits Center) basement space that was overcrowded from almost the instant the con opened its doors. This year the exhibitors took over most of the high-ceilinged main floor, an enormous space that the equally pop-culturey Licensing Show used to fill before moving to Las Vegas. Read more…
Brad Pitt’s accent doesn’t quite cut it for me in this trailer (compare him to the performance of R. Lee Ermey in Full Metal Jacket) but I’m sure Quentin Tarantino will have enough guts-n-gore to make up for that! And of course even if QT isn’t making a great film he never commits the sin of making a dull film, you know that when you enter the movie theater you’re going on a long roller coaster ride. Read more…
Slowly I’m starting to see the first signs of Coraline merchandise appear here and there — although what little I’ve seen so far hasn’t impressed me at all. For a film that looks so rich and has so much promise, most of the toys seem pretty unimaginative. Although perhaps the toy vendors are waiting to see if the film will be a hit. Two of the cooler things that I’ve spotted is the Coraline Lunchbox shown above and the Coraline PVC Set A shown below:
The first Amazon Kindle looked like something from the 90s, you’d half expected that it would be running HyperCard with some Voyager CD-ROMs providing the content. So with the debut of the Amazon Kindle 2 I was sort of surprised to see them still sticking with the same old ugly plastic buttons, a black and white screen and that awful off white casing surrounding the display. Frankly in a recession I’m not going to drop $360 on something that looks like it should cost under $100. Read more…
Posted by Michael Pinto on Feb 10, 2009 in Science
What makes this video amazing is that not only does it address what was once a taboo subject at NASA (embracing innovation) but in a bold step towards transparency NASA is making this video public and putting it on YouTube for the entire world to see. I applaud this as the agency has been facing criticism of being too bureaucratic, and this video shows the right stuff to having the correct mindset to change. Read more…
This weekend at New York Comic Con I heard the line “if you add a zombie to anything it will get better!”; And these skateboarding zombies by Tsuchiya Shobu are proof of that concept. These beautiful (but undead) vinyl figures are 8″ to 10″ tall and have a wonderful amount of detail in them: Read more…
The ATMs at the Javits Center charge a whopping $3 fee — however this may not be a bad thing as the New York Comic Con could empty your wallet rather quickly. The showroom floor is so packed with goodies it’s as if the Mall of America were run by fanboys — every inch is crammed with everything from arty urban toys to rare collectables. I’m also always blown away with the wide variety of trinkets, there’s something for everyone from anime hats to punk rock stickers.
Posted by Michael Pinto on Feb 8, 2009 in Videogames
That old Jesuit quote of “Give me a child until he is seven and I will give you the man” always comes back to haunt me when I see old commercials like this for Nestle Quick from 1983. Years later as a elder fanboy I find myself addicted to mocha flavored coffee drinks and still playing with computers day and night. By the way the bunny is playing with an Atari 2600 VCS: Read more…
Editor’s Note: This essay is the result of my walking about the New York Comic Book Convention this year and asking myself the question “What brings you here?”
While escaping the New York Comic Book Convention I came across a series of Watchmen posters in the street, saturated by the orgy of the show I naturally assumed that the posters were aimed at folks entering and exiting the mega gathering of geekdom. However several blocks I realized that I was only kidding myself as I came across the same set of posters again — what was once the realm of fanboys twenty years ago was the mainstream of Hollywood today. In this way Watchmen is no different than Oprah or any frat boy focused reality TV show on MTV that’s a hit. Read more…
This latest Land of the Lost trailer goes into a bit more detail than the Superbowl spot — I have to say that I love the idea that the producers have decided to make this a comedy instead of trying and botching up a more serious film. While I loved the fact that the original series had some A+ science fiction writers on board Hollywood just doesn’t have what it takes to pull that off, so it was smart move to do what they do best.
Our galaxy is big, really big — so the odds are in our favor that Earth is not a fluke. Of course this thinking is old news at this point, however what’s new is that astrophysicists are starting to crunch numbers on the subject based upon what we currently know from the field of astronomy. Once such fellow is Astrophysicist Duncan Forgan who has been crunching the numbers based on what we know about the currently discovered 330 known exoplanets. His estimate took into account factors like temperature, availability of water (so yes it’s “life as we know it”) and the size of the Milky Way. Read more…
Posted by Michael Pinto on Feb 5, 2009 in Star Trek
I forgot just how much dancing was in the original Star Trek series — it’s rather amazing that thee was so much there that you could edit an entire music video out of it and hardly repeat a scene! Here’s another fan made video which isn’t as well choreographed but still entertaining: Read more…
Posted by Michael Pinto on Feb 5, 2009 in Comic Books
In this illustration Ontario based artist Rosemary Travale depicts Nightwing (i.e. Dick Grayson who’s best known as Robin) taking up the role of the Dark Knight. Travale did this illustration for a competition, but in our book she’s already fanboy approved: The two things that I love about what she’s done here is how she brings the spirit of youth into Batman (that special unsure quality about yourself) without being too cute about it — and her gouache technique really allows the texture of the paper to come through which is something that you would just never get in a Photoshop coloring job.
Posted by Michael Pinto on Feb 4, 2009 in Videogames
When was the last time that retail employees wore a tie? The year is 1991 and this training video show retail employees how to dodge problem customers who want to return their Gameboy and NES Sports Sets. My favorite example in the video is the “nice customer” who is using the wrong port and is so grateful for the help that she offers to bring the store employee a pie. By the way notice how the customer is always at fault in this video as if Nintendo would never ship a defective product.
Posted by Michael Pinto on Feb 4, 2009 in Japanese TV
This 80s advert for Tess Tea has a soundtrack that either inspired by the Katrina and the Waves hit Walking on Sunshine — or — the earlier Clash single Hitsville U.K. Although the irony of this is that much of British new wave music from that era owed a great deal to a reggae dancehall rhythm. I couldn’t find out much about Tess Tea online other than the fact that it was a brand from Suntory that must have been popular in the 80s. Here’s another anglophile commercial for Tess Tea from 1984: Read more…
While this planet is about twice the size of Earth it’s amazing to think of the progress that astronomers have made in just the past few years. I wouldn’t be surprised if in the next few years we discovered a solar system that’s similar to own own. This latest exoplanet was detected by looking for a drop in brightness of the parent star as the planet passed in front of the star: During this transit the planet appears as a tiny black dot. There’s some controversy to the exact size of the planet, but to me what’s exciting is that we’re getting better at spotting the small one.
Posted by Michael Pinto on Feb 4, 2009 in Animation
Somehow over the last month I missed this trailer for the Imagi release of Iron Man 28 (Tetsujin 28): While I love the mecha in this trailer I hate just about everything else! By making the human characters look realistic they’ve lost the charm of the original character designs. Not only that but they’re not quite realistic enough so they look like a bad video game, except for the fact that they’re very stiff looking. Making matters worse the voice overs talent has no character to it and the sense of timing in the trailer seems off. A few days ago it came out that Imagi was having financial troubles and my first reaction was that it may prevent some bad films from being made – and sadly after this trailer I’m still of that opinion.
I just discovered that in Japan that you can get an illustration made out of the froth that they put into your cafe — shown above is an example from the Ghibli museum cafe which is based on Kiki’s Delivery Service (photographed by Misugi Yasunami). Below is a bunny cup of brew photographed by my Flickr friend Yasuko.
Posted by Michael Pinto on Feb 3, 2009 in Animation
There’s something very haunting about some of the Russian animation that I’ve seen over the years, there’s a sense of surrealism but there’s something very unnerving underneath the surface. This animated film is from 1991 and is titled Frother (Потец) — it’s based upon a poem Alexander Vvedensky from 1937. The film’s director was Alexander Fedulov (1947 – 1996) and the other worldly art direction is by Vladimir Burkin. Here’s the second part of the film: Read more…
Posted by Michael Pinto on Feb 3, 2009 in Japanese TV
There’s something slightly violent lurching under this ever so moe commercial for Sapporo Ichiban instant noodles. From my crude translation my understanding is that these instant bowls of wonder come in three varieties: ramen, miso and udon.
You don’t need money, don’t take fame, don’t need no credit cards to ride this train! But sadly recession struck fanboys like myself who grew up on Back to the Future can only dream about owning a vintage 80s DeLorean — however the next best thing may this official license plate replica being offered by ThinkGeek. Although if you do want to get closer to your childhood dream the next step up would be to go to Universal Studios of Japan where the Back to the Future: The Ride simulator currently resides.
Posted by Michael Pinto on Feb 2, 2009 in Television
As a television series Max Headroom: 20 Minutes into the Future was one of my favorite shows from the 80s. Of course the character of Max pre-dates that series — he got his start with a talk show in England in 1985 which in many ways inspired Space Ghost: Coast to Coast. When Coke launched their new formula they made the bold move of picking Max as their spokesperson using the tagline “Catch the Wave!” Folks loved Max but not the new Coke and the old Coke was bought back with the label “Classic Coke” (which was just recently dropped). Read more…
shown below:
